Volunteers have helped maintain Pickering Creek Audubon Center as a wonderful place to enjoy the outdoors. Many of you helped maintain over three miles of trails, repair the Center’s 1.2 mile-long driveway, mulch educational areas, remove invasive plants and plant native ones in the newly established meadow areas during five general work days. Some individuals and small groups of volunteers have undertaken major projects for a whole season. Members of the Chesapeake Herb Society and others have maintained the beautiful children’s and herb and gardens.  The invasives removal team spent 14 workdays removing multiflora rose, and other aggressive non-native plants. Other volunteers diligently mowed driveway edges and grassy educational and parking areas throughout the growing season as well as tackled major bush-hogging projects. 

Quite a few very handy volunteers worked on maintenance and construction projects all over the center.  Projects range from making bluebird and wood duck boxes, and repairing picnic tables to building changing stalls for summer camp, finishing the interior walls of two rooms of the Byron House, and repainting the Center office.

Volunteers built upon a tradition of wildlife monitoring and citizen science at Pickering Creek. This past year volunteers monitored Pickering Creek’s 65-box bluebird trail and 27-box wood duck trail. They recorded the fledging of 154 bluebirds and 101 tree swallows and the hatching of 111 wood duck chicks.   A handful of volunteers also undertook a new citizen science project at Pickering Creek, water quality monitoring. They recorded data for 27 testing days from April through December.  Water quality testing by staff, students, and volunteers 11 out the 12 months of last year, gave us baseline measurements of what water quality indicators like oxygen, pH, and nitrogen levels are like throughout the year.

Volunteers lent a hand to the center on a quite a few important indoor projects. Nearly a dozen people helped with administrative projects like stuffing and sealing envelopes for large mailings, entering data, organizing the library, and assisting with computer issues. Others have used their expertise by writing articles, organizing projects and events, and participating in board activities.

Over the past year, volunteers have supported what Pickering Creek is all about-connecting people of all ages with nature and inspiring them to participate in conservation.  These volunteer activities directly impact programming offered by Pickering Creek staff, and sometimes they are even part of our programming!  Several volunteers chaperoned and assisted during field trip experiences for elementary through high school students.  Junior Naturalist shared their love of nature with younger children during eight weeks of summer camp and at library programs. Volunteers of all ages represented Pickering Creek at the Waterfowl Festival, Harvest Hoedown-Pickering Creek’s annual public open house, and Tour, Toast and Taste- the Center’s major fundraising event.

This only touches on some of the great stuff volunteers have accomplished. It does not cover everything. A modest estimate of time spent by volunteers in 2010 is over 3,500 hours.  Your time is always appreciated, but not always recognized if it is not recorded. Did you forget to submit volunteer time?   It’s not too late to make it count. You can record hours in the volunteer logbooks at the office and welcome center. You can also submit your time online at the Pickering Creek website or send an email directly to the Volunteer Coordinator.

COMING UP IN FEBRUARY