1 Million Trees Planting Day at Mount Loretto in Staten Island…

On Saturday, I spent my day volunteering with NYC Audubon and Together Green in the MillionTreesNYC Fall Volunteer Planting Day that occurred across the five boroughs in NYC.   While I live in Queens and could have volunteered at Kissena Park, I decided to work with NYC Audubon, which took me out to Mount Lortetto, Staten Island where I joined many volunteers from a number of organizations to plant Tulip poplar, Sweetgum, Eastern white pine, White oak, Scarlet oak, Pin oak, Chestnut oak, Sassafras, and Eastern red cedar.

The planting site that our group was given was hard on the back as the soil was compacted clay, which was rocky and made it very hard to break.   There were some pre-dug holes, but they were small and so volunteers had to expand the diameter and depth of the holes in order to properly plant the trees.   Nevertheless, volunteers toughed it out and even worked in the rain in completing our goal of planting 2000 trees at the site.

Mount Loretto, is known as a place for birds, so I decided to do a bit of birding before the project began.  I ended up seeing, Red-Throated Loons, Common Loons, Red-bellied Woodpecker, Cedar Waxwings, Merlin, Swamp Sparrow, Song Sparow, White-throated Sparrow, Goldfinch, Downy Woodpecker, Red-winged Blackbird and Blue-Jays.  I plan to go back out there not only to bird, but to also check up on the plants to see how they are doing.


One of the site where some of the 2000 trees were planted.