It's your "fault" if you missed meeting up with the "gneiss" folks at Vulcan who hosted Richmond Audubon for our 4th annual trip this past Saturday. The weather was outstanding and we had a turn out of about 16 birders. Vulcan Royal Stone is a Certified Wildlife Habitat- sanctioned through the Wildlife Habitat Council showing the successful co-existence of industry and nature. If this was your first  Audubon outing please don't get used to being met in the parking lot with coffee freshly brewing and breakfast as we plan our morning. Sue Dudley the Plant Administrative Assistant and the driving force in their beautiful habitat out does herself every year with the help and support of a very involved and dedicated staff.

Keeping Habitat certification is a huge task and we were happy to add 2 new bird species to the avian inventory with nice sightings of Red-headed Woodpeckers over their swamp and then Brown-headed Nuthatches heard at different times in the morning. Eastern Bluebirds love it at the Quarry as we saw many on the wires, on the ground and even on a rock conveyor. A Sharp-shinned Hawk gave us a good look and Pine warblers trilled in the ?.pines. An unusually silent Kingfisher surveyed the creek.  The habitat has immaculate and well laid-out trails throughout a peaceful pine forest running alongside a pond. There is housing for everything from birds, turtles, toads and spiders! You can easily see all the dedication that has gone into maintaining and continuing develo pment of this habitat. While checking a bird house for occupancy-several of us were pleasantly surprised to get a long look at a Flying squirrel before he launched into a tall pine. This also added a new mammal to the Vulcan mammal inventory!

If breakfast and birds were not enough, the folks at Vulcan had a huge spread (brunch) for us under their Pavilion. Nothing was taken for ?granite.?  Jeff Rickey Plant Manager explained the functions of the plant and showed us the many products we use in day to day living that have rocks in their make up. Sue slipped into her ?Vanna? attire and the initial+ly calm and polite birding group put on their game faces for a rowdy competition of Bird-Match-similar to how we played "Concentration" as kids. No one was a loser as everyone walked away with something awesome for their own backyard habitats.

Thank you, thank you Vulcan for our continued relationship with you. You should be so very proud of what you are doing for the environment and your outreach to the community. You are all Rock-stars! Already looking forward to next year.

Live long and prosper.

Julie Kacmarcik

Richmond Audubon Society

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