Owl Moon, Featuring Live Owls,

at 7 PM on Saturday September 18;

Registration Open NOW to Members

The Friends of Mason Neck State Park will hold their annual Owl Moon program as an in-person event at 7 PM on Saturday, September 18.  Secret Garden Birds and Bees will present “A Year in the Life of an Owl”, and you’ll have an opportunity to have up-close views and photos of these rarely-seen birds. Admission to the program is $10 per person.  Members of the Friends can register now, and registration will open to non-members on September 4, subject to availability.  Members can register here. If you’re not a member, you can join for as little as $20 for up to two people here.

    

"What Lives in the Park?"

A Presentation of Photos by Randy Streufert

and Videos by Park Staff

Now Available Online

The Friends held their Annual Meeting virtually, in a Zoom-based program, on Sunday July 11 at 2 PM. The Friends' Board member Randy Streufert presented “What Lives in the Park?” an overview of the amazing variety of animals that call Mason Neck State Park home.  The program featured photographs of often-seen and not so often-seen resident critters as well as a discussion on some of their interesting behaviors.

         

Randy was the grand prize winner in the 2019 National Wildlife Federation's Gardening for Wildlife Photography contest and has had three of his photographs on the cover of Virginia Wildlife magazine. A few of his photos are on display at the park Visitor Center.  

 

You can view the entire presentation here.

The Friends of Mason Neck State Park

Joined in Promoting Recreational Opportunities

on Mason Neck

The Friends joined with other local organizations in supporting the creation of a brochure promoting recreational opportunities on Mason Neck.  The brochure, part of the Commonwealth of Virginia's Virginia is for Lovers" campaign, will be distributed at hotels and other locations that are visited by tourists and visitors throughout northern Virginia.  You can view the brochure here: Escape to Mason Neck .pdf  

Join the Fight Against Disposable Plastic

The Friends of Mason Neck State Park are doing their part to slow the production and disposal of plastics.  Plastic bottles take as long as 450 years to decompose in the environment.  Before they do, they break down into "micro-plastic" bits that are eaten by animals and can end up in our own bodies.  On land, plastic adversely affects soil fertility, and can choke our streams and rivers.

The Friends of Mason Neck State Park have stopped offering disposable water bottles to Park volunteers and at Friends events.  Instead, they are offering free multi-use bottles that recipients can take home with them.  Hopefully, people will use these bottles instead of buying more disposable ones.  

Mason Neck State Park also is committed to reducing the use of disposable plastic bottles and has installed water bottle filling stations at the Visitor Center and the picnic area.  

         

Do your part too:  find ways to limit your use of disposable plastics, including those grocery store bags that have a typical useful life of 15 minutes -- the time to get from store to home -- and take 1000 years to decompose in a landfill.