By Mary Reid Barrow

Walk across the new bridge at Pleasure House Point and see a great view of the emerging wetland and what it is becoming and so much less of a view of the construction mayhem that was once there.

You can learn more about the new area on guided tours at LRNow’s Wetland Celebration from 10 a.m. to noon, Saturday, October 25, at the Brock Environmental Center.

See how water flows in and out of Pleasure House Creek to help create the new wetland. You may see shore birds, like herons and egrets, stop into feed and even perch on the irrigation pipes that water new plants going in around the wetland.

“It’s been really nice to see,” said Cristin Pullman, LRNow’s Community Outreach manager, who often leads LRNow bird walks with the Virginia Beach Audubon Society.

 Last week Elgin Green took this photo of a young white ibis that flew out of the new area for bird walk participants’ benefit.

In addition to guided tours, you can learn all about wetlands when you stop by the Oyster Room at the Brock and chat with exhibitors. They include Wetlands Studies and Solutions, Inc. that designed the wetlands and Environmental Concerns, builders of the new area. The City of Virginia Beach will be on hand. Meet the Virginia Aquarium’s diamondback terrapin and learn about the importance of wetlands to this special species.

Children will be able to create an origami wetland bird and there will be refreshments and more.

LRNow director Karen Forget and Natalie Paparone from Wetlands Studies and Solutions will lead the guided tours that morning. Register below for one of three tours.

If you haven’t visited the Brock Center in a while, you will be in for a surprise. After walking in from the parking lot, you will suddenly see to your right the watery expanse of emerging wetland where there once were scrubby pines and sand.

You can pick up the new gravel trail around the wetland right there if you want. The new trail, which has been open to visitors for a while now, joins seamlessly with the existing nature area’s trail along Pleasure House Creek and other wetland areas.

Fencing along the trail to protect new plants going in will be up for a year, Cristin said. The grasses are mainly the low wetlands grass, Spartina alterniflora, and the uplands wetlands grass, Spartina patens, she explained. Native shrubs and trees to be planted include salt bush and bayberry, live oak and water oaks.

When Cristin and I walked, the tides were running very high and the wetland was filled with more water than usual, as you can probably tell from the photos.

Cristin walks the new trail about once a week. She said it was dismaying at first to see trees going down and truck loads of fill being removed.

“But now,” she said, “we can get a vision of what it will be!”

Register for a guided tour at LRNow’s Wetland Celebration here: https://lrnow.networkforgood.com/events/92099-wetland-celebration-at-pleasure-house-point