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Welcome to the Macoun Field Club!

Our autumn season has now started. Families can enquire about having their children join at any time. Either phone Rob Lee at (613) 623-8123 (note that “Macoun” rhymes with “crown,” not “croon”), or e-mail him at Macoun@ofnc.ca. The Macoun Club is sponsored and supported by the Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club (OFNC); there are no fees.

Indoor meetings take place at the Fletcher Wildlife Garden building beside the Experimental Farm’s arboretum (Building no. 138). Meetings start at 10 a.m. and wrap up between 11:30 a.m. and noon. Field trips take place on alternate Saturdays and typically run about 5 hours (sometimes with the option to attend only the part before or after noon). We go to wild places in Ottawa’s western Greenbelt (Stony Swamp) and Lanark County (the Pakenham Hills).

Schedule of Activities

Sept. 22: Members’ photo day.  Bring in a small selection of summer pictures on a USB drive. Also elections.

Sept. 29: Field trip (call Diane at 226-3306 anytime Thursday to find out details and register)

Oct. 6: Thanksgiving long weekend — no meeting or field trip.

Oct. 13: Chimney Swifts, with Melanie Farquahar

Oct. 20: Field trip

What are meetings and field trips like?
Here’s what we’ve just done,

followed by a sample of what we did last year.

Sept. 15, 2018: Wild apples and a native EAB parasitoid

Historically, the Macoun Club’s square-mile nature-study area outside Ottawa was occupied by five or six farming families. The people and their buildings are long gone, but the old homesteads are still discernible by some of the non-native food plants, garden flowers, and fruit trees that have persisted for 60 or more years: Rhubarb, Lily-of-the-Valley – and Apple trees.

We could find only the wild descendants of orchard trees, with fruit that tended to be small (< 6 cm), hard (which preserves them from pests), and usually sour (an acquired taste). We sampled apples from half-a-dozen trees. Some were very attractive, with a red blush or red striping, but the only sweet one was a light green colour.

Along the way, we found many Green and Leopard Frogs, a couple of Garter Snakes, and (in a marsh) a Water Snake. After lunch, sounds like a toy horn drew us to a Bitternut Hickory with two large Porcupines high up in the crown; the ground below was dotted with hickory nuts. And in the midst of the wave of Ash tree death sweeping our Study Area (because of Emerald Ash Borer) we saw several tiny insects moving in and out around a Red Ash tree. They appear to be a native parasitoid (genus Atanycolus).

 

Sept. 8, 2018: Start-up meeting

By way of getting to know each other, we asked each member, new and old, what they were most curious about and would like to learn more about this year. The answers ranged from trilobites to otters. We aim to pursue some of these subjects in the course of the year.

Rob brought out a box of bones and said it had been donated with no more identification than “Tortue sp.” (some kind of turtle). Only one member was interested in having the bits and pieces until Rob revealed that the note also included the location, right down to latitude and longitude, as well as the names of lakes and rivers where the specimens were found. Equally important, this label gave the name of the collector and the date. Rob said that with these three pieces of data — place, date, and collector’s name — this specimen would be acceptable in any museum of natural history. Now another boy wanted it. As for the species, that will have to be worked out by comparison with other specimens in a reference collection. We had a Snapping Turtle skeleton right at hand, and ruled that one out, at least.

June 16, 2018: Afternoon at the waterfall

For the last field trip of the Macoun Club year, we settled into a familiar, relaxing place at Pakenham – some of us right in, into the water.  It was a hot day.  While the boys chased frogs up and down the creek, Rachel stepped into the pool above the falls and offered the dancing Ebony Jeweling damselflies a finger to perch upon.  One of them claimed her, and returned again and again.

Meanwhile, the rest of us were waving off a steady stream of Deer Flies, and soon Garrett returned to have a Deer Tick removed from his skin.  (On the way out, Rachel caught another one by dragging her net through the trailside vegetation.)

Immersed in nature for hours and hours, we enjoyed an interval entirely away from the civilized world, no sight or sound of machinery or their marks on water, landscape, or sky.

 

 

June 9, 2018: Fish, from beginning to end

Robbie Stewart, former Macoun Club member and our favourite paleontologist, has come in again this year, this time to present an overview of the evolution of fishes through time, beginning with the first armour-plated Placoderms. “Why do they have so much hard, bony protection?” he asked. ‘Because there were powerful predators around,’ our group answered. “And why didn’t later fish need such armour?” ‘Because fish got faster, and could outswim their predators.’

He illustrated his talk with pictures that always showed a modern human for scale, but Macouners already knew that the fish of ancient seas had been gigantic. Yet one of the biggest, he said, the one shown here with the gaping mouth, was a filter feeder. He pointed out that it was the next one down that was the predator, with massive jaws and impressive teeth. (The most common of these fish was a little bottom feeder.)

And so it went, through time, with fish getting faster and lighter of body. Eventually, however, slow fishes with stout, bony pectoral fins appeared again in protected environments – shallow swamps full of sunken logs to crawl over. These fish became the most successful of all – although few have persisted in their original form. “What do you think I mean, then, when I say that they are the most successful?” After a thoughtful pause, a voice from among the kids spoke up: ‘Because they evolved to become us.’ “Right you are;” said Robby, and he showed a series of skeletal diagrams that traced the evolution of the fishy fin bones into an amphibian leg, a reptile’s, and ultimately a primate forearm. With great enthusiasm, he concluded: “We’re all fishes.”

Apr. 21, 2018: A study on apples

Macouners have studied many things in their Nature Study Area, but never the apple trees that occur there and their fruit. Apple trees are not native to the Americas, but have become widely distributed across the countryside because in pioneer times, almost every farm family had its own orchard. Five such orchards still existed within the Study Area in the 1970s, but most became overrun with plantations of pines and spruces. Today, Rob Lee proposed a new project in which we will rediscover where the trees are by their blossoming in May, and return in September to document the diversity of apple types.

To make a start at documentation, several of the leaders brought in apple varieties that are popular in local grocery stores. Rob recounted the origins of each – McIntosh, Granny Smith, Honey Crisp, and Pink Lady – and then we sampled them, making notes as we went. We learned that even a “sweet” apple will taste sour if it’s unripe.

Feb. 3, 2018: Eagle and Owl

Even at one of our regular field-trip destinations, it didn’t take much for Rob to guide us away from the routine trails and into new territory. The quieter portions of Indian Creek had frozen solidly, so we were able to cross to the far shore. We worked our way up through mixed woods to a beaver pond with several big stick nests up in some drowned trees. We had just seen a Golden Eagle being dogged by a seemingly tiny Raven, so raptors were much in mind, but the nests were those of the Great Blue Heron.

Coyote tracks laced the snow-covered ice, and the woods were full of tracks, assuring us that the winter landscape was rich in hidden wildlife. Red Squirrel and White-tailed Deer predominated, but we also saw Wild Turkey and Ruffed Grouse, mice and shrews, ermine, Mink, and Fisher. (No sign of Porcupines, however.)

Just as we were turning back, those at the front flushed a large, light-brown bird that flew only a little way before swooping up to perch: “A Barred Owl,” said Rob. It calmly allowed the whole group (16 of us) to gather around below it, swiveling its head all around to study us.  We left it in peace.

 

Oct. 14, 2017: Member’s share their nature photos

We began with images of local wildlife taken by Ana (Red-bellied Snake) and Garrett (llttle turtles and one huge fish — a Carp), and then ranged over Canada from coast to coast with Jan. He began with his excitement at visiting wildlife refuges in the American Rockies and seeing his first Ferruginous Hawk. There he had encountered Bison, too.

In the Canadian Rockies Jan encountered Clark’s Nutcrackers, birds of the conifer forests just below the timberline.

He had already told us of having seen the world’s largest Orca, and now showed us how much its dorsal fin towered over that of an average Orca, photographed together in BC waters. He had also been to Newfoundland and had pictures of Humpback and Minke Whales, as well as seals and a Common Puffin.