Birders Helping Birds - at Dead Creek W.M.A.

 

On 7/7/22, ten lovers of nature and birds met at the Brilyea Access to Dead Creek Wildlife Management Area in Addison. Our goal: to remove shrub honeysuckle, freeing up a wooded area to allow a naturally diverse habitat.

Invasive shrub honeysuckle can be recognized by cutting any branch or limb. The pith, or core, looks like this: 

The event was organized with Amy Alfieri of VT Fish and Wildlife, which manages the Dead Creek WMA. We were met by her colleague Toni Mikula, seen below loading branches onto the dump truck.

Beginning at 8:00, birders lopped, sawed, dug and dragged.

Sharon

Toni, Linda, Beth, Ron

Renata

Beth

Bill and Janet experimented with an Uprooter, a tool that uses human leverage to get under roots and yank them up.

Janet

Bill

Janet found a tiny nest, possibly last year's Ruby-throated Hummingbird nest. Sadly, nest predation is much higher in shrub honeysuckle than in many native shrubs because of the spaces between the major stems. We hope the little ones from this nest fledged successfully!

Along with shrub honeysuckle, we also took down several good-sized buckthorns. Buckthorn is another imported plant that evolved thousands of miles from Vermont's wildlife. Birds and mammals eat the berries, but they act as a laxative and provide no nutrition. 

Lynn

Ron

Four big dump truck loads were taken from the site. The removal of the invasive plants freed up many small oaks, prickly ash and dogwood plants - all native plants which can now grow to provide food, shelter and nesting places for a wide variety of wildlife.

Note: There is a native honeysuckle that's just lovely and isn't destructive to habitat or wildlife. If we had found some of this, we would have left it alone - and celebrated it!

native honeysuckle - photo from our backyard

We got some good advertising from a small piece in Seven Days. And we got some heartening and encouraging comments from other members of the Vermont birding community, including an offer to buy the honeysuckle warriors a tool or some snacks on our next event.

Amy has designed a great sign:

(Our phone number will be on the poster once it's finalized.)

The group photo at the beginning of this post includes our photographer (and devoted slayer of honeysuckle) Bernie Paquette. The following photo includes all the rest of us. From left to right: Maeve, Linda, Beth, Janet, Sharon, Renata, Lynn, Ron, Bill - and Toni on the truck.