About 70 people joined Trustees and FONAT for a grand opening celebration and hike on June 13. The new
Stevens to Stevens Trail links the Stevens-Coolidge Place to Weir Hill. Beginning at the Stevens-Coolidge Place, the trail continues down Andover Street, across North Andover Town Common, and up and over numerous lots donated to Trustees by the Stevens family, and into the Weir Hill Reservation. Trail and bridge construction was funded by the Community Preservation Act.
Walkers at the Stevens to Stevens Trail grand opening.
Weir Hill and Boston Hill See Active Habitat Management
Visitors to the southern end of
Weir Hill may have noticed the remnants a large fire along the trail's edge. Trustees and DCR recently conducted a controlled burn, called a "prescribed fire", burning 9 acres. Fire plays an important role in maintaining habitat that exists at Weir Hill. These habitats of oak woodland and shrubland host rare plants, and a variety of native species that thrive after a fire.
The trail leading through the clearing on
Boston Hill is closed to hikers while Trustees undertake a 12-acre forest clearing and canopy thinning project to expand the existing savannah-like area within the 30-acre fire-influenced habitat. This project started in June and should be finished by mid July. The goal at Boston Hill is to improve and expand grassland habitat and open woodland and savannah-like huckleberry-blueberry-pitch pine landscape.
Weir Hill is set ablaze in June.
Trail Cleanups a Success
Back in the spring, volunteers celebrated Earth Day by picking up trash in our open spaces. Over twenty trash bags were filled at Boxford State Forest in one morning. FONAT members also teamed up with
Shawsheen River Watershed Association volunteers to remove litter from the Shawsheen River by land and by canoe. For both events, North Andover DPW assisted with trash removal.
Posing with debris from the Shawsheen River.
Learning Our Birds and Butterflies
In its second year, our spring Nature Exploration series introduced us to a world of wildlife right here in our town. In early May, local experts Howard Hoople and Russ Hopping led a butterfly walk on Weir Hill. Numerous
butterfly species were identified, including Juvenal's duskywing, spring azure, mourning cloak, frosted elfin, eastern pine elfin and eastern tailed-blue.
Later in May, Merrimack Valley Bird Club's Donna Cooper and USDA Forest Service ornithologist Wayne Arendt returned once again to lead us at
Carter Fields and Carter Hill. With a lot of help from Donna and Wayne, we identified red-winged blackbird, great blue heron, belted kingfisher, tree swallow, eastern king bird, grackle, cowbird, chickadee, flicker, yellow warbler, bobolink, barn swallow, starling, blue-winged warbler, pileated woodpecker, cedar waxwing and willow flycatcher.
Spotting bobolinks and swallows on Carter Hill.
