Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 17:29:29 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Elliot Kirschbaum Subject: Re: Huntley Meadows (what's happened?) In-Reply-To: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit on 5/1/01 11:05 AM, Tom Beal at THBeal@AOL.COM wrote: > When I first moved to this area in 1983, I lived near Huntley Meadows. Used > to be MUCH more birdy. That spring I remember people were so excited that a > pair of Canada Geese were raising a clutch of young. Now the things have > taken over the area. The marsh is becoming a big mudflat; rails are no > longer common there. > Is there a plan/should there be a plan to control their numbers? I am sure > there are other reason the habitat has changed so much there, but the grazing > of the geese even seems to have affect the number of snakes and turtles. I am not sure what happened. When I was there with the Baltimore Bird Club on April 21, I was shocked at the change from last year. I asked about it at the visitor center, and was told that the change was due to siltation, and that the powers that be were considering how to correct the problem. However, one member of our group had heard a different story. That story is that the boardwalk had been replaced using arsenic treated wood, and that that is what killed off all the vegetation. I do not know any more, and would appreciate hearing from anyone who knows the whole story. Whatever the cause, the result has been awful. Elliot Kirschbaum Baltimore, MD USA mailto:ekirschb@bcpl.net ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================