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 [...]
The Pakenham Hills were perfect for a field trip today — fresh, fluffy snow six inches deep that we could walk through easily, unusual rocks and logs to play on, and abundant dry firewood for a lunch fire. The forest was criss-crossed with tracks we identified as Coyote, Snowshoe Hare, White-tailed Deer, Fisher, and various [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
In recent years we have run a joint field trip with the OFNC at Brewer Park, introducing neighbourhood children to the aquatic life of the river-side pond. In the usual pattern, kids caught frogs and crayfish; they were put on display in an open-air aquarium and then released in a safe zone. Our member Niccolo [...]
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 [...]
Birds were singing — we heard a Winter Wren, Ovenbird, and Northern Waterthush. Biting flies were out, and we had recently emerged Black Flies in our faces, but they weren't quite biting yet. We directed out attention to a much neglected corner of our Study Area — the far southwestern corner, in fact. The small [...]
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 [...]
The number and range of things to see increases tremendously as spring arrives. We hadn't quite entered our Study Area when a Great Egret flew out of it, big and white against the blue sky, and bucking the strong north wind. Once in, under a little grove of Red Maples we noticed that the leaf [...]
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. [...]
