By ROBERT DEFRANK

Times Leader Staff Writer

BARNESVILLE — Captina Conservancy welcomes nature enthusiasts to enjoy Captina Creek despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of whether they can actually visit the stream or not.

People are invited to walk along the creek whenever they have time, but especially on Wednesdays. They also are being asked to post photos from those walks, helping to create virtual tours of the creek on Facebook that anyone can enjoy.

“We started last week. We’ve had two events so far. We plan to keep doing it every Wednesday for the foreseeable future,” Ellie Ewing, executive director of the conservancy, said. “The idea is to go out the day of and do it. It’s sort of a middle-of-the-week pick-me-up, but people can post their pictures from anytime.”

Ewing said spring birds and wildflowers are popular pictures.

Captina Conservancy is currently celebrating it’s 10th anniversary, but the pandemic has halted or delayed many scheduled events.

“We actually have three different virtual events, but the main one is we’re doing Wednesday Walks and every Wednesday we’re just having our members post pictures from a walk that they’re taking, where they’re at, who they’re with,” Ewing said.

“We’re encouraging people to stick with the social distancing guidelines of course and not walk with anyone who’s not already in their household,” Ewing said.

“We had a … walk planned on April 18 that we had to cancel. We try to do a spring hike usually as well. We thought this was a good way to try to keep people engaged and encourage folks to get out and relieve some stress and enjoy nature since we can’t be together in person,” she said.

“We had some people who think it’s a really good idea and are excited about it. The first week we had more participants. We had four or five different people post little segments of their walk. This past week it wasn’t as popular, but I think it’s going to vary week-to-week with the weather and what time people have,” she said. “Some people have to go to the office. I said ‘you could post a picture of your walk down the hallway,'” she said.

Ewing said the tour posts are reaching about 200 people weekly.

“It’s a little bit on the low end. Usually we have higher numbers for bigger events. I think one thing that’s challenging is Facebook advertises … based on location, and because it’s an online event it’s not as linked to location, so people might have a harder time. It won’t pop up in as many news feeds automatically,” she said. “We’ve been spreading the word through our members directly and we’ve been getting some good participation that way.”

Some upcoming events include a litter pickup scheduled for April 25 to celebrate Earth Day. Ewing said participants will be asked to clean up areas near their homes.

“We’re going to try to coordinate as many people as we can to go out just with people in their own household and pick up litter along a stretch of road,” she said. “We’ll have folks post pictures of the litter that they picked up on that day. … A lot of our members are in the Captina Watershed, but litter pickup can be great wherever it can be done.”

The Facebook page can be found at facebook.com/friendsofcaptinacreek/.