There were a couple of Anna’s Hummingbirds at our front door today, and American Robins were chowing down on these berries in Byrne Creek Ravine Park in SE Burnaby, BC. An Orbweaver spider was also at our door.
To celebrate River’s Day, the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers Society, the Lower Mainland Green Team, and the City of Burnaby partnered to pull invasive plant species.
It was a gorgeous, sunny day for an outdoor activity.
It’s great volunteering with the Green Team for they provide sanitized equipment and oversee protocols for the safety of participants.
Anna’s Hummingbird, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Common Raven, Turkey Vulture at Fraser Foreshore Park in Burnaby, BC, this afternoon.
It was great to be back in an elementary school helping to deliver the Stream of Dreams Murals Society watershed education and community art program!
There has been some remote program delivery, and while getting the message across, it doesn’t compare emotionally with being in a school.
With careful protocols, some adjustments to delivery, and repeated and thorough sanitization between each class, today’s sessions went smoothly, and several teachers said they loved the program!
And of course team members, teachers, and students are masked at all times.
Team members are cross-trained to do both the watershed/environment education part of the program, and supervising kids through the Dreamfish painting.
The fish will eventually be installed as a beautiful mural on the school’s chain-link fence to remind students, their families, and the entire neighbourhood that All Drains Lead to Fish Habitat!
Pink Salmon spawning in a small creek off the Paradise Valley Road near Squamish, BC, today.
Pink Salmon duking it out for spawning rights on the Cheakamus River near Squamish. Also a Turkey Vulture chowing down on a Pink near the west end of Lillooet Lake.
Byrne Creek Streamkeepers Society volunteers conducted an aquatic invertebrate survey (bug count) on Byrne Creek in SE Burnaby, BC, today.
Bugs give us an indication of water quality because some are more pollution tolerant than others. Our surveys over many years have steadily found mostly pollution tollerant species, and they also tend to be small in size compared to more pristine creeks.
As usual, our results were in the poor to marginal range using the methodology in The Streamkeepers Handbook and Modules.
The creek gets a lot of road wash that carries contimanants down street drains, and we also get point-source pollution events when deleterious substances are emptied into street drains, or when construction sites are illegally pumped out.
Please rember that All Drains Lead to Fish Habitat!
The new shelter near the wading pool in Ron McLean Park proved to be a great place to count the bugs and enter the results on data sheets.