Birds of the Happy Valley Forest (Part Five)
Evening grosbeak (Photo by Anna Tchoulik)
Our forest cover in the Happy Valley begins a few miles above the lakeshore of Lake Ontario. Birds stop here each year to feed and rest while on their migration north in the spring, and as a last stop in the fall as they move south. In the fall...
Mudflats of New Brunswick
Flying over the vast mudflats at Johnson’s Mills, NB (Photo by NCC)
Brown. Flat. Smelly? A mudflat may not seem exciting at first glance. Even to those who grew up around the Bay of Fundy and are familiar with mudflats stretching as far as the eye can see, they may at first appear lifeless. But this couldn’t...
Return of North America's tiniest fox
Swift fox cub and its mum (Photo by Catriona Matheson, Cochrane Ecological Institute)
Foxes are a part of most people’s lives, whether in fairy tales, as a figure of speech or as a part of the landscape. They are found in cities, in the countryside and in wildernesses of forest, desert and ice. The strange link between...
Strength in numbers: Captive breeding and release program for shrikes in Ontario
All of the young shrikes are banded with a uniquely-numbered metal band before they are released; most will also get a combination of colour bands so they can be easily identified from a distance in the wild. (Photo by Lydia Dotto, ImageInnovation Photography)
There are only a few places left in Ontario where you can reliably find the endangered loggerhead shrike; one of those places is a property owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC). NCC’s Scheck Nature Reserve, located northeast of...
The Beaver Hills Moraine: A distinctive Alberta landscape
Human development on the hummocky moraine. (Photo by Beaver Hills Initiative)
The Beaver Hills Initiative (BHI) is made up of a group of more than 30 volunteer partner organizations, including representatives from all three levels of government, the science and academic community, residents, industry and non-government...
Birds of the Happy Valley Forest (Part Four)
This hawk lives in closed canopies such as those found in Happy Valley and thrives on small mammals and birds. (Photo by Dr. Henry Barnett)
During our five-year participation in Ontario in the Breeding Bird Census, daughter Ann Love and I found 109 breeding species in the Happy Valley Forest area or species seen regularly overhead in breeding season. The Happy Valley Forest has no...
Clarenceville Bog BioBlitz
Clarenceville bog BioBlitz (Photo by NCC)
When people asked what I was doing over the weekend, and I replied “Going to a bog,” the reactions ranged from puzzled faces to outright laughter. In the acoustic sense, the word “bog” isn’t particularly charming. And...
Cave diving in the Ottawa River, Canada
Dressed and ready to enter the water - note the yellow loggers on my right. (Photo by Cheryl Buzzacott)
Before coming to Canada I contacted renowned Canadian cave diver David Sawatzky, whom I knew had mapped these caves in the 1990s before moving to Nova Scotia. David kindly sent me his detailed map and some background information, including that...
The biggest nature lesson I learned from kids
Children walking in the woods, Bunchberry Meadows Conservation Area, AB (Photo by Kyle Marquardt)
Years ago I worked at an overnight summer camp as its nature director. My main role was to teach and help campers discover the beauty of Mother Nature. I was given very few guidelines, other than it was highly recommended that I take the campers...
Fescue findings
A bumblebee on field locoweed. (Photo by Diana Bizecki Robson)
As I near the end of my two years of pollinator research in the fescue prairie, I’ve been wondering what it all means. In particular I’ve been thinking about how the pollinator communities in fescue prairies are different than in the...
