Rockingham Bird Club members and university professors Clair Mellinger and Charles (Zig) Ziegenfus have been running a Northern Saw-whet Owl (Aegolius acadicus) banding station at the Highland Retreat Center near Bergton, VA, every fall for 15 years. They generously invite families and groups to watch and participate in their work. On any given night the…
While the HMN Basic Training class was in full swing during its fall session, chapter members were given opportunities to join in on a wide variety of field trips. Thanks to Kate Guenther for her organizational skills that made this happen. Here is a sampling of where we went in October: Forestry Management at Historic…
By the close of the last official Market Compost Drop-off on Saturday, October 29th, 8195 pounds of household organic waste had been collected and recorded from some 1045 contributions over 31 weekly collections at the Harrisonburg Farmers Market. These four tons of nitrogen-heavy organics are happily on their way to becoming finished compost at…
Birds of the ‘Burg completed its second season of bird walks at Hillandale Park in Harrisonburg. The walks were held the first Saturday of each month, April through October and were led by Kathy Byers, HMN Cohort IV; Ralph Grove, Sierra Club; and Anne Neilsen and Bill Benish, both with the Rockingham Bird Club. The…
On August 19, 2016, Chris Bowlen and Kathy Byers, two members of Headwaters Team 1 for the RareQuest project, launched an adventurous kayaking trip to find a rare species of goldenrod in Page County, VA. The team was anxious for success as one rare bird and another plant species had eluded the team earlier in…
Virginia Master Naturalists Headwaters Chapter 