Girl Scouts Bring the Nature to 'Nature Play'

Silver Falls State Park is home to hundreds of acres of native forest and dozens of beautiful waterfalls. It will also be the future home of a Natural Play Area. The transformation of this animal-themed discovery area moved further last weekend when three local Girl Scouts Abby, Carling, and Kat built bird and bat houses to be integrated into the site.  Girl Scouts from Troop #1047 were rewarded for their work, earning the highest award for Junior Girl Scouts, the Bronze Award.

Girl Scout Troop #1047 Assembing the Bird Boxes

The girls built a variety of boxes for the site – a Screech Owl Box, Small Bird House, and Bat House all of which were pre-drilled with screw holes and mounted directly to trees in the play area. The bird boxes will attract local native birds into the bird themed play area where park visitors young and old explore human sized bird houses and hopefully catch a glimpse of native birds.

Installation of the Bat House

Last Month’s bird house construction comes after the park broke ground last fall, to build 5 animal themed play areas that get children outside and connected with nature.  The play area is being built primarily by parks staff and volunteers like the Girl Scouts.  The Play Area will continue adding on play features this summer and aims to be open to the public by the fall. Below is a concept plan of the future bird adventure area.