Dear Friends,

It’s been a busy summer and hints of Autumn are appearing.

We are grateful to so many people in our community for contributing time and resources to protect nature.

Caring for nature is a thread that binds everyone together.

Remember to renew your annual membership on our website!

Warm regards,

      Jim Sunderland, President

PS: please forward this to your friends!

MLA Becky Druhan plants oak trees on East Spectacle Island

We are grateful for Becky Druhan, our local Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA). Becky has been a great supporter of LaHave Coastal and helped guide us through the complex process of bringing East Spectacle Island under permanent protection with funding support from the Crown Share Land Legacy Trust.

On a recent trip to East Spectacle Island, Becky planted oak trees and black cherry trees. These hardwoods had disappeared from the island during more than a century of intensive land use.

“Planting trees on East Spectacle Island was a joyful and tangible way to celebrate the island’s protected status and to help with restoration for both its natural inhabitants and visitors,” said Becky.

Birds, Birds, Birds!

While exploring the island with Becky, we also showed her the new bird call monitoring microphone (Haikubox) that we’ve installed near the saltmarsh on the island.

We’ve connected the island to the internet, so that sensors like this can be accessed by students and citizen scientists. We’re very grateful to Mattias Wolter for all of his volunteer work on the island to enable this.

Amy Donner & David Mann, the co-founders of Haikubox created this delightful birding tool by combining a weatherproof microphone with a neural network that recognizes bird calls. A Haikubox can send alerts to your phone, so you know when to go outside to see that Red Tailed Hawk or Solitary Sandpiper or other elusive bird that has been visiting your backyard.

We believe that the Haikubox at East Spectacle Island can help bring the remote island into classrooms. Each alert includes a button for playing the actual bird call recorded on the island. “We’re looking forward to collaborating with LaHave Coastal. This is a great way to use our technology to bring bird awareness to more people,” said David Mann.

I encourage you to create a free account online at listen.haikubox.com and explore the map of Haikuboxes. You can zoom into our box at East Spectacle Island and see all of the birds that it has heard — so far it has heard sixty-nine different bird species.

Becky Druhan agreed that “the HaikuBox offers an accessible way to experience the natural life of East Spectacle Island — providing a learning opportunity for classrooms that brings the outside in.”

LaHave is filled with birds. With help from Alix d’Entremont, we’ve expanded our monitoring. In addition to observing birds while walking and boating around LaHave, Alix has also deployed AudioMoth recorders to capture bird vocalizations at eight key locations representing diverse habitats during spring and summer. A total of 87 species were recorded including Species at Risk such as Chimney Swift, Barn Swallow and Canada Warbler.

The results of the field surveys have been added to eBird and will be picked up by the ACCDC. The AudioMoth data will be added to eBird in the next few months so that everyone can see what species are frequenting these woods and islands.

“Protecting diverse habitats including wetlands is essential for birds,” said Alix. “Habitat fragmentation has a severe negative impacts on all wildlife, so preserving and restoring connected areas of the natural environment are key to ensuring healthy populations of birds and other fauna and flora.”

Seven Thousand Trees

In partnership with the Southwest Nova Scotia Biosphere Reserve, we have planted more than seven thousand trees in the Sperry & Bell Woods in West Dublin this year.

The government’s Two Billion Trees Program provided the funding for the trees. We are grateful for the partnership with planters like Adam Forrest and his team shown in the photo below. Their hardwork is boosting biodiversity for all of us.

“This kind of teamwork is enabling us to plant more than fifty thousand trees for conservation each year in Nova Scotia,” said Adam Deveau from the Biosphere.

Join in Boosting Biodiversity

Our work together has just begun. Join the fun!

Here are two ways you can join in:

First, do you like taking pictures of nature? Try iNaturalist! iNaturalist is a non-profit organisation that helps identify what species you see and supports bioblitzes world-wide. Here are the easy steps you can follow:

1) make an account at iNaturalist.org.

2) install the iNaturalist app on your Android phone or iPhone.

3) login to your account in the app, tap “Observation,” and take a photo of an interesting plant or animal.

iNaturalist’s algorithms will help you identify the species. You can also select a broad category like “Fungi including Lichens (Kingdom Fungi).”

Your observations will go directly to the map, so other people can help identify what you saw.

Second, do you like planting trees? The greenhouse is now operational, and we’re working to bring more restoration species into the woods throughout LaHave.

In the Spring, we plan to announce bioblitz days at specific restoration sites, so you can join us to plant new trees and capture observations using iNaturalist.

Please remember to renew your membership.