May 11, 2019
comment 0

Camping at Presqu’ile

I’ve been away for a couple days, camping at Presqu’ile Park, near Brighton Ontario. I drove over there on Thursday, hoping to arrive and set up camp before the promised rain arrived. By the time I reached Port Hope, rain had started, but it stopped on my arrival at the park just long enough to erect my tent and a canopy and get my camp ready before the serious rain began.

It rained most of Thursday evening and all that night on and off (more on than off), and didn’t stop completely until 9:30 Friday morning. I chose Presqu’ile Park to camp at because it is a peninsula which juts way out into Lake Ontario. That means it’s one of the easiest places on the north side of the lake for a migrating bird to reach after a long flight across the lake.

There were in fact a lot of migrating birds, particularly at the tip area of the park. It’s easy for a guy with a camera to focus on the birds alone, but the whole area has a kind of scrubby, stark beauty about it, that I took lots of pictures featuring no birds at all (not to worry, bird pics are coming this evening). So, here is my non-bird Presqu’ile Park gallery.

and more….

May 8, 2019
comment 1

Nature Walk – Wilket Creek

This morning’s nature walk with Miles Hearn took place at Wilket Creek Park, the sister park to Sunnybrook Park.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet

Not all Ruby-crowned Kinglets show red markings on their heads. I saw this one as we were looking for a house wren which was calling in the same area. I often have trouble photographing kinglets as it seems there are in constant motion. We were looking for a House Wren which was calling beautifully right around the same area. I wasn’t able to snap a photo of the wren, but I did get this kinglet.

Lesser Celandine

Wilket Creek

May Apples and Horsetails
Manitoba Maple
squirrel
Colt’s Foot

It seemed unusual to see these Colt’s Foot growing from a sand cliff, but sandy areas near streams are their usual favoured areas.

Pussy Willows
Ramps AKA Wild Leeks
Rattlesnake Weed (not to be confused with rattlesnake root)
Trout Lilies are in bloom now
Spring Beauty

It was a treat to see these Spring Beauty wildflowers. They are only in bloom for about 3 days each year.

Hop Hornbeam

Hop Hornbean has a very distinctive bark. It looks like rectangular pieces of bark, each stuck in the middle and loose on both ends. Some people call Hop Hornbeam ironwood. They also call some other trees such as Blue Beech ironwood too, to add to the confusion.

Miles pointing out crown gall on a maple tree
Red Cedar

May 5, 2019
comment 0

Garden Gate

New garden gate, designed and fabricated by Mike Retallick

We’ve replaced the boring wooden gate in between the front side of our house with a swanky new gate, welded up from odds & ends by our friend Mike Retallick AKA around here as East Texas Red.

Mike came down yesterday from his place near Perth to install it, and today I gave it a paint job.

May 5, 2019
comment 1

10 Albums

I was tagged on facebook for one of those memes that resurfaces from time to time – post the cover of 10 albums which had an impact on your life. I understand why these memes keep perpetuating themselves. We look for ways of understanding the world we can identify with, and I know when I was a young man, the music I listened to was a big thing.

I’m not going to post one cover a day on facebook and I’m not going to tag anyone. I think those memes are like chain letters. They aren’t as insidious as the ones that talk about some disease and imply that you’re a heartless loser unless you copy and paste and continue the chain. I simply don’t ever tag anyone with facebook memes. I will however, post 10 album covers here, just for fun.

Here are the first 10 album covers that come to mind. While these albums are, or were important to me for one reason or another, I can’t say why I picked this list tonight instead of some other list. If I made this list on 10 different days, I’m sure there would only be a small number of repeats. Maybe everyday I’d choose a different list.

The one thing I like about these sorts of lists is they are personal and subjective. My list of 10 is going to look different than your list of 10. To one person a particular piece of music might be the best thing since sliced bread, the best album in the history of albums, in the history of ever for that matter, and somebody else might listen to it and say, well that doesn’t interest me so much.

I wonder if any of these recordings resonate in any special way for you? Maybe there are some you haven’t even heard of, since these days I don’t listen to so much mainstream pop music.

May 1, 2019
comment 0

Sunnybrook Park

Today’s nature walk with Miles Hearn was at one of my fave places for a walk, Sunnybrook Park. There are actually two large parks side by side, Sunnybrook Park and Wilket Creek Park, where we’ll visit next week. There are beautiful trails along the West Don River nestled between York University’s Glendon College and the wealthy Bridle Path area.

West Don River

It was rainy this morning and I expected it to be a somewhat soggy walk, but the rain stopped and conditions were quite cool but otherwise great. There was water on some of the trails but not excessive.

White-throated sparrow

We saw a number of bird species, including the white-throated sparrow, above, and a yellow-rumped warbler, but today was really all about learning some plants.

Bloodroot

We saw quite a lot of bloodroot this morning. Mostly the flowers on these lovely plants had not opened up yet.

Colt’s foot

Colt’s Foot is one of the easiest to identify spring flowers. It’s a yellow flower that appears without any leaves. After the flowers die away, the distinctive leaves appear.

Cut-leaved toothwort

Cut-leaved Toothwort is a new plant for me. It’s a native wildflower, scientific name: Cardamine concatenata.

Japanese knotweed

Japanese knotweed is an invasive plant in our area. When it’s little, it looks pretty, but it is aggressive and will crowd out other plants.

Pussy willow

Trillium are starting to flower

One interesting surprise in this forest is the presence of ramps, or wild leeks. These are delicious edible plants, but in some areas, they are becoming rarer and rarer because people dig them out faster than they can spread.

Horse chestnut
Star-flower False Solomon’s Seal

There are two types of false Solomon Seal, as well as the genuine variety. We saw plenty of the Star-flower False Solomon’s Seal this morning.

We only had a small group today. I think the weather had some folks thinking twice about a nature walk. Next week we visit Wilket Creek, Sunnybrook’s sister park.