Crow’s Nest: Stream Restoration Update

By Daniel Barringer, Preserve Manager.

We’ve completed the next step of the stream restoration at Crow’s Nest: adding shrubs along the stream side. Erin delivered a bunch of donated native shrubs: smooth alder, winterberry holly, red and black chokeberry (Aronia), and ninebark. Also, the red osier dogwoods we live-staked earlier are beginning to leaf out. The cover crop of cereal rye has germinated (as well as the cotyledons of mile-a-miunute—an invasive vine we don’t want but are not surprised to see in an area with so much soil disturbance).

Each shrub is mulched and flagged. Maintenance over the next few months will be critical as the growth explodes on this site and the flags will help us find the shrubs we planted so we can give them the care they will need—to be weeded around so that they aren’t smothered.

I decided not to cage each shrub, only because our deer population is still low following the 2018 outbreak of  epizootic hemorrhagic disease in deer. In the six weeks since the grading has been finished I haven’t seen any deer hoof prints in the mud (knock on wood).

Below, Alec plants a few more shrubs. We’ll update with more photos as this area greens up this spring! The next step will be to build a footbridge over the stream here so that we can open up the trail again. You currently can see this site for yourself from Piersol Road and from the trails as you return from the Chief’s Grove.