ANNUAL REPORT: SEPTEMBER 2024 - AUGUST 2025

We continued our Walk n’ Talk series of hikes this year and will continue these through next year also. We have two hikes remaining before the end of this year –  September 27 and November 16 and hope you will join us.  If any members would like to lead one of next year’s hikes - day, date, and topic of your choosing - we would love and encourage you to do that. We have also continued hosting quarterly Discovery Tables, with themes largely based on the season. However, our next Discovery table, on September 13, we will be celebrating what makes our State unique by looking at California’s many Symbols and Emblems. Again, if any member would like to host or help at a table, please let us know.

Outreach this year included hosting a table at Rancho Bernardo’s community event, and a presentation to 32 children at Monterey Ridge School’s for their annual Animal Extravaganza. In May we held a program for children about the importance of pollinators. It included a presentation, a hike in Blue Sky, and several pollination related crafts. Our sponsor for the program was Poway Valley Garden Club.

We switched our annual bird count from winter to spring which both leaders and attendees agreed we should continue to do. Statistics for the bird count, which we started in 2012, are posted on our website, as is quarterly Tracking transects data.

Thank you to those of you who turned out to help with two Torretto Trail Maintenance days. Our next one will be in November. We’ll finalize the date at our September meeting and post it in our Fall newsletter.

Our FOBS logo received a refresh this year. We felt incorporating an oak tree was more reflective of Blue Sky’s flora. Also recently posted to our website is a link to a great interview by Pace Productions with board member Alan Torretto about Friends of Blue Sky.

NEXT YEAR (SEPTEMBER 2025 - AUGUST 2026)

Our goals for 2026 include exploring more opportunities for community outreach events, and exploring potential sponsors for educational activities aimed specifically at children. Another of our goals is to purchase at least one wildlife camera to be placed in the Reserve to hopefully capture some good data regarding our wildlife residents. We will post those findings to our website also. We also plan to solve our storage issue with the installation of a shed to help with our increasing need for a central storage area.

We would really like to encourage members to join us during our activities, whether leading a hike, assisting at one of our events or submitting an article for publication in our newsletter