Looking about you and learning about what you see About a week ago we wrote about our participation in the Nature Conservancy Canada “Bioblitz” during which we recorded all the species we saw in a five day period in our garden and the nearby roads and parks. The total came to 217. We [...]
Early in the week we decided to take the now three month old EV for a longer run to see how the batteries behaved under greater stress than going to the supermarket involves. We crossed into Ontario and spent a happy half day walking the trails in the Cooper March nature reserve. We [...]
Baltimore Oriole As most people know, to attract a Baltimore Oriole to your garden you are supposed to put out fresh fruit - a half orange being a classic meal for them or maybe some grapes. This immature male arrived and obviously had not yet reached that page in the How to [...]
This is a reworking of a post of mine from a couple of years ago. You will see, when you reach the closing section, that it’s very much a plea for enthusing novices of all ages, though especially the younger age groups, in the importance and joys of wildlifing. In particular via the [...]
15 years later This is quite exciting - it looks as if a pair of Carolina Wrens are building a nest in an accessible (to us) site after an interval of some 15 years. We were taking our morning constitutional when we happened to observe the pair buzzing back and forth with nesting [...]
Even the woodpecker owes its success to the fact that he used his head. —Author Unknown Continuing with the theme of occasional “Naturally Speaking” accounts of species you can encounter on the West Island of Montreal I am going to introduce a another bird. Botanists and entomologist friends of mine need [...]
Species Accounts Richard Gregson PhD MPhil CBiol FRSB - West Island Wildlife - Snow Buntings (Plectrophenax nivalis) Introduction: I have been sharing a few photographs and some very basic information daily for almost a year now about assorted species of wildlife and plants that can be found in the leafy western [...]
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 [...]
Tits or Chickadees?Not sure how I had missed this after a lifetime looking at creatures but I recently came across a photograph of a small bird and thought "funny looking Chickadee". This was the bird: It didn't take me long to work out that it was similar but different - here [...]
Do you know just how varied is the wildlife on the West Island in Winter? West Island Wildlife is an occasional webzine. It is FREE and fully illustrated, and has the intention of introducing readers to the surprisingly varied wildlife and native plants to be found on the West Island of Montreal. Following the [...]