Iles-de-la-Madeleine 2022 There is a small archipelago of beautiful islands a couple of hours flight north-east of Montreal in the middle of the Gulf of St-Lawrence where we have just passed a splendid week watching birds, discovering wild flowers and eating marvellously fresh seafood. This post is simply a brief record of the [...]
New ventures in neighbour-watching ... four footed, furry neighbours. A member of an on-line naturalist group from Ontario recently posted some splendid trail-cam images of deer and other wildlife at a vernal pool. Inspiration was sparked. A few years ago, ten perhaps, we had purchased a trail-cam to watch birds visiting our garden [...]
It’s been quite cool so far this April and today was no exception. A reasonable air temperatures but quite a cold wind … perfect weather to go and enjoy ducks we decided. Just across the river, and within the 8km self-imposed circle (that’s 5 miles for American friends) there is some often good [...]
This an advance notification ... some months ago I mentioned that I am working on a project to write and publish a book currently with the title of “1001 Species” – an illustrated natural history of a small town" It's coming along quite nicely and I hope to have it out in [...]
As some of you will know I am a member of the Board of Directors of the Ecomuseum Zoo which is close to where I live. It's not a commercial zoo, but one which concentrates on the animals of Quebec and provides a home and care for animals that for various reasons [...]
Messy Eater Blood on the Snow We’ve noted before that the berries on the native Viburnum triloba are eaten in the fall while those on the similar European species (Guelder rose) are left until well into the New Year. Obviously those of the native species are more palatable while the [...]
As faithful followers of this journal will have gathered, there are a lot of squirrels around here. Although most of our gardening is designed to provide food and shelter to birds and insects it is a given that squirrels will take advantage ... as do raccoons and skunks and mice and all sorts [...]
The 21 January each year is Squirrel Appreciation Day - as we were reminded throughoout the day by numerous emails and FB posts from the various conservation organizations that we support. A couple of days later this rather scruffy black-form gray squirrel visited the garden in order to do some appreciating of [...]
Feed the Birds Every Thursday in Winter we start a morning's birding by visiting the nearby MBO bird banding station and filling the bid feeders followed by taking a census of the birds to be seen in the cold snow. This is quite a special thing for us - the station is [...]
A Baker’s Dozen of Cats in 46 Fun-filled Years Everyone posts cat pictures at some time. but we don’t do it often … recently, though, a blog post from 2013 accidentally surfaced on this website and, this being far too hot and humid a day to be outside, it seemed a good opportunity [...]