Category: Nature Knowledge

The year of high water at Presqu’ile

Today’s post comes from Natural Heritage Education Leader David Bree at Presqu’ile Provincial Park. 

It was a wet year for provincial parks in 2017.

If you visited Lake Ontario this spring, you know water levels reached record highs. By early May, the lake was 10 cm higher than the highest it had ever been since records started in 1918. This is also a full metre higher than average.

The damage this caused has been well-documented. At Presqu’ile Provincial Park, we had flooded facilities, lost land to erosion, and had to close for four weeks in June to prevent more damage to our soggy landscape.

The flood was certainly an inconvenience to us, but what effect did it have on the nature and wildlife of the park?

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BioBlitz at Sleeping Giant

Team members from our Northwest Zone, including Barb Rees, Evan McCaul, Lesley Ng, Renée Lalonde, Laura Myers and Kyra Santin, combined to share the results of Sleeping Giant’s summer BioBlitz! 

Sleeping Giant Provincial Park isn’t just home to beautiful cliffs and hiking trails. The park also plays host to a diverse group of plants and animals.

Sleeping Giant celebrated this biodiversity with its very own two-day intensive BioBlitz from June 17 to 18.
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7 amazing citizen science apps

You’re out in the woods and a bird flies by. Not sure what is it? There’s an app for that.

Today’s smartphones make ideal field guides. Photograph a butterfly sipping nectar. Video a slow-moving turtle. Record a birdsong. Then look it up, find a match, and enter your geotagged observations in a virtual field book.

These virtual field guides often support citizen science. You just share what you see. Scientists, researchers and conservationists use the crowdsourced data to look at climate change, track migration and monitor species at risk and sensitive ecosystems.

Here are a few popular apps:

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The secret flight of birds at night

Today’s post comes from Park Biologist Erica Barkley.

As a kid, I always pictured bird migration as Canada Geese flying south in a “V” during the day.

But that changed one calm, clear September evening. A park naturalist pointed out dozens of tiny “peep” noises over our heads. “Those are songbirds,” he said.

“No way!” I said. “Thousands of birds are migrating at night?!”

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Billions travel Ontario’s migration superhighways

Today’s post comes from Brad Steinberg, our Natural Heritage Education and Learning Coordinator. An avid birder, Brad identifies several “migration superhighways” and the role provincial parks play in protecting Canada’s Important Bird Areas. 

Being stuck in traffic sucks. Especially with young kids.

This sentiment recently ran through my head while mired in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Don Valley Parkway in Toronto, Ontario. (My conclusion was reinforced when my son loudly announced his urgent need for a bio-break.)

But as frustrating as highways can be; they are vitally important to us, providing a reliable route from one place to another.

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Hunting dragons, discovering damsels

During the summer of 2015, several research projects were conducted at Murphys Point Provincial Park, but one in particular attracted the attention of staff and public alike.

With long-handled nets in hand, park staff — led by expert volunteer Bev Edwards — could be seen thigh-deep in the vernal ponds, streams and lakes located within the park.

What were they doing?

Surveying for odonates (that’s dragonflies and damselflies to most of us).

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Saved by the fence

Happy World Turtle Day! Today’s post comes from Shannon McGaffey, our Assistant Park Biologist at Algonquin Provincial Park.

Earlier this month, a crew of seven park staff – rangers, maintenance workers, administration staff and biologists – spent the entire day installing turtle fencing along the side of the busy Highway 60 in Algonquin.

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What makes spring so green?

Spring invigorates us, renews us, and makes us optimistic. Leaves sprout, flowers bloom, and birds sing. Winter is gone (mostly), and we can look forward to warmer sunny days.

We get excited about spring because of colour too. Green leaves mean summer is just around the corner.

If we look a bit closer though, we’ll see that there’s more than just green in the forest…

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Ecopassages help wildlife cross roads safely

With Earth Day fast approaching, now’s the perfect time to talk about how our ecopassages are helping protect Ontario’s wildlife!

You may have heard of wilderness corridors built for wildlife to cross over or under the TransCanada Highway. Ecopassages are mini versions of these, like a critter-sized subway tunnel passing under the road.

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Don’t feed the foxes

Today, we want to share an important message about how we can keep our foxes (and other wild creatures) safe.

Foxes are extremely intelligent, able to multitask and quickly clue in to patterns. They remember where they found food, and will return to that spot to search for more.

But sometimes, foxes are too clever for their own good.

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