Welcome to the Macoun Field Club!
The Macoun Club was established in May 1948 as a joint venture of the National Museum of Canada (Museum of Nature) and the Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club; since 2010 it has continued under the sole sponsorship of the OFNC. This group is for children and teenagers aged 8 to 18. Activities normally take place on Saturdays during the school year.
Families can enquire about the Macoun Club at any time. Either phone Rob Lee at (613) 623-8123 (note that “Macoun” rhymes with “crown,” not “croon” — it is named for a famous Canadian botanist of the late 1800s), or e-mail him at Macoun[at] ofnc.ca. The Macoun Club is sponsored and supported by the Ottawa Field-Naturalists’ Club (OFNC); there are no fees.
Winter 2025 schedule
Indoor meetings alternate with field trips on Saturdays. Sometimes we hold two age-defined meetings in a morning, but usually a single, 2-hour meeting. At the Fletcher Wildlife Garden, there is parking nearby, but not at the building. See just below for more information on location and parking there. Some meetings are held at the St Laurent Academy.
Field trips will take place on the alternate Saturdays, typically from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m., all ages together. Details of exact times and locations are revealed only to families that either contact Rob on the Thursday or Friday before the trip, or register online once their child is registered as a member.
Schedule of events
Christmas — New Year’s Holidays
Jan. 11: Indoor meeting, all ages together 10 a.m. to noon. “How to find your way in the woods,” with Rob Lee
Jan. 18: Field trip: members can register online; otherwise contact Rob on Thursday evening or Friday
Jan. 25: Indoor meeting
Feb. 1: Field trip
For further information, contact Rob for details (and to register for trips). You can reach him at 623-8123 or e-mail him at macoun@ofnc.ca. Exact hours and locations of field trips are provided only when registering for them.
LOCATION, AND PARKING FOR MEETINGS: Except for special occasions, we meet in Building 138, the “OFNC – Interpretive Centre,” as it appears at a Google Maps pin, the building at the very end of the lane running east to the Fletcher Wildlife Garden from Prince of Wales Drive, the lane across the road from a big parking lot for the Agricultural Museum. There is no parking for parents at Building 138, or under the trees along the lane; if you want to stay while your child is in the meeting, park in the areas designated between the baseball diamond and the first building you come to, no. 136.
For families that remember how it was before, this year Agriculture Canada will ticket cars parked under the trees along the lane to Building 138, as it is considered an emergency-access route.
See what we’ve done on recent field trips
In the outdoors, dispersal reduces the concentration of troublesome particles, be they cattail fluff or respiratory droplets
Where we are now with respect to Covid-19
Most people feel we have moved past the Covid-19 pandemic.
Our general impression is that Covid-19 is now treated like other contagious respiratory illnesses — people should stay home when sick, but there are no longer specified periods of isolation.
We will not have to wear masks indoors, but you will see that some of us will be doing so in order to protect others from any respiratory illness they might have, or because of personal vulnerabilities. Outdoors, we do not consider masks necessary at all.
What have we been doing this year?
November 16, 2024: The fossil pile is breaking up!
Spreading out over the shale piles
Splitting shale with hammer and cold chisel
At the request of members, and Mike Leveille’s urging, we made a return to the shale heaps at Beechwood Cemetery near his school. This is the Billings Shale, which comes from a black layer in the local grey limestone, and it’s full of fine fossils from 440 million years ago – nautlioids, trilobites, graptolites and tiny inarticulate brachiopds. But the blocks of shale have been weathering for several years now, crumbling to powder, and good finds are becoming fewer.
Macouners now know to bring hammers and safety goggles, and worked for an hour and more splitting the remaining rocks apart. Nautiloids were everywhere, trilobites were scarce, and the other types quite scarce.
Back at his school, Mike also opened his cabinet doors and took in members’ specimens in trade for others of equal value.
November 9, 2024: When wild birds are hurt and need help . . .
Patty McLaughlin laying out specimens
Macoun Club members handling wings of birds that couldn’t be saved
When Rob Lee was a Macoun member, there was no one to take in injured birds and rehabilitate them. He had to do it himself, and successfully released a small number of birds that couldn’t fly for a month because of sprained wings.
Now, people are able to take the birds they find to the Ottawa Valley Wild Bird Care Centre. Drawing on decades of experience, baby birds can be raised until they can be on their own, injured birds are healed an released, and those whose injuries leave them crippled have a place to stay. One such is a small falcon, a Kestral with a badly-healed wing, too stiff for flight.
The Centre’s Education Program Manager, Patty McLaughlin, began with a series of photos and short video clips of the birds that have come in for care, and then, telling us that not all birds survive their injuries, passed around specimens for our examination (held under federal permits).
She even brought in the Kestral in a large cage. She fed it while we were there, which set it at ease in such a crowded room.
November 2, 2024: Late autumn in the Pakenham Hills
Lunch by a favourite beaver pond
On a perfect late autumn day, we followed an old bush road into familiar places, coming at last to the floating bog we visited on September 21st. But no one really wanted to wade out there at this season: we have had some hard frosts and the water was cold.
It was better on land, lounging in the sunshine, sitting by a campfire. Following our October 5th trip, some were keenly interested in mushrooms. Others wrestled each other to the ground and tumbled around head over heels. Only one salamander (Red-backed) was found, despite many logs being turned.
Continuing off-trail, Rob led over the hill to Indian Creek at a point where we could look across the water to Gerry’s cabin. And we finished up there. Gerry had been waiting for us – he had found a mummified baby turtle, and when the kids ran off looking for bones, he engaged the adults in conversation.
October 26, 2024: The arms race among the animals
Why is a turtle like a porcupine? Answer: they both wear body armour for protection against predators.
Why does an adult Snapping Turtle wear such heavy, awkward armour? Answer: for protection against other snappers when males fight each other.
What do pillbugs, water bears, and toads have in common? Answer: lightweight but tough armour against dry and hostile environments (they keep the water in).
In the beginning . . . Robbie Stewart and one of his slides
These were the basic questions that former Macouner Robbie Stewart explored through a survey of paleontological time, from the idyllic Ediacarian times when there were no predators, through the time of the dinosaurs, right down to today’s world. With his great interest in paleontology, there were lots of impressive giants from past geological eras, often with a human figure superimposed for scale.
And with the development of armour comes the evolution of bigger teeth and stronger predatorial jaws. Or evolution can go off in a new direction: fish no longer need armour because they can outswim their predators.
For an hour-and-a-half it was question and answer, back and forth, between our speaker and our members.
October 19, 2024: One last look at the foliage
Macouner letting a Garter Snake calmly glide through his fingers
Even on the short (200 m) walk through the woods to our Study Area proper, we started seeing wildlife. First there was a Barred Owl (see photo for Sept. 28th), which flew away from us, and then a Porcupine high up in a tall Red Oak. Under logs, we found Blue-spotted Salamanders.
From long experience we knew that the leaves would soon be off most of the trees, so we hurried to our Study Tree Woods to experience the forest in its colours. Already one was bare! – Corbin’s Yellow Birch. But most our trees shared the general yellowish-green of the canopy. There is very little red anymore, as a minute fungus has spoiled the leaves yet again. Even Sugar Maple leaves turn yellow and brown, with hundreds of tiny black dots.
While new members were choosing trees and making notes, and while Rob was helping measure the heights of the trees (with a homemade “hypsometer”), sharp-eyed Macouners were finding salamanders (Red Eft and Blue-spotted), frogs (a fingernail-size Eastern Gray Tree Frog) and snakes (just one, a Garter).
When we had eaten lunch and felt we’d exhausted the possibilities in this special hardwood forest, we circumnavigated the adjacent Woodland Pond. A metre deep in spring, the sedgy bottom now looked dry, but the basin’s peaty bottom was sopping wet and we skirted it by keeping to the floodplain fringe of Red and Silver Maples.
It’ll be weeks before we return, and the maples will have shed their leaves, but the oaks and maybe even the beeches will have kept theirs.
October 5, 2024: Mushroom blitz
Chlldren using a pocket mirror to check for gills on the underside of an Amanita citrina mushroom
Mushroom hunters Joan Heyding and Lynn Ovendon discussing Macouners’ finds
How many kinds of fungi might there be in our Nature Study Area? That’s a long-term project; since 2005 we have recorded 84 species, most of them mushrooms. Today we focused on one tiny part of the square mile, the moist border between a rather dry mixed forest (pine and red maple) and a young cedar woods near parking lot P6.
It was all highly organized, with five experienced mushroom hunters each taking under their wings five Macoun Club members: see what you can find in an hour. For beginners, the goal was to discover one example of a mushroom with gills underneath, or pores, or teeth; mushrooms of different colours (white, red, blue); and fungi of different structure (toadstools, brackets, cups, crusts, coralline growths).
When the hour was up, all the finds were brought to a long table set up in the woods and subjected to examination and discussion. The final total is still being tallied.
After lunch, Rob led away through a buckthorn jungle in which Macouners found animals skulls and bones lying on the ground. Then we broke out into a wide expanse of bare rock and bright sunshine. Onward into the woods on the far side — there were Blue-spotted Salamanders under logs — and up a long, long trail to our Study Tree Woods. There, new trees were chosen, and old ones revisited after a summer’s absence. We got out to parking lot P6 only a little late.
September 28, 2024: The outdoors was a bigger draw than indoors
Barred Owl taking flight
Rob had plans for a talk, but it was too fine a day to stay indoors, especially when kids were coming in with three snakes at time, or parents reporting an owl on the grounds of the Fletcher Wildlife Garden. We went out and found it by asking people we met along the trail — most were hanging back lest they stress the bird. It proved to be a Barred Owl, fully awake at noon and looking around from its post. There were Blue Jays around, but they did not seem to have found it (Jays yell a lot and will sometimes tweak a Barred Owl’s tail in a quick flyby).
Sept. 21, 2024: Early autumn at Pakenham
It was a very full day. We walked away from the cars and down a familiar old bush road, finding one salamander (Red-backed), one snake (Garter), and a number of frogs (Green, Leopard, and Wood). Arriving at Gerry’s cabin, we had lunch and scavenged animal bones (Blue Jay, Striped Skunk, Deer, Moose (?), and Raccoon) from the rock where he deposits dead animals he has come across (to feed scavengers like Raccoons, Ravens and Turkey Vultures).
Is it a stickleback?
From there we moved to a floating bog, waded across the moat, and explored its features. This is the bog featured in our banner picture at the top of this page. Niccolo caught a small minnow in a bog pool (which is open to the wider pond underneath the floating mat of peat) and released it.
We finished up by relaxing at a gentle waterfall on Indian Creek, where we could stretch out on an expanse of clean rock.
Sept. 14, 2024: First meeting of the year
Rob and Mike talked about keeping notes on what we see in nature — Rob passed around his homemade pocket notebook from when he was 14 years old, and a copy of a finished Nature Journal, bound in hardcover. We moved on to sketching subjects from Mike’s nature displays, and took advantage of Mike’s “Swap Shop” to trade for fossil specimens.