Green Lane Park and John Hienz NWR (21-Jan-2017)

The main purpose of this trip was scouting out trashy areas and hoping to see some rare birds. Green Lane Park, in Montgomery County, had some recent sightings of White-fronted Geese and an Iceland Gull. So I started the day there. On my way down I called up some friends and they were interested in going to John Hienz National Wildlife Refuge, in Philadelphia and Delaware Counties. Roosting Northern Saw-whet Owls and a Black-headed Gull had recently been spotted there. As you can see from the above photo, there was not much bird activity on the lake at Green Lane. I did a short walk along the bank and found a couple areas along the edge that could use a clean-up during warmer weather. These places involved going in the water to get the trash, not something I am going to do on most days in January. 

I did pick up a handful of items from along one of the trails at Green Lane. Then met Joe Greco and was off to pick up another friend before heading to John Hienz. I was a bit disappointed in not being able to see the White-fronted Geese and most likely they were still in the area, probably feeding in a nearby farm field. 

John Hienz didn't look all that much different than Green Lane with the fog. There were more birds though and as I would find out, a whole lot more trash.

Can you see it? Andrew Curtis was the first of our small group to spot this Northern Saw Whet Owl. You may think, how did he find a tiny owl in that whole refuge? Well employees at the Refuge made it a whole lot easier than you would think. These owls come back to just about the same spot every day to rest. Signs were put up on the trail at the two spots the owls have been frequenting. Even with the signs it did take a couple minutes to find the first one and the second was harder to spot. 

On the water we did not find the Black-headed Gull we were looking for, but there were many Northern Shovelers.

Along the trailside we also got to see some common songbirds like this Golden-crowned Kinglet. The ponds and the trailsides were for the most part trash free. I picked up a few items and it really wasn't bad. 

Things changed when we got to the Darby Creek. This section of the creek is a tidal marsh and as you can see it was full of trash. I really wanted to go out and just start picking through the mud, but that isn't the proper way of doing things. 

When I made this post on Facebook I was happy to get a response from someone who lives near by John Hienz. She informed me that the refuge does have an annual clean-up in spring and even got me the dates. I plan on joining the clean-up and getting boats on the water to help clean this mess up. Our  National Wildlife Refuges should not look like this! Hopefully the tide will cooperate for the clean-up so I can actually get into these areas. 

This was all I took off of the trails in John Hienz. Like I said they are pretty clean. It is mainly just the tidal areas in the Darby Creek that need a whole lot of work. I know everything in that area can't be taken care of in one clean-up, so I do hope that this year I can make it down to the refuge to work on it multiple times. 

See my most updated posts on Facebook: Taking Out the Trash in Eastern PA