A group of volunteers unveiled months of work at Birdhouse City in Prince Edward County Friday morning.
Birdhouse City, a fixture at Macaulay Mountain Conservation Area, features upwards of 50 birdhouses all designed in the image of the county’s history.
It has been around since about 1980 as a place for people to enjoy birds, nature and history on land owned by Quinte Conservation.
Over the years, many of the birdhouses have deteriorated. Groups have come and gone in support of refurbishing the birdhouses but the most recent iteration is looking to stick around.
A group originally comprised of eight people, now many more, spent the winter months taking stock of everything at Birdhouse City, finding people who wanted to volunteer to fix them and sending them off for caring.
The result is 36 refurbished and two brand new birdhouses at the outdoor leisure fixture.
Gillian Carson, once a frequent visitor and now resident of the county, was a driving force in the group that decided to refurbish the birdhouses.
She said that, despite past groups failing to keep up with the maintenance, she hopes this new group will be around for good.
“We came in, some of us moved to the area in the last couple of years, we’ve been coming to visit this with our children and now our grandchildren. We thought, ‘we don’t want to lose this really unique, one of a kind hybrid, between park, recreation, conservation and history’ and also, in COVID, what better time to be outside?”
She said the group’s goal is to rejuvenate the site and hopefully bring it back up to the 101 birdhouses it once had.
The plans for the group include establishing a sustainability plan in order to keep the group and the maintenance going even though volunteers come and go.
Carson was beaming when she talked about the group’s accomplishments.
“This feels so good for the community and also for Quinte and for people in Prince Edward County. It really is something that’s in peoples’ hearts. When you talk to people from the county they’re like ‘Yeah, it’s the first place we came when we moved, it’s a tourist attraction.’ As we were moving here, and we’ve been visiting for 25 years, there’s big signs that say Birdhouse City and then you get here and it’s like ‘Oh’ and now you get here and go ‘Wow, look at this.”
Quinte Conservation Chief Administrative Officer Brad McNevin had praise for the work done by the group.
“They’ve done an extensive amount of work to create this new habitat we can tie into the ecological sensitivity of this region. The greater picture is Macaulay Mountain and it’s a large parcel of land in Picton that Quinte Conservation owns for passive recreational use for its visitors to the region and we’re just really happy that the Birdhouse City volunteer group has done this amazing work for the region.”
You can visit Birdhouse City at 224 County Road 8 in Picton or you can learn more on the Birdhouse City Facebook page.
(Photo: Ryan Peddigrew/Quinte News)
