Nature Club News for August 2025

by John Dickson

The Owen Sound Field Naturalists Club (OSFN) is getting busier now with various types of hikes taking place and monthly speaker events starting on September 11, at 7pm, with acclaimed author and artist Allen Smutylo, to add to your calendar.

You can check some of these out at www.osfn.ca as well as looking into the Young Naturalist Club, aimed primarily at ages 7-12.

 OSFN’s Audrey Armstrong held a Monarch butterfly tagging program at Isaac Lake,  Sunday August 24, and shared this report. ‘A group of 8 OSFN members joined Audrey Armstrong, Willy Waterton and Patti Byers  for a fun afternoon of chasing butterflies with nets and learning about monarch butterflies in migration.

As Citizen Scientists, we tag monarchs for Monarch Watch and apply tiny round tags with unique numbers to help scientists learn more about monarch behaviour and migratory patterns. This is when the long-lived super generation begins their 4,000 km journey to Michoachan, Mexico. We know monarch numbers are in decline and on Sunday we tagged only  5 monarchs, compared to almost 50 in 2021.

People want to help monarchs and the best way to make their world better is to create habitat.  If you plant milkweed in your garden, females will find them and lay eggs on your plants so you will have an opportunity to witness their magical life cycle in your own back yard.

The Bruce Birding Club (BBC)  is ready to kick off its fall season too, with two scheduled hikes most months on the first and third Wednesdays, usually in Bruce County, plus a few in Grey, and in a few other counties too. There is no cost to join, beginners and seasoned birders are welcome and it provides many learning opportunities too. Many of the club members are actively birding throughout the months as well. If you are interested in doing some birding with some scouting and guidance to enhance each event, please email James Turland at  jaturland@gmail.com for the schedule of activities and ask to be added to his email list.

The Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory’s Stéphane Menu is back on site and guiding the operations there as the migration of many birds has already begun. Here is an excerpt from his weekly blog –

‘On August 15, the nets were open for the first time for the fall migration monitoring, the first of 78 straight days when a dedicated team of volunteers and the bander-in-charge will get up before sunrise to count, catch, and band birds….  

We’ve been fortunate to greet a new family at Cabot Head: Peregrine Falcons have bred nearby and raised two young this year (females based on their size). The young have been very vocal, advertising their presence by long harsh calls, making it easy for us to detect and admire them. Over the last few years, there were signs of Peregrine Falcons establishing a territory around West Bluff, but it is the first year that there has been tangible evidence of successful breeding. What a delight!’

For more please visit www.bpbo.ca 

OSFN’s Erik van den Kieboom, has been in the north this summer and I asked him to share some details of the work he has  been doing and some of the highlights  he has encountered as well.

“This summer I had the opportunity to work with Birds Canada and collect data for the Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas in the southern boreal forest. With this year being the fifth and final year of the project, our goal was to find the highest possible number of breeding bird species in every atlas square we visited. In one and a half months, I visited 15 squares, conducted 81 point count surveys, and saw approximately 150 species of birds. Some highlights included a Great Grey Owl, a Black Tern colony, a Black-backed Woodpecker nest, and a Black-and-white Warbler nest.

In addition to the birds there were also a few interesting sightings – bears, moose, some cool turtles and snakes. The bugs were pretty bad this year, but easy enough to prevent too many from biting.

This fall I am volunteering with the Hilliardton Marsh Research and Education Centre as a bird bander. The station is located in the boreal forest region of Ontario, just north of New Liskeard. The banding process involves catching birds with mist nets we’ve set up around the property. We then place a metal band on the leg of each bird with a unique identification number. Finally, we record some information about the bird, including its age, sex, mass, and wing length, before releasing it back into the wild. Currently we are catching a number of warbler and flycatcher species that will soon be passing through southern Ontario. Besides songbirds, a large number of waterfowl and shorebirds also stage here in the marsh before heading further south for the winter. Keep an eye out for any birds this fall with a silver band on their leg, there’s a chance they may have come from here. I was camping in a tent this summer but here at the station we have small cabins to stay in.”

In addition to all of the activity with birds and butterflies, many naturalists are enjoying the latest blooming wildflowers as we enter the season of Asters and Goldenrods, while others are enjoying some astronomy and observing the night skies, or are scouting out the various fungi and mushrooms often found in forested areas.  I now have three different patches of Wild Asparagus which I have found and which I like to see at various stages, including when it has bright red berries. 

It also looks like it will be what some call a ‘mast year’ with not only most fruit trees having abundant produce, but also various nut trees that have a good crop, as I have observed many laden Black Walnut, Oak  and Horse Chestnut trees with nuts galore this year.