Experimenting with native species in small spaces
Honeybee on butterflyweed (Photo by NCC)
Earlier this summer, a group of Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) Leaders in Conservation visited St. Williams Nursery & Ecology Centre in Norfolk County, Ontario, for a tour of the nursery's impressive facility. With several years of...
Magic shrubs: How to master live staking
Willow live stakes (Photo by NCC)
I remember raising my eyebrows skeptically when my colleagues from the Nottawasaga Valley Conservation Authority told me that we were going to be cutting branches off of shrubs and hammering them into the ground along the Nottawasaga River to...
A chance meeting with an iconic Canadian mammal
Moose and her calf (Photo courtesy of Wild for Wildlife and Nature)
Moose are an iconic part of Canada's wildlife. Growing up to six and a half feet tall at their shoulders and weighing up to 1,400 pounds, they are the largest species of deer in the world and one of the largest land mammals in Canada.Crossing...
Small pulls for a big cause: Ridding the Happy Valley Forest of invasive species
White trilliums in Happy Valley Forest, ON (Photo by NCC)
Summer in the Happy Valley Forest is the best time to enjoy the newly emerging flowers. It's a pleasant reminder that the warm weather is well on its way. Hiking through the forest, you may come across patches of bloodroot, Mayapple and of course...
Song of Northern Superior
White-throated sparrow (Photo by Wikimedia Commons)
It was a chilly April morning in southern Ontario, so all of the windows in my house were closed. But I could still hear something outside. I quickly pushed open the window and listened. There it was — the cheery song of the white-throated...
Feeling happy about conservation
Kristyn Ferguson, spring monitoring, ON (Photo by NCC)
I was 21 years old, and I was going to save the world, starting with one particular forest. In 2004, during my third year of an undergrad degree at the University of Guelph, I took a course called "Problem-solving in Environmental Biology." My...
Tracking wood thrush through Ontario forests
Adult wood thrush at her nest (Photo by Sue Hayes)
Each year, the wood thrush travels thousands of kilometres from its over-wintering habitat in the tropical regions of Central America to its breeding habitat in forests throughout southern Ontario. This medium-sized songbird, like many other...
A prothonotary warbler partnership takes flight
Prothonotary warbler (Photo by Bill Hubick)
Deep in the swamp forest of Backus Woods in Ontario on a hot summer’s day, it’s easy to feel as though one has been transported to somewhere in the Mississippi basin. The thick canopy of mature Carolinian trees provides shade to...
Searching for worms in Ontario’s restored tall grass prairie
Ontario’s largest exotic earthworm, Lumbricus terrestris. (Photo by Heather Cray)
Looking across a beautiful stretch of native tall grass prairie in its full glory, the first thing that might strike you is, well, the grass; big bluestem, switchgrass, Indian grass, all of them might reach up to or above eye level. Then there are...
Lakeside daisy: The yellow jewel of spring
Lakeside daisy (Photo by Charles Peirce)
There is nothing quite like witnessing the beauty of flowering lakeside daisies across an alvar in early June. This brilliant yellow member of the aster family is found almost exclusively on the alvars of the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula and southern...
