Rock Creek Songbirds
A venerable white oak which fell over in August 2017 at the corner of Piney Branch Parkway and 17th Street. Losses such as these are shrinking the tree canopy in Piney Branch and underline the importance of continued planting of native trees.
Rock Creek Songbirds is a habitat restoration and outreach initiative that has been a partner of the DC Audubon Society since 2013. The initiative got its start with funding from Audubon’s Together Green program, combining conservation and education in the Piney Branch section of Rock Creek Park that borders the city’s Latino neighborhoods. The theme uniting all Songbirds activities is that bird migration bonds the peoples of the Western Hemisphere in a common ecological future.
The Songbirds project has organized the planting of more than 500 trees and hundreds of wildflowers and grasses. In the spring of 2019, the wetland behind the Piney Branch parkway picnic pavilion was expanded by the removal of an asphalt slab that served as a basketball court before the area flooded. The 2,400-square-foot space will be planted with both aquatic and upland species by students of the Sacred Heart School in nearby Mount Pleasant.
The “Songbird Journeys” exhibit, completed in 2016, features displays on migrating species, and video interviews with Latino residents that you can watch below. Supported by the Mayor’s Office on Latino Affairs and the DC Humanities Council, the one-room exhibit has “migrated” to schools, churches, and community venues around the city since its debut.
Volunteers plant trees in Rock Creek Park as part of the Rock Creek Songbirds initiative
Among the beneficiaries of the Songbirds project is the Wood Thrush — the District of Columbia’s official bird. Though the park contains large tracts of wooded areas, the amount of suitable habitat has been shrinking in recent years due to deer browse, competition from non-native plants, extreme weather, and overuse. Loss of habitat has been linked to the dramatic decline in Wood Thrush populations throughout its range.
The Songbirds initiative fits into Audubon’s strategic plan aimed at protecting and enhancing habitat for birds through the four flyways that cross America. The migrants from Central America and Mexico that reach Rock Creek Park travel along the Atlantic Flyway, which encompasses some of the hemisphere’s most productive ecosystems.
Students at Eaton Elementary School learn about geography as they study the migration of neotropical songbirds.
Tree species planted in Piney Branch include oaks, tulip poplars, serviceberries, redbuds, dogwoods, viburnums, eastern red cedars, and American hollies. Besides Sacred Heart, the Songbirds project partnered with two other schools in that neighborhood, the Mundo Verde bilingual environmental charter, and Bancroft Elementary. Students planted small nurseries to care for saplings that were planted in a plot bordering the park.
In the classroom, a large, interactive floor map was used to explain the geography of North and Central America, while the importance of habitat was emphasized as students made scale models of a stream valley. As all the schools have substantial populations of students with Central American heritage, the migratory story is a particularly meaningful way to create a feeling of inclusion for young people of many backgrounds.
For more information, please contact the initiative director, Steve Dryden, at 301-512-5899, or jsdryden@comcast.net
Here is what some kids from the Sacred Heart School in Mt Pleasant think about the birds in Piney Branch:
“For [Washington,] D.C. to be their habitat is really interesting because we’re a city.”
“Our local birds sing beautifully, and they like to live where we hike after school!”