How time does fly — just over a year ago I was inspired by a fine naturalist from England (thanks Tom) who had set himself the challenge of identifying 1000 UK species — birds, grasses, spiders, whatever. I had a couple of exchanges with him was assured that the concept was not trademarked, [...]
If you are not a keen birder this will perhaps not be of great interest - unless you have decided to really take up birding with the start of a new year and wan a target to aim for. Anyway, assuming you plan to read on ... here is what we saw [...]
Garden Birds - November 2020. During this "lockdown and go nowhere" year Bird Protection Quebec have replaced their weekly guided birding field trips with a series of interesting virtual alternatives. Basically, they have been saying, here’s a challenge, go and do it and then tell us all about what you found. For the [...]
Looking to the future - When I was a kid over a half century ago Hallowe’en (it had an apostrophe in it back then) was an indoor party with "exciting" games such as apple bobbing. Nobody actually had these parties but we read about them in children’s story books, probably written pre-war. Sometime [...]
A Project Perhaps? We were walking near home recently, as we do every day to keep things working as they should be, and went along a short stretch of a road separated from the Autoroute 20 (that's the very busy and noisy road to Toronto) by a dense but narrow stretch of trees [...]
Playing with Light I was driving along the lakeshore in town (the lake being a widening of the St-Lawrence River) a couple of days ago about 7:30 in the morning when I was struck by the light on the water. Normally I would have had a camera with me but I was [...]
Mid-summer Progress Report We are now in our second full year of letting what was once a scrappy lawn have the freedom to just grow while we wait to see what's there and what has arrived. Mid June is a good half-way stage in the process of creating a "mead" and to pause [...]
Bird Protection Quebec regularly has guided birding field trips each weekend but, with social distancing and groups being forbidden for the past ten weeks they have organised "virtual field trips" restricted to the birds in our gardens. These have been surprisingly popular with many more people taking part than ever come out [...]
Great Crested Flycatcher A garden resident this summer where we have several tall trees from which it can sally forth any after passing flying food. It's been around and calling for a couple of weeks but only now did it pose for its portrait. Great Crested Flycatchers are sit-and-wait predators, sallying from high [...]
Thyme-leaved Speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia) Working in the Fritz Garden (where the community grows vegetables for food banks) a few days ago, and preparing to plant tomato seedlings I was caught by this tiny gem of a wildflower looking appealingly at me and pleading not to be “weeded”. What could I do but [...]