Menunkatuck Audubon Society Accomplishments for 2021

As COVDI-19 restrictions eased, Menunkatuck Audubon Society was able to engage in some activities and make significant accomplishments.

Conservation

Menunkatuck’s UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery in the Newhallville neighborhood of New Haven is a partnership with Community Placemaking Engagement Network, a neighborhood community action group. We worked with seven neighborhood teens and adults growing 2000 native perennials and shrubs. We planted many in neighborhood gardens and sold others. Thanks to your generosity at last year’s Annual Appeal, we purchased a greenhouse that we will use to get an earlier start on growing plants next spring. UrbanScapes was one of three chapter projects featured during Audubon’s Virtual Convention last summer. 

Terry Shaw’s crew installed more than 10 new and replacement Osprey platforms along Connecticut’s shore. 

Menunkatuck is partnering with the Connecticut Ornithological Association and the Yale Divinity School in Lights Out! New Haven, a project to help birds reach their destinations safely by reducing skyglow over the city.

The Purple Martin colonies at Hammonasset and the Guilford Salt Meadow Sanctuary with 165 fledglings, Tree Swallow nest boxes at Hammonasset, the Ox Pasture Preserve, Guilford Salt Meadow Sanctuary, and West River Memorial Park. We fledged 305 young birds, and Eastern Bluebird nest boxes at the Guilford Salt Meadow Sanctuary and had 14 Eastern Bluebirds fledge. Neither Purple Martin Gourds at the Ewen Farm Preserve in Orange nor West River Memorial Park in New Haven have been colonized yet.

Community Science

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COVID-19 prevented us from participating in the 2020 Christmas Bird Count in December.

With the diminishing of the pandemic in late spring and fall, we were able to conduct the East River Marsh Migration Survey with 50 volunteers from our members and friends as well as UConn Researchers and students from Southern Connecticut State University.

Advocacy

As part of the Connecticut Forage Fish Alliance, we continued our education and advocacy campaign to save our seabirds from the extinction crisis facing them, advocating for the Forage Fish Conservation Act. We provided testimony regarding siting offshore wind turbines in the waters off Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Outreach

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Mayor Elicker cut the ribbon at the greenhouse.

For the past several years we have been tabling at 8-10 events each year. This year we were only able to do two events, the Orange Country Fair and our Greenhouse Opening celebration at which New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker cut the ribbon.

Education

We offered 21 Zoom programs with an average audience of about 40 people and speakers and attendees from as far away as Australia.

Our streaming video from our nest cameras in New Haven, at Hammonasset Beach State Park, and on Falkner Island continued.

Volunteers & Funding

Amazingly in these difficult times, we had 110 people who donated 2500 person-hours of volunteer time. Working in small groups with all the recommended precautions, they installed Osprey platforms, monitored nest boxes, conducted the marsh migration survey, worked at UrbanScapes, and performed other activities. Their volunteer time was worth more than $70,000.

We were successful in leveraging your contributions into grants and gifts totaling more than $3,000.

In addition to maintaining our current projects including the Osprey platform replacements, nest box monitoring, and streaming nest cam video, during 2022 we plan to use the greenhouse at the Urbanscapes Native Plant Nursery to propagate native plants from seeds, complete nest box trails in Orange, Woodbridge, and North Branford, install a new native plant demonstration garden, expand the East River Marsh Migration Survey, and initiate climate solutions.

Menunkatuck is an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff. The majority of our programs and field trips are free, and any fee we charge is simply to cover the expenses of a program. Members and friends like you play a vital role in supporting our local chapter. With your help, Menunkatuck will continue to serve as the local birding group, environmental educator, and conservation advocate. As always, we welcome your volunteer assistance on any of our projects. 

 Best wishes for a happy holiday season and a better 2022 for us all.

Dennis Riordan, President 

Photos: Robin Ladouceur

Why You Should Do Your Spring Planting in the Fall

Margaret Roach,  in The New York Times last week, reported on an interview with Rebecca McMackin, director of horticulture at Brooklyn Bridge Park. The goals of gardening, says McMackin, are to enhance wildlife and the ecology.

Rather than following the common practice of planting and transplanting in spring, for instance, she suggests shifting virtually all of that activity to autumn — and not cutting back most perennials as the season winds down….

“Why do we plant so much in spring? And why do we hear so much about ample spacing and airflow around plants when, if you look at a meadow, that’s not what you see the plants doing?”

After examining and challenging a number of horticultural wisdoms, she found that some were helpful and others were not….

Gardening is a practice, Ms. McMackin said, “and like any practice it is based on traditions passed down from previous generations.”

But here’s the hitch: “The problem is that many of those people who started the traditions lived in Europe or England several hundred years ago, and kept topiary. They were great at growing plants from all over the world — in foreign environments — and making them do crazy things.”

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Wyndcliffe Court

McMackin advocates a different approach.

“Ecological horticulture is animal-centric,” she said. “We encourage the dynamic between plants, wildlife and soil, and strive to figure out how to get those plants to thrive independently of our care. We cultivate gardens with high levels of biodiversity and ecological functionality that can help repair the damage done to this land.”

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Diverse native plant garden.

The tradition of spring planting is another aspect of gardening that needs to be examined.

But is spring really the best time for planting, to foster success either horticulturally or ecologically?…

“When we do plant in spring, and then summer arrives, it can be such an extreme environment — hot, dry and windy, too,” she said, and those are hard conditions for plants trying to root in. With a fall planting schedule, the winter that follows is easier on them.

Spring planting is tough on gardeners, too, who have to keep after new installations with regular watering, or risk losing them. Fall planting gives plants time to establish themselves, and some are fully settled by the following summer, so watering isn’t needed then. Peak planting time at the park is from late September through early October or so, with grasses going in earlier in September, for extra rooting time…

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At Brooklyn Bridge Park, the gardeners skip most of the traditional fall cutbacks and cleanup. That leaves plenty of seed that can self-sow, or be eaten by birds, and preserves an overwintering habitat in the leaf litter for arthropods. Except where mulch or compost is needed, the approach is hands-off….

Come spring, anything that must be cut back is trimmed in six-inch increments. The chunks are allowed to fall to the ground as mulch, not carted away.

With ecological horticulture and fall planting in mind, now is the time to visit UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery and choose the perennials and shrubs that will complement your garden next year.

UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery is located at 133 Hazel St in New Haven. Plants can be ordered online for pick up on Saturdays from 9:30 - 12:00 or you can visit the nursery to pick out plants from our selection of ten native shrubs and 24 native perennials. Shrubs are $20 and $30 and perennials are $10.