- The POCA meeting will be this Monday at 6:30 pm and the subject / vote of the dog park will come up...  If you are interested in this project -  pro or con please attend the meeting so your voice and your opinion can be known !!

- The map I am sending you shows the locations of (1) additional dog waste station, (2) of three bike racks, and (2) new benches which will be installed soon.  I took a ride around the nature preserve today and installed some stakes with yellow flag tapes to mark the locations.

- We may be able to get the POCA tree service company to install some additional mulch on wet trail areas this winter. If someone has time to ride around with Stewart and show him the areas that stay wet that would be a help.

- The beavers are back along with water in the ponds the beavers are thinning the forest and doing some remodeling on their lodge.  I did not see a permit application ? I also had a Sharp-shinned Hawk that sat on a trial and calmly looked at me as I walked by and then after some stake pounding watched me walk past again.  This was an unusually trusting accipiter.

- We are moving forward with the new rule signs and they will be done before the end of the year and we will switch out the old signs for the new signs and install a new sign at the Strawberry Lake Way entrance at that time.

- We also have a new sign for the main entrance area with the Great Blue Heron on it and I also have a new 2' x 3' display case coming that will have current photos, meeting and filed trip notices.  I will also reinstall the large display case that was damaged and repaired on the back side of the kiosk.

- The new interpretive signs are probably not going to get done this year since the two folks who were going to work on the text have not had time to address this project.  If anyone can address this ASAP please let me know  !!!   410-672-5672  I can let you know what is needed on this.  Stacie Davis can do the graphic work and then we can ship the information off to the sign company fro production.

- I will meet with Stacie this week and go over the modifications to the web site.  If anyone has some time or interest in this project let me know. One she gets the changes made we can fine tune and add to as needed.

- Martha Wiewel will be back in Maryland on Dec 15 th and with her great energy I will see about getting some maintenance done on the bird boxes.  We have some new boxes to switch out with the existing boxes so we can do some repairs on the old boxes over the winter.  I want to reinstall some boxes on the main asphalt trail for the titmice, nuthatches, wrens, and chickadees.  Most of the public see this area and this will give them a chance to see some nesting action in the spring without going on the other trails as well as giving the birds some additional nesting sites.  Trees with holes in them are at a premium.  I will also install a few Blue Bird boxes over some of the water areas for the Prothonotary Warbler which is a cavity nesting warbler and they like areas over water to nest.  We may have some success in attracting Wood Ducks this spring to the new boxes installed this fall for their use.

- We will be installing some demonstration gardens by some of our rule signs and entrance area signs to showcase native plants and shrubs.  We will have a variety of plants and soil and lighting conditions and we will select the plants and shrubs best suited to these various areas.  This work will be done as much as possible by the end of the year.  We may have a few plants to install in the early spring.  David Smith provided very good list of plants and local suppliers.

- I met with David Smith a few weeks ago and we looked at our field area in the back of the PONP and he sees consistent improvement.  We will see about doing some augmentation with some native plants and grasses before the new year.  Some of the new plants will act as hosts and food plants for butterflies.  We will also be over seeding and seeding some bare spots with warm season grasses  which are native plants and are better food plants for wildlife.  The killing off of the non native plants went well this fall but we will need some spot control in the spring.

- David also looked at and made recommendations on the access area to the new bike trail. We will install some split rail fence on the access trail area to help channel the foot traffic to the nature preserve trail.  We also looked at an area that the county did not stabilize on the slope of the bike trail.  I sent photos to David Dionne from AA County Parks about this issue.  I had talked to Mr. Dionne a week or so before David Smiths meeting and Mr. Dionne said that the county would be installing a zig zag fence area at the access point to the PONP trail to keep bike off the PONP walking trail.  We will have a bike rack we can install in this area.  If the county installs the bike rack we have another location for a bike rack.