Second part of the season

This week, we started the second part of the stewardship season. Unfortunately, the last couple of weeks we had to cancel because of Canada Day one week and a huge thunderstorm the other. Therefore, there is a lot of work to do. We continued with the invasive removal along the paths and worked on huge patches of stinging nettle.


Black-crowned night heron (photo curtesy of Sherry)

When we walked down to the site at the beginning of the evening, we saw a night heron down in the pond. Their breeding habitat is fresh and salt-water wetlands. These birds stand still at the water's edge and wait to ambush prey, mainly at night. They primarily eat small fish, crustaceans, frogs, aquatic insects and small mammals.


Grapevine on top of our pile of removed invasives

Grapevine going up a tree

Later on, Sylvia and I struggled to remove a huge grapevine that had twirled itself on large trees and we managed to win this battle. Those vines are very invasive and they can do a lot of damage to trees and plants.


Fleebane

I'm on vacation this week so I had the opportunity to walk around the site one morning. I found a large patch of fleebane. There are quite a few around the site.

Unfortunately, along the same path, the DSV is rampant. We haven't worked along this path, but it seems to me it needs a lot of attention.

I also found another large patch of stinging nettle along the path of the middle slope which we haven't visited either. I think I'll try to tackle that next week.


Every Tuesday in Riverdale Park, there is a small market from 4:00 to 7:00 P.M. and I'm told this is one of the reasons why the stewardship is held on a Tuesday at this site. At any rate, stewards can have an incentive to show up early or on time for our 6:30 start time.