My 2015 nature year in review
Ralph River (Photo by Alistair Taylor)
When you’re on Facebook and other social media you start following a plethora of organizations and groups that interest you. Before long they start to accumulate and your timeline is full of stuff to read, interact with and comment on. At...
Winter isn’t just for the birds
Snow bunting (Photo by Wikimedia Commons, John Haslam)
While many bird watchers and nature enthusiasts in Canada might look forward to the spring – a time when millions of migratory birds return to fill Canada's forests and grasslands with a chorus of songs each summer – I experience a...
An osprey family affair
An osprey soars around its nest (Photo by Lorne)
This journey of an osprey family, between early May 2015 and mid-August of the same year, is almost as much my journey as theirs. It begins as a young boy some six decades ago, when my maternal grandfather would pick me up to spend some quality...
Memorable 2015 fieldwork moments
Tall grass prairie in NCC's Interlake Natural Area (Photo by Cary Hamel/NCC)
I asked the Manitoba Region’s talented group of field biologists, “What was your most inspiring or challenging fieldwork moment of this past summer?” Here are some of the highlights of last year's field season in...
Close encounters with a pileated woodpecker
Pileated woodpecker female foraging on a dead stand. (Photo by Claire Elliott)
When I’m feeling unmotivated to go for a hike, I usually try to suppress those feelings and go anyway. I never regret the time I spend outdoors, and again that was the case this past weekend. I was sitting restlessly at my desk, which was...
Calling doctor centipede
House centipede (Photo from Wiki Commons)
Before starting in communications I had a successful career as a bug doctor. I had a nice little set-up on the playground of my elementary school where I would take bugs cut up by classmates and nurse them back to health. I wasn’t top in my...
Searching for skipperlings
Poweshiek skipperling in Petri dish. (Photo by Monica Reed)
It started with a lesson on the swoop and the drop net – methods that I would soon use while searching for the elusive Poweshiek skipperling butterfly. If captured, a careful transfer from net to a Petri dish allows for the butterfly to be...
Close encounters of the wild kind
A black bear located where I normally like to see them: far away. (Photo by Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson)
This summer, I spent a good chunk of my field trips to the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC’s) fescue prairie preserves being bear-anoid. Although I saw several black bears last year, they were all solitary and a fair distance away....
Give a hiss on World Snake Day
A prairie rattlesnake neonate - note the triangular shaped head and yellowish-green colouration.(Photo by Wonnita Andrus/NCC staff)
The sun is just beginning to crest the grassland coulee slopes of Lethbridge, Alberta, but I have already been hiking for an hour. I am on the search for one of Alberta’s most feared predators. Its perfected greenish-yellow camouflage and...
Happy trails in the Happy Valley Forest
Tour participants walk by a mature maple tree on the Goldie Feldman Nature Reserve. (Photo by NCC)
We heard the eastern wood pewee before we saw it. Just as the name suggests, we could hear it calling “Pee-oo-wee! Pee-oo-wee!” as we walked along the trail in the Happy Valley Forest. We stopped to admire some of the older-growth...
