Documenting the plants, animals, habitats, and ecology of the Sligo Creek watershed (past and present); pursuing habitat improvements; and providing educational experiences through nature talks and outings.
Natural History Committee Projects
FOSC’s Natural History Committee helps us humans near Sligo Creek Park appreciate the variety and abundance of plants and animals with whom we share the watershed. We do this by promoting citizen sightings of Sligo wildlife, documenting the flora and fauna of Sligo, advocating for new natural areas, helping to conserve existing ones, and organizing talks and outings about our diverse habitats and the many living things that inhabit them.
Garlic Mustard: pervasive, invasive and edible
Garlic mustard is an unwanted guest in Sligo. It has no predators. Even deer won’t eat it. It’s invasive, crowding out native plants that pollinators and other insects, and animals, depend upon.
Through the Parks Dept, the Weed Warriors program has taken on this invasive with special removal techniques. In a springtime race against its maturing seed pods, called siliques, Weed Warriors pull and bag the entire plant. This prevents the seedpods from flinging the tiny seeds to gain a foothold in new areas. In fact, the primary goal with this biennial is to prevent new seeds from entering the seed bank in the soil. The Parks Dept takes the bagged plants to the Dept’s composting facility, which generates very high composting temperatures to kill the seeds.
To protect Sligo, it’s important to eliminate garlic mustard from your property to reduce sources of seed. Garlic mustard research into bio-controls and other techniques for ecologically sound management continues. For now, hand pulling is the best effective practice. Bag pulled plants and place them in the trash. Home composting temperatures aren’t high enough to render the seeds inactive.
Organic Lawn Care
Organic lawn care is about more than not using pesticides and herbicides. Mary Travaglini of the MoCo Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP) explained why at a FOSC presentation in late Sept.
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Video of the talk by Mary Travaglini of DEP
Fall 2023 Organic Lawn Care Slides
North Hills of Sligo Pollinator Havens
Learn about the steps three neighbors took to involve their community in converting abandoned rights-of-way into pollinator havens. Their work won over skeptics and filled the spaces with pollinator-supporting beauty.
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Neighbors saw the chance to create a native plant haven when the street configuration changed.
Video of the talk by Eric Cathcart, Ross Campbell, and Kyle Simpson
Bark Talks and Walks: Identifying Sligo’s Trees Through Their Bark
Ever wonder how to identify the trees that surround us in Sligo Creek park and our neighborhoods? From the smooth gray bark of beech and ironwood to the deeply furrowed bark of walnut and chestnut oak, we looked at easy ways to know what’s towering over us in woodlands throughout the park.
Video of the Bark Talk by Michael Wilpers
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Bark Talk Slides
Sligo Creek/Long Branch Kiosk Posters
Sligo Natural History Videos
Pollinator Havens in North Hill of Sligo
Italian Arum-Emerging Invasive (Dig, don’t pull)
Electrofishing in Sligo
Green Herons of Sligo
Takoma Park Tree Study
Great Egrets of Sligo
TSS: New Partnerships
Common Snapping Turtles
Eastern Box Turtles
Bald Eagle in Sligo
A bald eagle seen in Hillwood Neighborhood Park by Ellen Maidman-Turner, Dec 2021.
Habitat Projects
FOSC has been active in a wide range of efforts to create new natural areas and to protect existing ones. An important part of this effort is removal of non-native invasive plants, which is an activity handled by the Remove Invasives Plants team, a part of the Invasives Committee (see the “Invasives” tab of the main menu.)
One of our habitat projects is the shrubby meadow/grassland in the PEPCO powerline corridor between the creek and 16th Place in Hyattsville. Starting in 2008, Pepco agreed to reduce mowing from six times a year to once (in Fall). Five years later, FOSC volunteers counted 120 species of flowering plants, 90 species of native bees, and a nesting pairs of American Kestrels (which are in decline statewide). View the Powerline Plant Survey list and the Habitat Projects page.
We are partnering with Montgomery Parks on another managed meadow located along Sligo Creek Parkway across from the Golf Course near Forest Glen Rd. And advocacy for less frequent mowing along the Parkway resulted in a meadow project north of Dennis Avenue that started in Spring 2020.
Habitat improvements to the Wheaton Branch stormwater ponds is an ongoing concern that FOSC is pursuing with the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection.
A tour of the managed meadow on Sligo Creek Parkway across from the Sligo golf course led by Carole Bergmann.
FOSC Wildlife Lists
One of the Natural History Committee’s ongoing priorities is creating up-to-date inventories for much of the watershed’s wildlife and maintaining older ones as historical snapshots of our rich flora and fauna. These inventories are available on the Plants of Sligo and the Animals of Sligo pages.
One of our most ambitious efforts to date is a survey of Sligo’s native plants (completed by John Parrish and RG Steiman in 2003), which gives their locations, habitats, and abundances of 372 species in a fully searchable database.
Since then, we have developed inventories of 90 species of native bees, 68 species of nesting birds, 45 species of butterflies, 16 species of fish and the flowering times of 120 species of plants. We also have lists for Sligo’s frogs, salamanders, reptiles, and mammals. These digitized historic surveys (dating from the 1930s onward) allow individuals and policymakers to see the changes in Sligo’s flora and fauna over time.
The Natural History committee has mapped these sightings to their corresponding Sligo Creek section maps, available on the Maps of Sligo Creek page, which also includes topographic, trail, land use, stormwater, features, and historic maps – there are 33 in all.
Continuously updated lists of plants and animals can be generated on demand through the citizen science projects iNaturalist and eBird. On eBird, one can generate lists of birds seen or heard in several “hot spots” in Sligo, including the Wheaton Branch and Kemp Mill stormwater ponds and the creek mainstem. In iNaturalist, one can create lists of plants, birds, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals through a “project” devoted exclusively to the Sligo watershed titled “Fauna and Flora of the Sligo Creek Watershed.”
All of these wildlife lists are the work of amateur and professional naturalists, often in collaboration with outside organizations and government agencies.
Sightings
The “Sightings” page on our old website was one of its most popular features, allowing Sligo residents to share their wildlife observations with others and to follow what was being seen and heard in Sligo throughout the year.
In 2020, we moved this activity to iNaturalist, working with local naturalist Stephen Davies to create a “project” within iNaturalist devoted exclusively to the Sligo watershed. The Fauna and Flora of the Sligo Creek Watershed project now lists more than 600 observers making more than 10,000 observations of nearly 1,600 species of plants, mammals, birds, frogs, salamanders, snakes, and insects in Sligo. Report your sighting on iNaturalist! Learn how here.
For more information on how to post your sightings on either iNaturalist or eBird, and to read about others’, go to the FOSC “Sightings” page under the Natural History tab.
FOSC archives of animal and plant sightings 2014-2018 continue to be available in the FOSC Sightings Archive. We will be adding all the sightings from 2018 and through the first months of 2020 to the Archive in the coming months.
One of the Natural History Committee’s ongoing priorities is creating up-to-date inventories for much of the watershed’s wildlife and maintaining older ones as historical snapshots of our rich flora and fauna. These inventories are available on the Plants of Sligo and the Animals of Sligo pages.
One of our most ambitious efforts to date is a survey of Sligo’s native plants (completed by John Parrish and RG Steiman in 2003), which gives their locations, habitats, and abundances of 372 species in a fully searchable database.
Since then, we have developed inventories of 90 species of native bees, 68 species of nesting birds, 45 species of butterflies, 16 species of fish and the flowering times of 120 species of plants. We also have lists for Sligo’s frogs, salamanders, reptiles, and mammals. These digitized historic surveys (dating to the 1930s) allow individuals and policymakers to see the changes in Sligo’s flora and fauna over time.
The Natural History committee has mapped these sightings to their corresponding Sligo Creek section maps, available on the Maps of Sligo Creek page, which also includes topographic, trail, land use, stormwater, features, and historic maps – there are 33 in all.
Continuously updated lists of plants and animals can be generated on demand through the citizen science projects iNaturalist and eBird. With eBird, one can generate lists of birds seen or heard in several “hot spots” in Sligo, including the Wheaton Branch and Kemp Mill stormwater ponds and the creek mainstem. In iNaturalist, one can create lists of plants, birds, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals through a “project” devoted exclusively to the Sligo watershed titled “Fauna and Flora of the Sligo Creek Watershed.”
All of these wildlife lists are the work of amateur and professional naturalists, often in collaboration with outside organizations and government agencies.
The “Sightings” page on our old website was one of its most popular features, allowing Sligo residents to share their wildlife observations with others and to follow what was being seen and heard in Sligo throughout the year.
In 2020, we moved this activity to iNaturalist, working with local naturalist Stephen Davies to create a “project” within iNaturalist devoted exclusively to the Sligo watershed. The Fauna and Flora of the Sligo Creek Watershed project now lists more than 600 observers making more than 10,000 observations of nearly 1,600 species of plants, mammals, birds, frogs, salamanders, snakes, and insects in Sligo. Report your sighting on iNaturalist! Learn how here.
Another place to post sightings – and to follow those of others — is through eBird, which has established “hot spots” in a number of areas of Sligo, including the stormwater ponds on Wheaton Branch and in Kemp Mill and along the Sligo Creek mainstem.
For more information on how to post your sightings on either iNaturalist or eBird, and to read about others’, go to the “Sightings” page under the Natural History tab.
FOSC archives of animal and plant sightings 2014-2018 continue to be available in the FOSC Sightings Archive. We will be adding all the sightings from 2018 and through the first months of 2020 to the Archive in the coming months.
FOSC has been active in a wide range of efforts to create new natural areas and to protect existing ones. An important part of this effort is removal of non-native invasive plants, which is an activity handled by the Remove Invasives Plants team, a part of the Invasives Committee (see the “Invasives” tab of the main menu.)
One of our habitat projects, the shrubby meadow/grassland in the Pepco corridor between the creek and 16th Place in Hyattsville. Starting in 2008, mowing was reduced from six times a year to once (in Fall). Five years later, FOSC volunteers counted 120 species of flowering plants, 90 species of native bees, and a nesting pairs of American Kestrels (which are in decline statewide).
We are partnering with Montgomery Parks on another managed meadow located along Sligo Creek Parkway across from the Golf Course near Forest Glen Rd. And advocacy for less frequent mowing along the Parkway resulted in a meadow project north of Dennis Avenue that started in Spring 2020.
Habitat improvements to the Wheaton Branch stormwater ponds is an ongoing concern that FOSC is pursuing with the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection.
A tour of the managed meadow on Sligo Creek Parkway across from the Sligo golf course led by Carole Bergmann.