Inalienable Rights (and Geese)
Now in PRINT !!
Earlier this year, just in time for spring, I completed an early version of my book 1001 Species: A Natural History of a Small Town and offered it to the public as free PDF download. It enjoyed moderate success in the very small and rather niche market it was offered to and [...]
We (almost) won Canada !!
The five day Nature Conservancy Canada Bioblitz ended last night and we came in eighth out of 1788 participants (8/1788). That's two spots down the league table from last year but at 249 species we increased our total by 32 ... eighth place out of all of Canada. Must say we are [...]
The Kingdom of the Savannah Sparrow
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 [...]
Rejuvenating the Wildlife Pond
Over twenty years ago, faced with a large garden and looking for an interesting challenge we decided to install a garden pond. Edited anonymous quotation: I built my first backyard pond about twenty years ago. After seeing a massive pond on a rural garden tour, I was hooked. The sound of [...]
After Two Years – “The Book” has Launched
I am an inveterate keeper of lists of just about everything other than train numbers (you need to have grown up in England in the fifties to understand that) - but mostly lists of birds and plants that we have seen and enjoyed. After over 20 years of wildlifing around the western end [...]
Preparing the Wildlife Garden for Winter
Some simple suggestions ... Faithful readers of our posts will have gathered some ideas about how to attract wildlife to their gardens over spring, summer and early fall but now winter approaches and what do we do with all those native plants still standing tall? The neighbours are starting to look askance. [...]
Where the Wild Things Are
Around the edge of the garden is a quite dense thicket of bushes and trees where the outdoor staff, the "Wild Things". do whatever it is they do. Just every now and again I venture in there to see what's happening and to collect the rent. [...]
How Many Species Live In Baie-D’Urfé?
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 [...]
Knowing the Neighbours
I am not a person who appreciates, or usually understands, poetry beyond Ogden Nash and the Horatio on the Bridge sort of thing. But there are exceptions. Many friends and readers of this journal will have noted that I enjoy wildlifing on my "patch", which is to say I like to go [...]