A Brantford family is hoping the community can help rebuild a birdwatching trail that was recently vandalized.
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Chris Wilson and his daughter Taylor began going for birdwatching walks each morning after she returned home from college for online learning at the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020.
“The trail started to get packed in where we were hiking,” Wilson said of the 2.5-kilometer out-and-back trail that began near the former canal at Locks and Beach Roads in Brantford. “I thought, instead of marking the trail with paint, I’d put something that’s fun and showed why we built the trail.”
Over the last four years about 150 birdhouses were hung along the trail, along with faces on trees and a rock snake made with 50 painted rocks. Wilson constructed many of the birdhouses from skids and scrap wood, but others have added about 50 of their own.
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On a stroll along the trail Friday evening (December 6) he discovered five or six birdhouses had been knocked down and damaged. After doing some repairs, he took them back the following day only to find another half-dozen broken.
“On Monday night I went for a walk and everything was either smashed, torn down, or thrown away,” he explained. “It was just utter chaos that went through.”
Devastated by the vandalism, Taylor Wilson created a Facebook event called Help Rebuild the Bird Path scheduled for Sunday, January 5, at 1 pm
“My dad has hundreds painted of birdhouses and signs for the trail, and in recent years it’s become a wonderful community project,” she wrote online. “It was such a whimsical place beloved to many, that it breaks my heart someone would destroy everything.”
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Wilson, a retired teacher, cleaned up the area on Wednesday returning home with 110 broken birdhouses that he will do what he can to repair them. The Bird Path has become a retirement project, he said, describing the vandalism as “heartbreaking.”
“We reported it to the police, Crime Stoppers, and I talked to three local school principals to keep an ear out,” he said, noting that trail cams and surveillance signage will be installed.
As of Thursday afternoon, 36 people have indicated they will attend the event, while more than 200 have expressed interest. Wilson will bring a ladder and provide the hardware so that birdhouses brought by the public can be safely hung.
“We’re expecting… that a bunch of people are going to show up,” he shared. “My hope is that of the 100-plus broken ones I have, I’ll be able to make repairs. I’ll bring them as well and hopefully people can help us rebuild the trail.”
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