Sunday, July 20, 2014

UGA Extension in Cobb County Celebrates 100 Years


Horticulture Week was celebrated with a special day at
 Green Meadows Preserve Park and a Walk and Talk
Tour was scheduled on the Bluebird Trail.

We had 28 interested and eager people to join us on the Trail Tour, it was a HOT July 8th morning.

This was the last scheduled Walk and Talk Tour for the summer. With the birds busy nesting and the summer weather being so HOT, we feel it best not to disturb the nesting birds during this time. Plus it is just to hot for us humans to be on the trail late in the mornings. I will be putting out a Fall schedule of the Walk and Talk Tours soon, that will start up again in October of this year.

We are starting to get the mean wasp that like to build their nest in the stovepipe predator guards on the Nest Box poles and Feed Station poles. I have been successful so far in keeping them out of the Nest Boxes, this spring we rubbed the upper inside of the Nest Boxes with Ivory soap. This helps to keep them from attaching their nest to the inside of the boxes. We will do this again by applying Ivory Soap to the inside of the Nest Boxes this fall and again in the spring before nesting season starts. 
These guys are very mean and their sting really hurts if you are not careful and get stung by one or more of them. Last year they were really bad early in the summer and I had to clean the nest out of the Bluebird Nest Boxes with a stick and then kill them when they were on the ground. You can not use pest spray to kill them in the Nest Boxes. The parents will leave the nest and their eggs or babies if you do, or they will not build a nest in the boxes if you have sprayed the pest killer in the boxes. Last year I was stung three different times on the same hand with gloves on and had to go to urgent care each time, so be careful with these mean wasp.

I will be providing you with a up date of the numbers we are having on the Bluebird Trail this year already in the next Blog coming later this week.

Green Meadows Preserve Trail,
Where Birds Come to Life!
 
Thanks for your support and for
joining us along the Bluebird Trail.....Jim B