About Robert Lee

Naturalist. Macoun Club member 1965-74; Macoun Club leader since 1985.

Nature Quiz: What’s the Story Here? (Feb. 10, 2018)

Macoun Club members discover looped tree (White Pine) On Macoun Club field trips, we regularly encounter strangely shaped trees that are hard to figure out. On last weekend’s outing to Pakenham we found this sturdy White Pine sapling that had formed a complete loop. The tree had recently died, so we collected the [...]

2018-02-12T03:26:42-05:00February 12th, 2018|Macoun Field Club|

A perfect autumn day (Sept. 16, 2017)

We lazily walked in to a place we know as "Rock-wall Pond" at Pakenham, finding a Spring Peeper, Wood Frog, and Leopard Frog, and many American Toads beside the trail, and passing pale asters as we went. We ate lunch on flowing steps of thick moss on a rocky hilltop, and resumed our ambling. When [...]

2017-11-20T01:30:42-05:00September 20th, 2017|Macoun Field Club|

Start-up meeting (Sept. 9, 2017)

We began, as we do every meeting, with "Observations." What have we seen in the natural world since we last met? In this case it had been more than two months. Gabriel had been out whale-watching on the east coast, and Jan in B.C.. It's pretty hard to beat Humpback Whales and Orcas. But Julia [...]

2018-01-03T00:28:24-05:00September 10th, 2017|Macoun Field Club|

Members’ photo day (May 27, 2017)

We had no sooner settled in for our meeting when a late arrival reported that the Mourning Dove just outside the door was feeding its nestling. Everyone rushed out to watch. The bird had started building her nest during one of our meetings, and is so used to people she wasn't perturbed at all. Macouners [...]

2017-07-11T00:09:51-04:00May 28th, 2017|Macoun Field Club|

Nature-art workshop (May 6, 2017)

May 6, 2017: Nature-art workshop As the end-of-May deadline for Little Bear contributions approaches, we all sat down to sketch and draw creatures that appeal to us. Some members flipped through bird books, one used a field-trip image on Rob's laptop as his model, and Rachel called up a picture on her smart-phone. Niccolo drew [...]

2017-07-08T15:12:19-04:00May 8th, 2017|Macoun Field Club|

Yukon salmon (April 22, 2017)

Apr. 22, 2017: Swimming 3200 km to get home We have all seen video of salmon leaping natural obstacles and dodging bears. We have also heard that the spawning runs are faltering in many places. Today Nick Lapointe explained that Chinook Salmon spawning in the upper Yukon River are a shadow of their former abundance. [...]

2017-07-02T23:30:29-04:00April 22nd, 2017|Macoun Field Club|