by Christine Hanrahan Dodging the rain showers and gusty winds, I spent several hours walking around the garden looking for birds, plants, insects... Naturally, the latter were scarce and had to be looked for under leaves, huddled against stems and branches, seeking shelter from the rainy weather. I did see a pretty common spring moth [...]
by Christine Hanrahan Black Walnut in bloom It was a blustery, coolish day at the garden, but as always, there was much to see. Starting with birds, the kestrels were flying around the barn, a green heron flew to the pond, red-winged blackbirds, tree swallows, chickadees, yellow warblers, song sparrows, one lone white-crowned [...]
by Christine Hanrahan I arrived at the FWG at 5:30 this morning, a major effort for someone like me, normally a night owl. I'd hoped to hear a dawn chorus of migrants - warblers, vireos, flycatchers, and so on. That didn't happen. Until the sun came up fully, the only birds singing were robins and [...]
by Christine Hanrahan Eastern Phoebe It was our first real scorcher of a day at 25 degrees C (anything above 15 C is a heat wave to me). I was expecting to see butterflies, even perhaps a few spring azures, as I've seen them elsewhere recently, but no butterflies showed themselves to me. [...]
by Christine Hanrahan Song Sparrow at our Amphibian Pond Happy Earth Day! It was a great day to be at the FWG, sunny, not too warm, not too cool, just right to bring out all sorts of wildlife. I saw four mourning cloaks today, three around the ash woods, one by the butterfly [...]
by Christine Hanrahan Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is recognized as a serious invasive plant species in North America. Native to Europe, the plant was brought here by settlers for food and medicinal purposes. It has been present in North America for over 140 years, apparently first recorded in 1868 on Long Island in New York [...]
by Christine Hanrahan It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words and, bearing that in mind, I am posting some photos of a couple of bee nesting structures. The large nest box made by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada scientists has holes of varying sizes and contains rolled up tubes of paper that [...]
by Christine Hanrahan Our Insect Hotel, photographed by Aroop Ghosh This is a simple overview of various types of accommodations for bees. I won’t be providing instructions for building bee boxes, but I do provide a reference below for the best all-round source for creating different types of bee houses. Much media attention [...]
by Christine Hanrahan Willow catkin I am happy to tell you that the FWG's April photo blog is now up and running. I was at last able to drive to the garden (hooray!) and, after an absence of 10 weeks, it felt good to be back. As I got out of the car, [...]
By Christine Hanrahan As spring very slowly chugs its way into our region, many of us find our thoughts turning, longingly, to gardens and gardening. Those of us inclined to create and maintain gardens for wildlife, are also interested in the various things we can do to enhance our site for birds, bees, and other [...]
