On Friday September 29th we are planning another weed pull at Important Bird and Biodiversity Area MB091 Riverton Sandy Bar.

We had an excellent turnout on Aug. 17th with 36 volunteers filling 66 bags of invasive sweet clover, burdock and willow. Because the sweet clover requires regular removal we plan to meet at 9:00 am on September the 29th to  pull more bags of the stuff. Looking far into the future, we also hope to do another pull in late April or early May 2018.

We are looking forward to having Don Bodnarus’s high school class from Riverton Collegiate join us on the 29th as well. It’ll be great to get youth from the community involved.

The purpose of this Weed Pull is to once again clear an area of Sandy Bar to make the habitat more attractive to Piping Plover. This shorebird species last nested at Sandy Bar in 2004. With low lake levels and a large open sandy area we hope that the Piping Plover may once again make an appearance at Sandy Bar.

We’ll also be doing a bit of Birding  and recording the species we see and hear while we’re pulling weeds. It would be ideal if we could pull weeds for 2-3 hours and then walk to the end of the sand bar with binos and scopes to show birders and nonbirders some of the bird species that stop over at Sandy Bar as they continue their fall migration south to areas as far away South America. On September 30th 2016 we saw such species as Rusty Blackbird, Smith Longspur, Lapland Longspur, American Pipit, Horned Lark and American Golden Plover.

There is also a possibility that we may be able to show the volunteers how to enter our bird sightings into eBird under the IBA Protocol.

It would be great to have you join us again on the 29th. Please feel free to forward this email to others who may be interested in pulling weeds, meeting others and learning about the fall migrating birds at Sandy Bar.

More details will be emailed out as we get closer to the date.

Thanks!

Joanne Smith

Footnote – please email Tim Poole, iba@naturemanitoba.ca for more details