Opportunities with National Wildlife Federation!

The following backyard habitat-related opportunities are available through your local National Wildlife Federation office:

Habitat Ambassador:
Help others learn how to garden for wildlife by hosting a table at a community event, giving a short presentation or distributing National Wildlife Federation literature. The training is done online with an NWF-provided CD and takes approximately five hours.

Community Wildlife Habitat™ Team Leader:
Once you have registered your own yard as a Certified Wildlife Habitat™, you can take your commitment to the next level by forming a Community Wildlife Habitat team and getting your community certified.

Habitat Steward:
Teach others in your community how to create habitat for wildlife by giving presentations, volunteering to create a Schoolyard Habitats™ site, writing articles for local media or restoring habitat in a public site. Training is in-person and more intense than for a Habitat Ambassador and takes 24 hours, usually over three successive weekends or you can participate in the Woodland Park Zoo Backyard Habitat Classes. Habitat Stewards make a commitment to volunteer for at least 30 hours within the year following their training.

Interested? Contact Courtney Sullivan, National Wildlife Federation Education Manager, at 206-577-7175 or sullivanc@nwf.org

Watershed Walks

Plan to attend a Watershed Walks training event Saturday, April 7, 1 – 4 pm and you’ll learn how to lead engaging, informative walks in your community that connect residents to their environment!

The Watershed Walks Program is designed to train Neighborhood Walking Ambassadors to educate residents about the natural ecology of the Longfellow Creek/Duwamish River Watershed. Individuals attending this event will become trained Neighborhood Walking Ambassadors. Camp Long Naturalist Jeanie Murphy-Ouellette and Feet First Volunteer Coordinator Darcy Edmunds will lead this training on how to effectively engage walking groups, what environmental threats affect our watersheds, and how individuals can reduce their impact on local ecologies.

The Watershed Walks Program provides an enjoyable way for people to learn about the relationship between their actions and a clean environment, and will provide participants an opportunity to experience their environment and community in a different, more intimate way.

Location:
Seattle Public Library - Delridge Branch
5423 Delridge Way SW, Seattle, WA 98106

For more information or to register for this free training, contact Feet First Volunteer Coordinator Darcy Edmunds by emailing darcy@feetfirst.org or calling 206-652-2310, ext. 5. Participation is limited to the first 20 people. All individuals will receive a training packet including a full color watershed map of Longfellow Creek. http://www.feetfirst.org/events/watershed-walks-training

The Watershed Walks Program is a collaborative effort by Feet First and Camp Long, made possible through a grant from The Mountaineers Foundation.

Early Morning Bird Walk at Woodland Park Zoo!

Saturday, May 12, 2012
6:45-9:00 a.m.

In celebration of International Migratory Bird Day, take a guided tour of zoo grounds with a keeper and learn firsthand about the wild birds that call Woodland Park Zoo home, and those that make it a temporary home during their annual migration. Zookeepers and expert staff will be your guides, giving natural history and birding tips to participants of all ages and levels of experience. The walk will last approximately two hours. Please bring binoculars and weather-appropriate clothing. A light breakfast of pastries and coffee will be served.

Cost: $20 per adult non-zoo member; $10 per adult zoo member. Children 12 and under are free. Reservations are required. RSVP by emailing Eric.Kowalczyk@zoo.org. Space is limited to the first 50 RSVPs.

Spring is coming! Get nest boxes ready for new occupants

From Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife's Crossing Paths News Notes:

Spring may officially be several weeks off, but now is the time to get your bird nest boxes cleaned out and ready for new, incoming occupants. Many backyard sanctuary managers who use nest boxes leave them up year-round and leave nesting materials in them through the winter, when some birds will use them as nightime roost sites. But migrating birds that use cavities for nesting, like bluebirds, swallows and wrens, will be returning next month and they prefer clean quarters to follow their instincts to build their own nests.

All nest boxes attract insects - mites, lice, fleas, flies, hornets, spiders and more. In small numbers they are relatively harmless to birds, but in larger numbers they can cause injuries and even fatalities to young birds. Inspect all nest boxes to clean out insects and also to remove the old nesting material. Although some diligent and industrious birds will remove old nesting material before building their own particular nest, many more will just build on top of an old nest. That kind of layering can raise the nest dangerously close to the entrance hole where predators might reach eggs or young.

Your inspection may turn up dead nestlings or infertile eggs, which of course should also be removed. Be sure to use protective gloves, maybe even a dust mask, and dispose of everything you find in nest boxes away from the site to avoid smells that can attract predators. Nest box maintenance includes tightening screws, loosening lag bolts, unblocking drainage holes, and generally making sure everything is secure and working right.

If you find a nest box in your collection that year after year goes unused, consider relocating it. It might not be in the appropriate habitat or suitable height location for the species it's built for, or perhaps it's in the right place but is not built correctly. Check the entrance hole size, overall size dimensions, and other factors that are important to, and different for, various species of nest-box-using birds. Details are available at http://wdfw.wa.gov/living/projects/nestboxes/index.html .

If the same nest box turns up dead nestlings or infertile eggs more than once, consider relocation to avoid competitors or predators, or remodeling to protect the species using the box. A predator block - just a one-inch thick piece of wood drilled with the appropriate size hole - mounted over the entrance hole to create a short tunnel into the nest, can deter starlings, raccoons, or squirrels that have chewed the original hole bigger. Another improvement is to remove any perch post projecting out from the front of a nest box. Our native cavity-nesting birds don't need these perches but they are used by more aggressive non-native birds to harass nesting birds.

If you often have earlier-arriving starlings or English house sparrows dominating your nest box site, you may want to plug the entrance hole until later this spring when martins or swallows or other native species arrive. Small paper cups and other such plugs work well. Remember to remove the plug as soon as you see your "target" species return to the area, or when you otherwise learn of its return to your area. (Online birding chat groups can be a good source of news about migratory bird movements.)

If you watch a nest box closely enough this spring to know when birds have finished raising a brood, you can clean out the box again to encourage another pair to use it or the same pair to nest again. Just don't bother an obviously occupied nest box.

Spring Backyard Habitat Classes at Woodland Park Zoo

At this series of five classes, you'll learn from experts from Seattle Audubon, Seattle Tilth, Washington Native Plant Society and Woodland Park Zoo about how to design your wildlife habitat, attract birds and other wildlife to your backyard, select and care for native plants, manage your backyard sustainably, coexist peacefully with the wildlife you attract, and get your yard certified as a Backyard Habitat.

Cost: $25 per person / $100 for the five-part series if you register before 3 p.m. on Wednesday, March 14th.

For more information or to register, see the zoo’s Backyard Habitat page: www.zoo.org/backyardhabitat

King Conservation District 21st Annual Native Bareroot Plant Sale

The King Conservation District offers a variety of native trees and shrubs for conservation purposes such as wildlife habitat, windbreaks, hedgerows, reforestation and stream enhancement. The plants are bareroot stock which means they do not come in pots or burlap bags, but are harvested from the field in winter when the plants are dormant and ready to be replanted. Bareroot plants are affordable, hardy, have well-developed roots, are easy to handle, transport and plant.

The King CD will hold its next native bareroot plant sale on March 2 & 3, 2012. We always recommend pre-ordering as this is the best way to ensure plant availability. For the first time ever, we are offering online ordering! Please see the King Conservation District website for more information or to order online. Pre-order deadline is January 27th.

Garden Variety Bees Calendar from The Great Sunflower Project!

Garden Variety Native Bees of North America is both a guide to some of our more common native bees and a gardening calendar that never goes out of date. It is set up as a “perpetual calendar” so it includes the dates in each month, but not the days of the week. Use this calendar to keep month to month, and even year to year comparative garden notes. It's a great way to record your observations of the bloom times and other characteristics of the bee-friendly plants you include in your garden, along with reminders to observe bee visits in your garden and send in your data! Details and order information here: www.greatsunflower.org/forum/resources/perpetual-calendar-garden-variety