Spring Meeting 2011

The 2011 spring meeting of the Bedford conservation land stewards is scheduled for Thursday, April 28th. We will meet in the upper conference room of the Bedford town hall at
7:30 p.m. sharp. This is the week following school spring vacation.

Please submit a field report for your conservation area before the meeting. Complete the form that is available here and send it by email to both Yan Thomas and Elizabeth Bagdonas. Their email addresses are provided on the field report form.

The stewards are heavily relied upon to update the conditions and needs of our town’s conservation areas. We're looking forward to hearing from you as the ground clears for inspection.

Please send any agenda items for the meeting to Yan Thomas, head land steward. Thank you!

Bird Sightings

Yan Thomas has been kind enough to share the details of some bird sightings here in Bedford. Please send news of any interesting flora or fauna you encounter to bedfordlandstewards@gmail.com. Here are Yan's notes:

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January 13, 2011, sighted for the second time this season a Red-bellied woodpecker (male) at a suet feeder on Dudley Rd.

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December 15, 2010, sighted a pair of Red-bellied woodpeckers (separately) feeding on mixed seed on the ground under my bird feeder on Dudley Rd. A misnomer, they do not have red bellies; the male has a red crown and nape, the female, only a red nape!

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November 12, 2010, A flock of Pine Siskins visited my thistle feeder on Dudley Road. A small finch with dark, heavily –streaked breast
stripes, a touch of yellow in its wings and base of tail. The flock did not remain into the next day.

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November 23, 2010, A male Pileated Woodpecker (up to 20” in length) visited the backwoods behind my house. When it flew most striking were the large flashing white patches on the underwings against the black body. When it landed on a dead tree the very red crest was evident and through the binoculars looked like a huge flaming-red helmet. Large oblong holes in the tree’s trunk showed where the bird was feeding (carpenter ants). What caught my attention at first was the LOUD irregular kik-kik call like that of a Flicker.

Christmas Bird Count

Volunteers from Bedford will be participating in the National Audubon Society's Christmas bird count on January 2, 2011. The Christmas bird count is an annual event that takes a census of the numbers of species and individual birds in circles of 15 miles in diameter throughout North and South America.

Several of Bedford's conservation areas are within the circle that has been registered with the National Audubon Society for Concord, MA. These conservation areas are:

• Clark
• Dellovo
• Little Meadow
• Vanderhoof
• Webber

All areas within a registered 15-mile diameter circle are eligible for bird counting. The circle registered in Concord includes many back yards in Bedford as well as some land in the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge.

Participants may go out into the field to count birds on January 2nd or they may stay at home and watch their bird feeders. There is a five dollar charge for field participants (over 19 years old) and there is no charge for feeder watchers.

From the National Audubon Society's web page about the usefulness of the Christmas bird count:

The data collected by observers over the past century allow researchers, conservation biologists, and interested individuals to study the long-term health and status of bird populations across North America. In the 1980’s CBC data were used to document the decline of wintering populations of the American Black Duck, after which conservation measures were put into effect to reduce hunting pressure on this species.

Contact the Christmas bird count leader for Bedford to join a field team or to participate as a feeder watcher. Frank Gardner is a long-time Bedford conservation land steward and is leading the Bedford participants in the count this year. Send Frank email if you would like to join the count.