photos by Bill Bowman According to Fred Schueler, Kemptville Creek, just below the dam at Oxford Mills, is the only place in Ontario where our giant aquatic Salamanders can be easily viewed during their winter activity. Searching for salamanders at this site is a regular weekly event for Fred, and he has [...]
Unlike birds, most wild mammals are little seen. Some are nocturnal, some are crepuscular, some are subterranean – and a good many have reason to fear us and hide. But they are here all around us and Gordon Robertson from the OFNC reviewed our local species groups. The meeting was a great success because everyone [...]
by Michelle St-Germaine As I had a milestone birthday last year (I turned 50), I treated myself to a week in Paris alone and spent many hours in beautiful parks, contemplating life. In addition to this trip, I took a retirement course (yes, they exist!) and was pleased that I am on the right track [...]
by John Davidson Tricoloured Bumblebee at work in the FWG's Butterfly Meadow Punch “bees” into your search engine and, within seconds, you'll get a screenful of headlines, something like this: Why are bees dying? Plant flowers to help declining bee populations Could pesticides be limiting the ability of bees to reproduce? We are [...]
Alex MacDonald, of Nature Canada, demonstrated how to find bats using a small hand-held detector. by John Davidson “I can hear one, I can hear one!” The excited cry cut through the night at the same time as the device in the young boy’s hands burst into a cacophony of staccato crackles. This [...]
In planning for today's field trip, we had to make a decision about snowshoes three days ahead of time. During January, daytime temperatures had been at or above freezing for weeks (this being about 6°C above normal), but then the weather had turned cold and added five inches of fresh snow. Would the shrunken snowpack [...]
If you wanted to see Woodland Caribou in the wild, how could you do it? They have been pushed so back into the far reaches of Canada that in most places you'd have to fly into some northern community. But there are one or two places where you can also drive into the north. It's [...]
By Barry Cottam Once again OFNC members got together to share their passion for nature and nature photography. And once again, we discovered the amazing range of interests and experiences Club members explore. We could have used even more time than the three hours scheduled for this event. Each presentation by the ten participants was [...]
There were animal tracks all over the place at the Study Area, but apart from a few squirrels, we really had to search to see anything with fur on it. There were the footprints of all sizes of dogs along the walking/skiing trails, deer tracks crossing those trails, and muddy raccoon footprints leading from one [...]
Why do puffy clouds have flat bottoms? This was just one of the many questions Rob posed as we explored different aspects of earth's atmosphere. Earth's breathable atmosphere is the only habitat we really, truly live in, but owing to the normal invisibility of air, we forget about it. So why are clouds flat on [...]
