Tay Meadows Tidbit – Clearwing moth

In between rounds at Rock Ridge yesterday I took a stroll back into an area of the forest we don’t normally visit, just to see what I could see. It was later in the morning, and the birds were starting to get quiet, but the insect activity was beginning to pick up. I’d paused atop [...]

Small-scale biodiversity

At Maplewood Bog, in the clearing where we have our banding station set up, there is a large patch of bright yellow wildflowers. I think these are Woodland Sunflowers, Helianthus strumosus, a relative of the common giant sunflowers often planted in gardens or as crops for their seeds, although there are a few members of [...]

The plant that lives in the air

Edit: Thanks to several wonderfully knowledgeable readers who left comments, the “plant” has been identified as a “witch’s broom”, which is actually a mutated growth of the tree itself. Normally found high up in the tree canopy, presumably this one was brought down to eye-level by the toppling of the tree. Witch’s brooms can be [...]

Tay Meadows Tidbit – Pinesap

Since we’re no longer at Kingsford Lake, I’ve had to discontinue the installment title “Today at Kingsford”. I haven’t been sure what to replace it with. I’d settled on the name “Tay Meadows” for our new location, which is, as the name implies, primarily meadow, and is located in Tay Valley Township, not far from [...]

The plant that eats meat

More than pitcher plants, my favourite bog/fen plant has to be the sundew. I could see them every time I visit a bog and still exclaim, “Oh look! A sundew!” My hiking companions would probably grow tired of hearing that from me. I’m not sure what it is about them that captivates me so – [...]

The plant that drinks meat

One of the features of Rock Ridge that really appealed to me from our first visit was the small bog that sat just offshore in Rock Lake. Bogs are intriguing habitats to me, perhaps because their unique conditions make them such a rare habitat type, full of interesting and different species found nowhere else in [...]

Up and running for real this time

This morning, Dan and I rolled out of bed at 3:30am to prepare for a visit to Rock Ridge. This was our fifth of seven total visits we’ll be making to the site. There is very little reward to getting up well before the crack of dawn, but watching the sun rise on clear mornings [...]

A selection of summer fungi

Fall is the time when the greatest diversity of fungus (mushrooms) is usually seen, with the boldest colours and most interesting, eye-catching shapes. However, summer can be pretty good, too. We’re just starting to see quite a number of speciies appearing in the woods around our research sites, and I’ve been collecting photos for sharing [...]

Whip-poor-wills in decline (from OFO News)

I’m the lead editor for the Ontario Field Ornithologists’ newsletter OFO News. Our June issue was just published. When one of the articles we’d had lined up fell through a week before the deadline, I put this piece together to take its place. I did the drawing above as accompaniment.
I’m borrowing that article to post [...]

A mouse with wings

A couple of evenings ago, Raven was giving her alarmed something-strange bark, rather than her usual I’m-bored play bark, out at the front of the house. Usually when she does this there is actually something worth investigating (even though we don’t always find it), such as a turtle. That evening when I stepped outside, I [...]