Habitat Hero – 2023 Award Winners

Carol Collison

I have been remiss on posting about our wonderful 2023 Habitat Award Winners, we had two winner for 2023.  Carol Collison and George Maurer.

Our first winner of 2023 was Carol Collison. Carol has been a long-time resident of CSC and a highly active member of the CSC Garden Club. Imparting her knowledge to novice and experienced alike. She is often the recipient of their Yard of the Month award for her beautiful displays of color.  Her front yard pops with traditional spring flowers.  She won CCC’s coveted Habitat Hero for the native plants she has added to her landscape over the years and the wildlife friendly practices she maintains to help the birds, bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. Some of her favorite natives include blood root, serviceberry tree, coneflowers, Virginia bluebells, woodland phlox, snakeroot, and columbine.  She has generously shared some of her beautiful natives with CCC and friends.  She has participated in our native swap by digging out an invasive shrub and receiving a free native shrub from CCC. Some of her other best practices include keeping the leaves on site for overwintering insects and foraging birds.  Carol does not use pesticides.  She composts her yard waste and kitchen waste and uses that to enrich her soil. Carol does not shy away from the wildlife that inhabits her yard, even embracing the black snakes and respecting their role in the environment – natural rodent control!

George Maurer

Our second winner, George Maurer made his career in the environmental world, a retired environmental planner in senior positions with Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, and several county governments. Later he had his own consulting business preparing water quality protection plans on farms. As a lifelong birder, who also studied ornithology in college (his M.S. thesis is on songbirds) he has recorded an amazing number of species (73) in his Cape St Claire backyard but sadly he has noticed a significant drop in the numbers of species as we have seen in the official research on this topic. By converting his backyard to a safe haven for wildlife he has been able to help local birds find the resources they need.  Not just with bird feeders, but by creating a healthy ecosystem by adding native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. An abundance of birds, bees, and butterflies visit his habitat. He gave up trying to fight for growing grass in the shaded backyard and let it be what it wanted to be – a shaded woodland space. He uses sticks and brush on his property as habitat, and keeps the leaves over the winter. And shuns pesticides.

His thesis research taught him valuable identification of birds using not only sight but sound—listening to the birdsong he has been able to add to his extensive bird list. In addition to many of the common birds we have seen in our yards, George has identified many warblers during migration, eastern wood Peewees, ruby crowned kinglets, cedar waxwings, many species of woodpeckers and even a screech owl visited his nesting box.

Thank you to Carol and George for caring about our native flora and fauna and creating healthy ecosystems for nature to thrive and survive. They both are truly Habitat Heroes. We look forward to visiting their yards to learn from them. Stay tuned for an upcoming Habitat Hero Tour Date announcement. Likely in May date TBD.

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