Our volunteers do many things. In the back room we have our directors and officers working on policy, keeping the administrative wheels turning, publishing our newsletters and this web-site as well as all the other thousand and one things that a charity has to accomplish.
Meanwhile, we occasionally manage events “on the ground” that any supporter can volunteer to join. This page shows you that volunteering can be fun – the most recent events will be at the top of the page:
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Trail-marking at Philipsburg – June 2014
On 15 June 2014 some 18 members of the Philipsburg Support Team spent a long day affixing green, red and blue trail markers within the sanctuary to help visitors find their way around. Once the maps are published later in the year finding the birds will become really easy.
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Wood Duck nest box installation – March 2014
BPQ were given a set of beautifully constructed nesting boxes for Wood Ducks (or maybe Screech Owls?) made of western red cedar and a group of some fifteen volunteers headed down to Philipsburg to erect them on trees around the edges of Streit’s Pond on our sanctuary there. as well as enjoying a job well done in good company, there were Eastern Bluebirds to watch, flocks of Cedat Waxwings, an adult Bald Eagle doing a low level fly-past and a couple of Tufted Titmouse.
The temperatures were mild, the sun shone and all the work was easily completed. We thank Jane for organising the day and Joel, Chris and Patrick for acting as installation team leaders. Here are a few pictures taken on the day … if you click on the smaller thumbnails they will open up into a full-size gallery …
- The northern “gateway” to the Philipsburg (Montgomery) Bird Sanctuary
- Our volunteer crew (minus the photographer)
- Heading out to start work
- Gathering at the birding hide to split into work groups
- Keeping the transpoprt sleds moving
- Streit’s Pond in winter
- Erecting Wood Duck nesting boxes in 2014 – Installations de nichoirs en bois en 2014
- More exciting than the Iditarod
- The best nest boxes on earth – these will last lionger than the trees they are fixed to
- Bobcat spoor
- Installations de nichoirs en bois en 2014
- The BPQ birding hide north of the lake
- Captain Scott of the Antarctic leads his team to safety
- Returning to base at the end of the day
- Cedar Waxwings joined us for luncheon
Do you remember those old sepia photographs of Victorian explorers hauling their sleds over the ice? The tradition is maintained by BPQ volunteers.
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Philipsburg trail defining day – summer 2013
The spring trail mapping day helped us to define the lines of the main trails that we will be advising visitors to use but there were areas where we not quite sure of the best line to take and others that definitely needed to be modified. A smaller group of volunteers went back to the Philipsburg sanctuary in the summer to take more detailed notes:
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Philipsburg trail walking day – spring 2013
In the spring 2013 we asked for “a few” people to join us at Philipsburg and help to create a preliminary map the main trails that will guide us over the next few seasons as we upgrade some of the facilities for visiting birders. We expected maybe a dozen of the regulars to turn oout … we got almost forty volunteers, some from as far away as Trois Rivières and Québec city!