The Birds and the Trees

Guest speaker Kelly Delaney, of the For the Birds Nature Shop in Mahone Bay, had an attentive audience at a recent meeting of the Chester Garden Club.

Choosing to focus mainly on hummingbirds, Kelly outlined the steps to follow in attracting these delightful tiny creatures to our gardens. Under headings of food, shelter and water, she provided many tips that would entice the hummers to visit and possibly to nest in individual gardens. In addition to learning about making a homemade nectar solution and how to care for the feeders, we were interested to hear that hummingbirds enjoy bathing in a fine mist of water and that they are genetically programmed to be drawn to the colour red in the same way that wasps are attracted to yellow objects. It is unnecessary to add red dye to the nectar solution (and in fact it is preferable to use a simple white sugar solution) because the birds will be attracted to the colourful red container.

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In celebration of Earth Day, April 21st, some members of the Garden Club volunteered to help the ecology-minded members of Friends of Nature in planting small trees in the new nature park being created next to Shoreham Villlage.

A total of 840 seedlings of hemlock and red spruce, were brought to the site and, using a few professional tools and a lot of muscle power, the ten volunteers got the job done in a couple of hours. Shown above are Sheila Knowlton-MacRury carrying a tray of seedlings; her husband Ken, using the useful dibber; and in the background, Syd Dumaresq, carrying posts used to designate the end points of the rows in which people were planting.