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 [...]
We were visited by a couple of raccoons in the garden, one barely being impeded by next door's fence which it scaled without effort. The other passed through to investigate what we had, digging several holes with its busy little paws as it went. The sludge on the bottom of the only partially [...]
I have mentioned before that I am writing a Natural History of the town I live in, and a few nearby places within a short distance. A friend who we met ten years ago on a wildlifing trip of north-western Newfoundland and Labrador pointed out from some early draft pages that I don’t [...]
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 [...]
I have just experienced one of those biological “well I never” moments that makes biology such a fascinating pursuit. This I have to share with you. In a book I am reading (details at the end) I found the following. Quote: "Another example … is the unusual bathroom behaviour of sloths. Three-toed sloths [...]
Not that we have any urge to escape from the garden - this lockdown business is not causing any mental disturbance at all - but occasionally we like to check up on what the wild world is up to and so we take ourselves five minutes down the road to walk the trails [...]
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 [...]
What did forests once look like? It has been understood, taken as gospel, that the “Bambi Factor” which prevents hunting and management culls of too large deer populations is leading, in large parts of eastern North America, to a severe loss of forest understory as out of control deer eat pretty well [...]
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 [...]