Thursday 30 October 2014

Extended summer weather.....

For the last few days, there has been some exceptionally great weather, which makes it feel more like late summer! So a recent visit to Rondeau was in order.

I headed to the South Point Trail, thinking that the sunny weather, warm temperatures (which reached ~20C) and brisk southwest winds would have made it conducive to winged critters.

There was some action. But not a lot. It seems like the cooler weather and storm systems not that long ago had convinced many birds to head south. But there were lots of both kinglet species, some American Robins, Blue Jays and Cedar Waxwings, among others. This first image is part of a flock of about 24 Cedar Waxwings, mostly young ones, that were out and about.


This next image was a little surprising. It was at the top of a tall Eastern White Pine tree, feeding on berries along with a half dozen robins. The light was so poor against what now had become a cloudy sky, that it was hard to see much detail other than shape. I thought it might have been a red-wing or even a grackle, but when I got it home, cropped it and adjusted the contrast, it turns out it was a Rusty Blackbird. Normally you see them rummaging through the leaves on the ground in a wet area, not feeding on Virginia Creeper berries 30 metres or more in the air.


 Turkey Vultures are going through in large numbers these days, although their main flight path to get out side of Ontario goes north of the park. Nonetheless, there is often a dozen or more that are seen in the skies above the park.

I saw three Eastern Commas as well as one or more Clouded Sulphur and Orange Sulphur butterflies. I also saw quite a few dragonflies. Most seemed to be Autumn Meadowhawks, but there was the occasional darner. However the breeze kept them all on the move, and I never got any photos of them.

This next invertebrate was a lot easier to photograph, as it paused while crossing the trail. It was about as big an example of this species as I recall ever seeing.
Marbled Orb Weaver
The highlight for me along the trail this day was finding a new location for an endangered tree species.....a Red Mulberry. I had noted that the leaves of the Red Mulberry trees towards the north end of the park had all fallen off. Normally they are one of the last tree species to lose their leaves (they are also one of the last ones in spring to put out their leaves). However at the south end of the park, the lake effect takes place. That means that the colder night-time temperatures which affect vegetation at the north end of the park, are moderated by the warmer water temperature since the sand spit sticks out in the lake for such a distance. So when I saw these large green and lobed leaves off in the distance, I knew what it was.


The leaves are extremely large. Red Mulberries don't often show this much lobing, but certainly can do. And what really is striking about most of the leaves, were the very long drip tips. Those are the long narrow tips of the leaves, which assist in the leaf shedding water to reduce the likelihood of mould.
To give you  an idea of just how large these leaves are, I found this average sized one on the ground and put an average sized leaf of a Red Oak on it. The Red Mulberry leaf measures more than 20 cm (12") from the base to the tip.

The Red Mulberry is an endangered species in Canada and Ontario. There are populations at Rondeau, Fish Point Provincial Nature Reserve (on Pelee Island), Point Pelee National Park, and in the Niagara Escarpment area of greater Hamilton, and a very small number elsewhere. It is at the northern extent of its range in southern Ontario. What compounds its chances of survival is that the non-native White Mulberry will hybridize with it, and cause its decline through a process that is known as 'genetic swamping'. One of the management approaches to helping the survival of Red Mulberry is to eliminate as many White Mulberry trees as possible, but given their abundance across the landscape, it is a losing battle. And because the fruits are so delicious, birds such as robins, thrushes, warblers and others, feast on the berries, and when they defecate later, the seeds are transported well away from where they originated.

Speaking of seeds, now is the time to collect the seeds of milkweeds. If you collect them when they are too green, they may not ripen properly. Wait until the seed capsules are fairly dry and start to split, like this one.


Collect the seed pods, and put them in a paper bag to let them dry some more. When they are dry enough, it is easy to pry the seed pod open and then gently remove the brown seeds from the white silky hairs that, if left outside, will act as parachutes and be swept by the wind to far away places.

You can collect them when they have reached this stage as shown in the next image.


However they are much more difficult to remove from the silk, which is so light it will float all over the place even with virtually no wind, so don't do it in the house!

You can plant the seeds immediately, or store them over the winter in a small container such as a paper envelope, Do not put them in an air tight container, or any residual moisture in the seed will likely cause the seeds to get mouldy. Storing the seeds in a cold place, such as an unheated garage, will allow the seeds to experience what is known as 'cold-moist stratification', which is important to cause a greater number of seeds to germinate in the spring.

If you have the time, you can plant the seeds in a small container with potting soil. Plug trays are best, but sometimes things with separate compartments like an egg carton will do. The best time to do it is in the late winter or early spring, so they will have sprouted and developed some root systems and make them easily transplanted to the location you want them to grow.

If you are successful, you may end up with a beautiful display of colourful milkweeds, visited by the beautiful Monarch butterfly, and assist with the recovery of this rare species!

Monarch visiting Butterfly Milkweed

Monarch laying an egg on a Common Milkweed
For anyone who had seen the notice on an earlier version of this post about my Canon 5D camera body being for sale, fyi it has been sold.






Tuesday 28 October 2014

Middlesex moments

I've had the privilege of doing some fieldwork on some sizable private property in Middlesex County recently. It was a place where I had never spent any time before, but as a result of this field work, look forward to getting back next year.

There was a nice variety of habitats, including woodland, wetland and prairie. If you've been following my blog posts for very long, you will know that I have a particular fondness for tallgrass prairie, so coming across some of these patches was unexpected, and definitely a highlight.


What made this site interesting was the dominance of Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium).
Little Bluestem seedhead

And one of the highlights, was to find an Eastern Hog-nosed Snake! This species is one of the most fascinating of our native reptiles. They are very rare, considered a Species At Risk in Ontario and Canada. They are named for their flat, upturned snout which enables them to dig in the sand searching for toads, their primary food source. They can vary in colour....this one is quite dark above, but I have seen them a mottled orange and black, brownish and also a whitish-gray. What makes them especially fascinating is their behaviour. When startled or threatened, they will vibrate their tail to sound like a rattlesnake. Other non-rattlesnake snakes do this as well.

If they are handled, they will excrete a very foul smelling substance. But if this doesn't scare away the potential threat, it will hiss and puff up like a cobra, and even pretend to strike. Which is amusing, since they don't have any teeth at the front of their mouth. (They do have teeth towards the back of their mouth cavity, but they point backwards and are important at deflating toads which will puff up as they are being eaten, so puncturing the toad will enable it to be swallowed more easily.) And if this doesn't scare away the potential threat, they will go through various contortions, writhing and eventually turning upside down to play dead. It is really quite well done, as when they are upside down playing dead, their tongue will hang out, and there will even be a drop of saliva at the tip of the tongue.


Another good species to find at this site is this Great Plain's Ladies'-tresses (Spiranthes magnicamporum) which is ranked as S3.
Spiranthes magnicamporum

A more common prairie plant of late in the season is Fringed Gentian (Gentianopsis crinita). It is certainly more common than the aforementioned Spiranthes, but not all that common and always a treat to find.


As mentioned, we also had the pleasure of surveying some woodland and wetland areas, including floodplain. Here one of my colleagues carefully manoeuvres his way across a small beaver dam.


Along the creek system, we came across a large Chinquapin Oak (Quercus muehlenbergii). It was approximately 80 cm in diameter. It isn't one of the more common oaks of southern Ontario, and is always nice to find. However it is typically found on more upland sites than this one was occupying. I had never seen one right at the edge of a creek system before! We also came across a large White Oak nearby, which measured almost exactly 36" diameter (~91.5 cm), a good sized tree indeed.

Chinquapin Oak

I hope to get back to this site next spring!

Elsewhere in Middlesex Co, I've stopped in at Skunk's Misery quite recently. Skunk's Misery is a large woodland complex in the southwestern part of the county. About half of it is privately owned, but fortunately for those of us who like to wander through natural areas, the other half is owned by either the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority or the county of Middlesex. The mosquitoes can be pretty abundant during the late spring and summer, but most of them have disappeared by now. I enjoy autumn walks through some of the trails.




This latter image shows a very large Tuliptree on the left. It measures 1.38 metres (54") in diameter! It is measured at a standard height known as diameter at breast height (dbh) which is 1.4 metres (4.6') from the ground level.



Saturday 25 October 2014

Mitchell's Bay Cattle Egret, etc

A couple of days ago I got a message from a photography friend who has a trailer unit right adjacent to Lake St. Clair at the north end of Mitchell's Bay. The Cattle Egret which had been reported earlier was back again (Thanks, Bill!). I hadn't caught up to this species yet this year, so off I headed. No doubt the hunting activity throughout much of the area gave the Cattle Egret, as well as a few others, an incentive to stick around this small area of marsh which is not hunted.

It actually spent more time on the grassy slopes of an inland pond than it did in the marsh proper, which is not surprising. They are often seen in a pasture with cattle, searching for grasshoppers and other invertebrates that are scared up by the hooves of the cattle. There were no cattle around here, but it was having success catching grasshoppers and crickets.


In the semi-open cattail marsh along the lake, there were other birds of interest. A young Common Gallinule is still hanging out. There is a Pied-billed Grebe partially hidden at the lower right hand side of this image. The gallinule hatched from a very late nest, in August, right near by.

Common Gallinule (l), Pied-billed Grebe (r)
Here is the adult gallinule, taken back in mid August near the nest.


And a better view of the Pied-billed Grebe.


This area is great for viewing marsh birds. Being adjacent to a trailer park, they are relatively unperturbed about human activity. A bit earlier in the season, the broken off aquatic vascular plants that washed ashore were attractive to shorebirds. Here a Least Sandpiper pauses from its gleanings.

It was within a literal stone's throw from this vantage point where as many as three Marbled Godwits were observed about a year ago.....when the water levels were lower and there were some exposed mudflats for them.

Marbled Godwit--2013

Green Herons are seen in the area.

Great Egrets are regular, even common place. However these next two images were taken along nearby Bear Creek.









Wednesday 22 October 2014

The colours, they are a-changing

That isn't really news, if one takes even a casual look around the landscape these days. Even after a short time, the changes can be dramatic.

I have been to Rondeau a couple of times over the last week, and this is what looking north on Rondeau Road just north of Gardiner Ave looked like the first time.


Four days later, it looked like this.


Bennett Avenue showed a similar trend.


Not a lot of difference in the four days compared to the previous set from a couple of kilometres south at Gardiner Ave.

Here is a dry slough south of Bennett Ave. The very large tree on the right is a Silver Maple and is just a bit more than a metre in diameter.

The roads can still be a magnet for reptiles and amphibians, as they soak up the sun beating down on the pavement. I've seen a few dead ones in the last couple of weeks. Fortunately this Northern Ribbon Snake was crossing on a less travelled portion of the road system, and on a rainy day when there was less traffic and the pavement wasn't warm to hold it on the pavement.


I came across this large cluster of a bracket type of fungus known as Chicken of the Woods. It is present all year around, but the fruiting bodies on rotting logs are most noticeable in the late summer and early fall.


Rotting logs are great for other things as well. Salamanders love them.

Red-backed Salamander

I noted this attractive,, small, grayish white spider clinging to the underside of a piece of rotting wood. I haven't determined what kind it is yet.


Harrison Trail is fun to explore, sometimes for the scenery....


 ...and sometimes there are other things!

This is a stinkhorn fungus. It is something you often will smell before you see it. In fact I smell them regularly in the late summer and early fall, but I seldom see them. The breezes can carry their odour for a ways, and one can't always follow the wind currents upwind to find the offending fungus. I didn't actually find the stinkhorn that I was smelling on this trip....this photo was taken a couple of years ago. Some stinkhorns are orange, other species are more muted in colour.

The stinkhorn doesn't produce spores that are dispersed by wind currents as most fungi do. Instead, the tips of the fungus produce a distinctive, with the emphasis on 'stinct', odour that attracts flies that are normally attracted to decomposing things. When the flies walk around on the smelly tip of the fungus, the spores are transferred to their feet and delivered to the next thing that they walk around on.

Much more attractive are the berries of this Maple-leaved Viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium). The maple like leaves are obvious, and the blue-black berries are notable at this time of year. This shrub is not common, but regular in a few places along Harrison Trail and elsewhere in the park. It seldom grows more than 2 metres high.

Maple-leaved Viburnum





Wednesday 15 October 2014

Something a little different

A few days ago we re-visited parts of central Ontario and the southern range of northern Ontario. We do this 2-3 times a year, since our daughter and hubby live in North Bay.

It is always a treat to experience a landscape where forest, hills, lakes and rocks dominate instead of the flatlands of the extreme southwest.

We were hoping to catch some of the brilliant colours of autumn, knowing that the predominant hardwoods would have more colour in the southern parts compared to the more subdued colours of predominantly conifers of the more northern extent of our travels.

The weather was generally overcast, with occasional days of rain. I think during the 6 days we were away, the sun only came out for a few hours on two of those days. But the overcast conditions provided some saturated colours to enjoy.

Brooks Falls, a few kilometers north of Huntsville, and even fewer kilometers east of Hwy 11, is a favourite stop along the way. The Magnetawan River tumbles over and through a series of rocky rapids, including one drop of about 3-4 metres. It is very accessible, and one can park just a few metres from where your first glimpse of the falls can be had. This first image was taken more or less from the edge of the parking area. There was a light rain at the time.

Brooks Falls
 A fairly steep trail leads from the edge of the parking area to almost the water level, with several spots along the way to capture the falls. When the trail is wet and/or covered with leaves and needles, it can be difficult to navigate, so extreme care is needed especially when one has lots of expensive photo equipment to carry!



Our main destination was North Bay. Fortunately there are a few places to explore close at hand. One of my favourites is the 97 hectare (240 acre) Laurier Woods Conservation Area, right within the city limits. It can be good for birding as well as giving one vistas of a typical northern landscape. Being within the city, and very close to the traffic of Hwy 11, traffic noise is always present to some degree, but it gets buffered by the forest vegetation. A few scenes from along the several kilometres of trail follow.







There are two small lakes within the conservation area, one of which is maintained by beavers. From the lookout for the image below, I noted Common Merganser, Mallard, Wood Duck, Green-winged Teal and Hooded Merganser.


Birds elsewhere along the trail were few, but included White-throated Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Dark-eyed Junco, American Robin, Common Raven and Downy Woodpecker. Migrant warblers were non-existent at the time I was there, but maybe if I had spent more time looking through my binoculars instead of through my landscape camera viewfinder, I might have seen some :-).

Another natural feature worth visiting while in the North Bay area is Duchesnay Falls. It is immediately adjacent to Hwy 17 at the western edge of the city. A trail runs along both sides of the falls and river, providing excellent views. The first image was taken from the Hwy 17 road allowance.

This next image shows the eastern offshoot of the main falls, which is worth visiting all in itself.


The main falls is featured in this short video clip, with a stopped action shot of this same site immediately below. (The original video clip was ~50 mb in size, but I got it re-sized to 2.4 mb to include here. However the quality does not show the clarity that the original does. But uploading a 50mb file here isn't an option. If anyone has suggestions, I'm open!)


 This next photo shows the shallow but busy set of rapids just upstream from the main falls, and are attractive in their own right.


I have always been interested in old growth forest. There is something very appealing to me about exploring a forest that is about as pristine as it gets, at least for the time we live in. One can read the descriptions of the early explorers to get a feel for the magnitude of the forests they encountered. Unfortunately the opportunities are few and far between to even get a basic feel for such forest conditions any more, and one has to actively search out the small remnants.

I acquired a recently published book entitled Ontario's Old Growth Forests, and take the opportunity to check out some that are highlighted in this book whenever I am in an area where they persist. One such site is just north of Marten River Provincial Park, which is about 60 km north of North Bay. An Eastern White Pine reported to be 127 cm in diameter has been seen in this small strip of forest a short distance from the highway. Other lesser sized pines are also present, as well as large, mature Yellow Birch. A forest reserve occurs along the eastern side of the highway, both north and south of Marten River PP. I took the opportunity to explore this for an hour or so, trying to take in the characteristics of what an old growth forest of this type can look like.


The White Pine in the centre of this image didn't measure 127 cm, but was in the 100 cm range as far as I could tell.

Old growth forest is more than just large trees, although large trees are often a primary characteristic. I plan to devote an entire blog (or maybe two?) to old growth forest in the future.