Category: Local Resources

Bird Watching on the Anacostia River

Submitted by Dorothy Yuan

Friday, October 1, 2021, provided perfect late afternoon temperatures for 15 Collington residents to take a 90-minute pontoon ride on the nearby Anacostia River.  The group boarded the boat at 5:30 p.m. for the sunset cruise conducted by the Anacostia Watershed Society. 

One of the organization’s environmental education projects is to offer experiences on the water with a licensed river pilot.  Pat and Mike Burke saw this opportunity and offered to organize a group from Collington to watch for birds.  Their offer was immediately taken up members of the local bird club.  (The Collington birding club is open to all residents.  To join, contact club founder Joe Howard.)

As we cruised along the river, our knowledgeable captain, Robinne Gray, provided information regarding the conservation efforts of the AWS while a naturalist with eagle eyes pointed out birds.  Among others, we saw large numbers of great egrets, a hawk, several great blue herons and various waterfowl.  The highlight were two bald eagles, one perched motionless for many minutes on top of a telephone pole and the other on a treetop almost as high.

The Anacostia Watershed Society is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect and restore the Anacostia River by bringing partners and communities together to achieve a clean and safe Anacostia River for the benefit of all living in its watershed and for future generations.

All and all it was a most pleasant evening spent with familiar friends.

Collington Residents Make Masks

Contributed by Susan Wolf

With covid-19 creating a shortage of face masks, an appeal has gone out to our residents:  We need for 400 masks for our staff to use!  So far we have a stalwart crew of 8 people (and maybe more) doing their best to meet this urgent need.  Some are sewing by machine and others are sewing by hand.

People have raided long-neglected fabric stashes, sacrificed sheets, and donated hand-made ties, elastic, and ribbon.  As of Sunday we have donated 55 completed masks, with more coming soon.

 

Sen. Van Hollen and AG Frosh on Consumer Protection at MaCCRA’s Annual Meeting

Submitted by Lorrie Rogers and Lois Brown

Don’t get hooked by scams was the message U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh brought to Collington on June 17, 2019.

After the short business meeting, the US Senator and Md Attorney General spoke to a packed auditorium about the wide variety of scams arriving daily on our phones and in our in-boxes.   Most importantly they discussed measures we can take to avoid being hooked by them.  We’ve all heard the advice of “Just hang up”, and “Don’t click on links,” but the one that took most people by surprise was that we should not only freeze our own credit, but advise our children to freeze theirs and that of our grandchildren.  Scammers are ruining the credit of minor children, which often is not discovered until they become adults.
Delegate Erek Barron was also in the audience and got a shout-out from the Senator and AG.

Following the Q&A period, the staff from the Maryland Consumer Protection Division, Federal Trade Commission, Prince George’s County Area Agency on Aging, and Maryland Relay had tables of brochures and other information and were available to answer questions.

You can view most of the discussion below.