Nature Club News for February 2025

by John Dickson

Owen Sound Field Naturalists next speaker  presentation features Dufferin County Forest Manager, Kevin Predon and is entitled ‘Forestry Isn’t Always An F Word’ – or – ‘The Musings and Opinions of a middle-aged Forestry Professional, Attempting to Create an Appreciation for Sustainable Forestry.’

Kevin’s goal is to cajole the Audience into an appreciation (or at least an understanding) of commercial forestry and its progressive environmental practices.

This talk is scheduled for 7pm Thursday February 13 at the Harry Lumley Bayshore Community Centre. Doors open by 6:30pm for a chance to check out  OSFN’s many gift ideas – a Fern Buff, Fern t-shirts and sweaters and OSFN’s publications including the new edition of Ferns Bruce & Grey.
Everyone is welcome, with admission by donation – (free for OSFN Members). The event will also be shared virtually via this  Zoom link that is also posted with the event listing at www.osfn.ca  

https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/wonBm4mxQv6qWBM7P1OO1w#/registration

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The Great Backyard Bird Count  February 14-17, 2025, is an annual four-day event that engages bird enthusiasts of all ages around the world in counting birds to create a real-time snapshot of where the birds are. Anyone can participate, from beginners to experts. You can count for as little as 15 minutes on a single day, or for as long as you like each day of the event. It’s free, fun, and easy – and it helps the birds! The Great Backyard Bird Count is a joint program of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Audubon with Canadian partner Birds Canada.

Visit  Great Backyard Bird Count to learn more and get started!

For more information contact:
Olivia Carvalho
Great Backyard Bird Count Coordinator
ocarvalho AT birdscanada.org

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Young Naturalists report from Amanda Eriksen 

The January meeting was held at the property of Owen Sound Field Naturalist member Pam Kinchen.

Her son Jeff Kinchen led us on a tracking hike. The snow conditions were perfect for snowshoeing, which was also a first experience for several of the 13 in the group. Jeff was a wealth of knowledge. He gave us many tips on how to tell what animal we were looking at based on not only what the track looked like, but the pattern, the spacing and “why here”. We saw many deer tracks, deer beds, a coyote track and a fisher
track. Our February meeting will be crafting with Nature held in
the GSCA building boardroom. I hope to make it moth and butterfly themed. 

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This year’s Huron Fringe Birding Festival  will be May 23 – June 1 at MacGregor Point Provincial Park.  Registration begins at 6 am, March 14, 2025  The program is available for viewing at Huron Fringe Birding Festival

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The 32nd Annual Grey Bruce Woodlot Conference & Exhibition will take place on Saturday March 29, 8am to 3pm at the Elmwood Community Centre. 

Some of the topics being presented include  – 20 Years of Tree Planting & Biodiversity Impacts; Invasive Species in Your Woodlot; 

The Forest Birds of Grey-Bruce; Private Lands Advanced Forest Resource Inventory Project; Forest Health Conditions in Ontario – 2024 Update;  Included with Admission: Door Prizes, Coffee & Refreshments, and more.Tickets: 

Advance Tickets $30 (RECOMMENDED). 

 AT THE DOOR : $40 CASH OR CHEQUE ONLYPAYABLE TO THE “GREY BRUCE WOODLOT CONFERENCE”For more information please visit   

https://gbwc.blog

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The Grey Sauble Conservation Foundation has announced details for its upcoming Springtime events. April 22, 2025: Earth Day Hike May 8, 2025: Earth Film Festival at the Roxy Theatre in Owen Sound. Tickets available at the Roxy Theatre.  June 8, 2025: Memorial Forest Ceremony

Help Support Conservation Projects Please consider making donations to the Grey Sauble Conservation Foundation and help GSCA maintain and enhance our beautiful conservation areas. You can also show your support by purchasing a GSCA Membership parking pass ($45+ HST for residents and $80+ HST for non-residents) and enjoy visiting GSCA
properties all year.

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To close, here is a particularly apropos Nature quote from  About this Life, by Barry Lopez remembering his early years in California in the 1950s –  ‘I felt the hysteria that came with brush fires fanned by Santa Ana winds and caught the astringent smell of creosote bush after a desert rain…. the sound of a night wind clattering ominously in the dry leaves of eucalyptus trees’ ; and a Nature quote from Bush Runner – The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson, by historian Mark Bourrie who lived for a while in Grey County – 

referring to the Lake Superior snowbelt – ‘Until the lake freezes in late January, bitterly cold winds crossing Superior from the north and west pick up steaming moisture from the lake and dump it on the land until the snow is more than three feet deep. Once the lake, or at least most of it, freezes over, prairie and Arctic winds arrive as drier, bitterly cold air, and temperatures plunge down to about forty below zero. (At this temperature, -40 is the same in Fahrenheit and Celsius.).’

By John Dickson

Twenty years ago this Spring, I registered for my first Huron Fringe Birding Festival (HFBF). Having just turned 50, I had decided to take up birding as an active pastime, and this wonderful festival helped me to rediscover the learning and pleasure I had somehow left behind at the age of ten.

This year, due to COVID-19, and generous sponsorship, the 23^rd HFBF has announced these seven exciting and free webinars scheduled for 7:00 pm on each evening of the Festival Virtual-Lite, which will run during their normal Festival dates of May 28 – 31 and June 3 – 6, 2021.  

They are: May 28 – Birding in Algonquin Park with Michael Runtz

May 29 – Black Bears of the Bruce Peninsula with Dr. Martyn Obbard 

May 30 – Fifteen Years of Ontario Piping Plovers with Andrea Gress 

May 31 – A Holistic Approach to Learning Bird Songs and Calls with Ian Shanahan

June 4 – Birders Gone Wild: 24 hour Bruce Peninsula Birdathon with Ethan Meleg 

June 5 – Bird Banding at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory with Stephane Menu 

June 6 – The Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas -3: Focus on the Females with Mark Peck 

To learn more and to register, please visit – http://hfbf.ca/

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With the arrival of Spring there has been a flurry of shared observations: trees beginning to leaf out; Scarlet Cup and other colourful fungi popping up, sometimes overnight; wildflowers already blooming; choruses of toads, frogs, and insects; migrating birds stopping here for a brief visit, or perhaps like many of us, they consider this area an ideal one in which to stay and raise their families.

Sightings of note here include Eastern Meadowlarks, American Kestrels, Sandhill Cranes, a few Trumpeter Swans and several hundred Tundra Swans that staged this year at Lake Eugenia, plus Eastern Bluebirds. I had my first sighting this year of an Eastern Phoebe, just this week, as well as the newly brightening yellow feathers of a male American Goldfinch.

Congratulations to Bob Bowles, formerly of the Markdale area, on the recent naming of the Robert L. Bowles Nature Centre near Orillia. Bowles has created a wonderful legacy of nature learning through Naturalist Clubs, his Ontario Master Naturalist Certificate Programme through Lakehead University of Thunder Bay and its satellite campus at Orillia, plus his popular television shows. Here is an excerpt from their recent announcement “at the new Robert L. Bowles Nature Centre (formerly Green Events and Programs) on Saturday, March 20, 2021, the first day of Spring for our ‘Signs of Spring’ workshop. Spring arrives in the northern hemisphere this year at 5:37 A.M. EDT, marked by the vernal equinox. Award-winning writer, artist, photographer and naturalist Bob Bowles will lead us in our discovery of spring signs.”

Barbara Palmer shared this report about OSFN’s March 21 Birding the Waters of the Beaver Valley, during Spring Migration.

“On a lovely, early spring Sunday, David Turner led an outing to some of the Beaver Valley’s birding hotspots.

First, we checked out the birds on Lake Eugenia from the Causeway. We were not disappointed, as there were good numbers of tundra swans swimming and vocalizing. These beautiful white swans with black beaks and straight necks are always a welcome sight as they stop to fuel-up for their high Arctic destination. Several species of ducks were identified, including the ubiquitous mallard, black, common goldeneyes, pintails,redhead, and ring-necked ducks. We were thrilled to see a couple of sandhill cranes flying in the distance and a couple of bald eagles were spotted. There were lots of Canada geese too. Cackling geese were spotted earlier in the week, but weren’t seen on this trip.

Our next stop was the Kimberley Sewage Lagoons, where a pair of trumpeter swans greeted us as we parked. They were exhibiting courting behaviour, bobbing their heads in a graceful dip. The lagoon had a number of Canada Geese which took off as we approached. All was not lost though, as a northern shrike was spotted on a wire. It appeared to be hunting. Various other birds were noticed, including robins, red-winged blackbirds, crows, a raven and a turkey vulture.

All in all, a wonderful morning of birding.”

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The Owen Sound Field Naturalists, (OSFN) have three presentations lined up for this month, all offered free to the public via a ZOOM link sent to members or available on request at www.osfn.ca:

Foraging for Edible and Medicinal Plants, with Alexis Burnett at 7PM Thursday April 8, via ZOOM. This focus of this presentation is on learning how to ethically harvest plants for food and medicine from the wild. Burnett will talk about both native and non-native plants and explore what it means to work with these groups of plants in a way that helps to sustain and regenerate local populations.

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2PM Saturday April 17, via ZOOM: OSFN’s 6th Annual Celebrate EARTH WEEK event – An Afternoon with Beth Gilhespy: Reflections on Wildlife and Wild Space Conservation Keynote Speaker Beth Gilhespyshares her experiences and insights.

 Gilhespy is a former CEO at Bruce Trail Conservancy, who, in 2019 gave a Geology presentation to a full house OSFN audience and led a complementary field trip. She also shared this comment about her new work: “There is so much excellent work being done at the Toronto Zoo to increase the numbers of endangered Canadian species in wild – Blandings turtles, wood turtles, loggerhead shrikes, and many others.  Plus the many other programs that are helping improve the lives of endangered animals worldwide through education and conservation research. Lots to tell people about!” Our sincere gratitude to the ongoing generous sponsorship of this event by Caframo.

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This is a ZOOM webinar. Details of how to join will be sent out in an eHerald closer to the event. The webinar will be open at 6:45pm to sort any technical difficulties.

Didn’t receive an e-herald but would still like to participate? Please contact web@owensoundfieldnaturalists.ca

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7PM Thursday April 29, via ZOOM as a special bonus presentation: Peter Middleton with: Peacocks, Tigers and Temples – Birds in the Heart of India.

This is a ZOOM webinar. Details of how to join will be sent out in an eHerald closer to the event. The webinar will be open at 6:45pm to sort any technical difficulties.

Didn’t receive an e-herald but would still like to participate? Please contact web@owensoundfieldnaturalists.ca 

Thanks for your patience as we change with the times! 

To close, Nature quotes from Sailing Alone Around the World, by Captain Joshua Slocum, who sailed from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia on July 2, 1895 aboard the sloop Spray. On July 5, having cautiously skirted the deadly shifting sands of Sable Island, Slocum “ …was in a world of fog, shut off from the universe.” and later that day Spray “dropped into a smooth lane, heading southeast, and making about eight knots, her very best work…

“The fog lifting before night, I was afforded a look at the sun just as it was touching the sea. I watched it go down and out of sight. Then I turned my face eastward, and there, apparently at the very end of the bowsprit, was the smiling full moon rising out of the sea.”

In the first week of April 1896 “With the vessel in good trim, though deeply laden, I was well prepared for another bout with the Southern, misnamed Pacific Ocean…

“On April 14, the Spray making good headway on a northwest course, Hurrah for the Spray! I shouted to seals, sea-gulls, and penguins; for there were no other living creatures about, and she had weathered all the dangers of Cape Horn.”

Nature Club News March 2020

by John Dickson

Please note – This NCN Originally Submitted March 10th. Due to COVID-19, most of the March events were postponed or cancelled. Please see individual listings for their current status.

There are many Nature related activities – for humans, that is – lined
up over the next while. Here are some which may be of interest to you
and/or your entire family:

This Thursday March 12, the Owen Sound Field Naturalists (OSFN) host
their Members’ Night, featuring as many as seven brief presentations
as diverse as Bill Moses using Phragmites to enhance habitat choices
for bees; David Morris pointing out “armed and dangerous” plants that
should be avoided; Bruce Peninsula wildflowers and photography
guidelines with Lyn Reket; Forest Bathing and Nature Therapy with Neil
Baldwin; Dorcas Bay Road wildflowers with Barbara Palmer; a Piping
Plover update with Norah Toth; and shades of green and gold with John
Dickson. Starting at 7PM, in the Bayroom of the Harry Lumley Bayshore
Community Centre, everyone is welcome, and encouraged to arrive early.
Admission is free, although donations are very welcome. For more
details please visit www.osfn.ca

Then on Sunday March 15, begins a four part lecture series featuring
Dr. Thorsten Arnold, a local farmer scientist, plus climate and food
systems advocate.

The entire series is entitled How Can Food Systems Regenerate Our
Earth? The lecture begins at 1:30PM at the Harmony Centre, located at
the corner of 9th Street and 4th Avenue east, and the topic is
Biosphere Self Regulation of its Climate. Admission is on a Pay What
You Can basis.

The dates and topics of the other three lectures, all at 1:30PM are
Sunday April 5, Regenerative Agriculture and the Biosphere; Sunday
April 26, Food Systems for the Biosphere; Sunday May 3, Making
Holistic Land Use Decisions. Arnold is known for the eloquence and
substance of his talks and his articulate presentations.

Support for this lecture series has been provided by Eat Local Grey
Bruce, Climate Action Team of Bruce, Grey and Owen Sound, Grey Bruce

Sustainability Network, OSFN, and St.George’s Anglican Church

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On Friday March 20 at 2PM Grey Roots Museum and Archives, as part of
their March Break feature Back to Your Roots, is offering a chance to
“Learn about moths and what they do in the winter” with a fun
presentation by Brian Robin, in the Grey Roots theatre, co-presented
by the Young Naturalists club.

On March 24 Grey Roots begins its Spring Lecture Series with Dr. David
Holah asking  How Green is Green Energy?

Our hopes of moving away from fossil fuels lies with the increased use of green energy (solar and wind) and the production of batteries for
electric cars. Success will largely be dependent on a few metals of
which most people have never heard and which come with a significant
environmental cost. This presentation is part of Grey Roots’ Spring
Lecture Series taking place on Tuesday afternoons following March
Break, March 24 through April 14, in our Theatre and are Free with admission. Talks take place at 1:00 p.m. and are repeated at 2:30 p.m. Complimentary refreshments following this talk, are provided, courtesy of Owen Sound Field Naturalists. 

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On Saturday March 28, Grey Roots is also presenting a chance to learn
more about hibernation, with popular speaker and naturalist Jenna
McGuire, also co-sponsored by OSFN.

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The Grey Sauble Conservation Foundation is hosting its 5th Annual
Earth Film Festival. The Festival will be held at the Roxy Theatre in Owen Sound on Thursday, April 30, 2020.This year the festival follows one week after the Earth Week Celebration. The theme for the Earth Film Festival is the beauty of the monarch butterfly. 

During the day, there will be two school matinee performances at the
Roxy. Students from grades 6 to grade 8 will be invited to attend. The evening starts with a social from 6pm to 7pm, during which guests can view displays, view draw prizes, and participate in a silent auction. At 7:00 pm the night will begin with an interactive butterfly presentation by Audrey Armstrong and photographer Willy Waterton. Following which the featured movie “Flight of the Butterflies” will be shown.

All funds raised benefit local conservation projects and student education grants supported by the Grey Sauble Conservation Foundation. Tickets are $25 and are available from the Roxy Theatre, contact 519-371-2833.

For further information, please contact Don Sankey, Chair, Grey Sauble Conservation Foundation at 519 376-1348

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Also celebrating Earth Week, OSFN presents renowned ecologist and
singer/songwriter Jarmo Jalava, on board the Chi Cheemaun, starting at
2PM, Saturday April 18. Entitled Relationships with Nature, as told through slides, stories and song, tickets for this event, which has limited seating,
are only $5 each and are still available at these ticket outlets –
Ginger Press, OS Farmers’ Market and the OSTC office at Springmount.
Ticket sales are starting to pick up again, now that Spring is in the
air. Sponsored by Caframo, proceeds will be directed to OSFN Youth
Projects.

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There have been many special sightings in the area recently. Jim
Hastie from the Leith area, reported his first Redwing Blackbird on
March 4th.

The Juvenile King Eider is still seen regularly at Southampton Harbour. Many Red-Tailed Hawks have been observed busily engaged in breeding activities; 

Tundra Swans are showing up in LambtonCounty, and in South East Grey. David Turner sighted nine Tundra Swans at Lake Eugenia, March 10, following a parallel path towards crossing Lake Huron.  Peter Middleton was successful in photographing a pair of Golden Eagles in Bruce County. Along with many Bald Eagles, HornedLarks and Robins have been seen throughout the area, and at least a couple of chipmunks have been observed, out of hibernation.

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Stew Hilts had a very nice sighting with a Red-tailed Hawk, to see the full story, head to his Seasons in the Valley blog.

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A tracking hike led by Jeff Kinchen last Saturday drew this assessment
from Julie Lamberts –

“I really appreciated Jeff’s insight around interpreting animal tracks
to understand not only the type of animal but how an animal is
behaving.  This insight gives you the opportunity to more deeply
understand that animal’s story, forming a deeper connection with them.
This was a very informative and enjoyable experience!” And, from Marilyn Betteridge – “Jeff was so enthused to share his experiences and accumulated knowledge it made learning and retaining so rewarding. Personally, I went out the next day looking for tracks and an otter slide he told us about. Finding two wildlife treasures was a highlight!!” 

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Jody Johnson reported that on February 23, the Young Naturalists Club
spent a beautiful afternoon exploring the area around Jones Falls, led by Judy Robinson. The kids experienced life as either a porcupine, fox, skunk, coyote or rabbit – looking for food, shelter and avoiding prey. They also created nature art of their selected animal.

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Also, looking back to February 13, Peter Middleton, in immense gratitude and warm recognition of his outstanding legacy,  received a lengthy standing ovation from the assembly of 200, who were on hand for his final lecture/presentation at the Lumley Bayshore.  They had been enthralled by the story of his recent trip to Brazilwith his wife, Jan. The trip had been well researched in advance and they were successful in observing most of the target species they were aiming for. Along with Peter’s superb photographs he made their adventures come alive for the audience as he imitated the sounds of Howler Monkeys and various anteaters and shared stories of behaviours they observed. Thank you, Peter, for generously sharing your nature experiences and gifts with us!

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To close, a Nature quote from Sam Llewellyn’s The Sea Garden – “From
the foot of the donjon walls the gardens sweep away. They are
twenty-one acres of Paradise, of flowers and scents gathered from the
Cape of Good Hope, and the Canaries, Australia and the Azores….”