Monthly Archives: November 2009

Another plea for Peru

Posted on November 14, 2009 | 8 Comments

"P8200084" by teamperks on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons license

A year from today (approximately), on Saturday November 13, 2010, I hope to be stepping off a plane and breathing in the humid, tropical air of Peru. As regular readers know, I have been offered an opportunity to travel with Kolibri Expeditions to southeastern Peru. The trip is an 8 day birding tour of the lowland rainforests adjacent to Manu National Park. My particular departure will start on the Saturday, and wrap up on the following Sunday, just prior to the American Thanksgiving. I’m hoping to entice a few adventurous birders, bloggers or travelers to join me on what should be an exciting trip. We ideally need 5 people, besides myself, to make the trip a go (the trip could run with fewer, but individual costs would be higher).

"Our group and local weaver" by Dermoidhome on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

The tour will be visiting areas associated with the Amarakaeri communal reserve next to the national park. The Peruvians who live in these communities are poor, and the primary source of income currently is through exploitation of the local natural resources: logging, mining, and oil. Kolibri Expeditions is working with these communities to develop ecotourism as a viable sustainable alternative to non-renewable resource extraction. Although the natural resources are more lucrative in the short term, it is hoped that the communities will embrace the long-term benefits of preserving the ecosystems for tourism. Ecotourism would also have the effect of encouraging the natural resource extraction operations that are already taking place to become more eco-conscious, as they will be under greater scrutiny from an environmentally-minded crowd.

"Our bus on Manu Road" by Dermoidhome on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

The Kolibri trips will serve a dual purpose. The first is that a contribution from each traveler’s tour fees will go directly to the community for use in developing facilities and training local workers. Currently the infrastructure in the Amarakaeri communities is minimal – these won’t be 5-star lodges you’ll be staying at on the trip. Previous tours have camped in school shelters, for instance. Obviously it’s difficult to promote ecotourism to affluent countries when the facilities are rustic (by the visitor’s standards) at best. And yet, it’s hard to get enough money to be able to afford to upgrade the infrastructure without the tourists coming in. Kolibri has been working hard to help contribute toward the necessary funds for the projects. If every tour currently scheduled on the webpage for this trip goes out with 5 participants, a total of $5000 will be raised for the communities.

"Birding the Manu Road" by Dermoidhome on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

The second effort that Kolibri has been making with this trip is promotion of the region as a destination for birding. This is a large part of the reason for inviting bloggers on to the tour. The agreement is that the bloggers will post about it preceding, during, and after the trip. Kolibri is in the process of working out satellite internet service that would allow the blogger to “live-blog” the trip from the rainforest, providing a day-by-day report of the latest highlights, and then following it up with a more complete summary after the trip. If tour participants also happen to be bloggers, they would receive a $100 discount on the price of the trip in exchange for at least one post-trip report on their own blog (honestly, though: if you were going on such an amazing trip, how could you possibly not post about it upon your return, $100 incentive or no?).

Riverbank in Manu, Peru; borrowed from Wikimedia Commons

The Amarakaeri Communal Reserve is a 402,335 ha area that was designated as protected land in 2002. It is part of a conservation corridor that includes protected areas from Bolivia and Brazil. ParksWatch, an international non-profit based out of Duke University that helps assess Central and South American parks to advise park management decisions, designates the Reserve as Threatened, meaning that under current trends and practices there is a high risk of failure in the park’s ability to conserve and maintain current biodiversity levels over the medium-term future. Current factors affecting the Reserve’s viability include gold mining, illegal logging, and human pressures such as hunting and forest resource collection (eg., palm fronds) by a population increasing through migration.

"Hoatzins at Cocha Salvador" by Sarah_and_Iain on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

Although the macro-fauna and -flora of the area is fairly well-documented, there has been very little research undertaken in the Reserve to either study the local macro-species in more depth, or to document more of the micro-species. An advantage of a strong ecotourism industry and the facilities necessary to support it is that often research institutions such as universities or museums will use lodges as a base for local research operations, especially when first beginning to explore and research new areas. By establishing a good infrastructure in the area, it may encourage more research on the local species and habitats.

"Cocha Otorongo" by Sarah_and_Iain on Flickr; borrowed through Creative Commons licence

My departure dates are November 13-21, 2010. I would love for you to join me on my trip, but if you want to go and the November dates just don’t work for you, you can still participate on one of the other departures. The cost is $1680 (or $1580 if you’re a blogger) plus airfare from your local international airport to Lima; this covers everything but your personal expenses such as souvenirs. For more information, including an itinerary, and/or to sign up for the trip (you know you want to!) visit the Kolibri Expeditions tour page.

Since the trip is still a year away, this won’t be the last you’ll hear me promote it on the blog – I have 5 people I need to round up! – but I’ll try not to make it too often. :)

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Posted in abiotic, birds

Tagged Amarakaeri Communal Reserve, Kolibri Expeditions, Manu, Peru

On Remembrance Day

Posted on November 11, 2009 | 11 Comments

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 – 1918)

This poem was written in 1915 by a Canadian from Guelph, Ontario, very near my hometown and the city where I attended university. He wrote it during World War I, after witnessing the death of a friend and fellow soldier. He was apparently unsatisfied with it, and tore it out of the notebook where he had written it. The page was rescued by a fellow officer and the poem printed in Punch magazine. In 1918, a professor at the University of Georgia, who spent the war years on leave to help train YWCA workers in New York, wrote a poem of her own in response.

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet – to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
— Moina Michael (1869 – 1944)

It was from this response, and the last stanza in particular, that we now wear red poppies on Remembrance Day.

I learned the John McCrae poem when very young, in grade school. I’m sure we memorized the whole thing; perhaps we recited it as a class as part of an assembly. A portion of the poem has even been printed on the current Canadian $10 bills. Despite that at one time or another most of us have probably learned the whole thing, I suspect the majority of young Canadians only know the first two lines: “In Flanders’ fields the poppies blow/Between the crosses, row on row”. That’s all I’m able to remember; I had to look up the rest. We probably don’t know why we wear poppies, aside from the obvious connection to the first line in McCrae’s poem. I suspect most young Canadians have never heard Moina Michael’s poem; certainly I never did (or if I had, it wasn’t emphasized the way McCrae’s was).

At just 29, I am far too young to be able to remember either of the wars we are commemorating on Remembrance Day. Even my parents are unable to remember the wars themselves, born after the second ended, although as children of the baby boomer generation they surely felt the effects on their daily lives when young. My grandfather would sometimes share stories from his war days when he was stationed in southern Ontario monitoring radio frequencies for enemy activity (I think). The only story I can remember in any detail was of him stashing a young, barely-clothed woman under his bed when his senior officer dropped in unexpectedly during his shift.

For the most part, I understand what took place during the two world wars. I recognize that our freedom today is largely due to the sacrifices made by the soldiers in those wars. I appreciate their sacrifice, I give thanks to the deceased, and honour the fallen soldiers. I purchase a red plastic poppy to show my respect, which I pin on to my purse where it won’t fall off so easily, lasting most of the year till next Remembrance Day.

But I cannot remember. The only war to have taken place within my conscious awareness has been the current one, and unfortunately, while I support the troops who are there, the war itself is not one I believe in. I can read all about the horrors of the two world wars, I can learn the poems and observe the moment of silence; I can understand and I can recognize, but I can’t relate. With each generation, the connection to those wars becomes frailer. To today’s youth, for my own children when I have them, the stories of the wars are little more than that: stories. The child knows what to believe, knows how to act, but they do so only because they are told to do so. Is it possible to engage a child to connect with a past they’ve never known?

Last year on Remembrance Day I heard a radio show by Canadian Stuart McLean, author of the Vinyl Cafe short stories (the Canadian equivalent of the US Prairie Home Companion or Lake Woebegon stories). I must have been driving somewhere for something, as I rarely have the radio on at home, and the show happened to be on. It was a Remembrance Day special, and there was one story that he told that really stuck with me, of a man who travels with his family overseas to France on a tour of a number of the sites, including Dieppe and Vimy. He brings his bagpipes with him, and offers a moving tribute to the fallen soldiers at Vimy Ridge. But the story notes that it is only after having visited the historical sites themselves that the man feels any connection to the events of the past.

The CBC shares its shows online as podcasts. You can download the Stuart McLean Remembrance Day podcast here. The whole show is worth listening to, but the story above starts at about 24:00 minutes, and is about 22 minutes long.

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Posted in abiotic

Tagged Remembrance Day

A stray at Tay

Posted on November 10, 2009 | 21 Comments

As I was working in my study this morning, Dan came in from his walk with Raven and called up to me that we had a visitor. I went downstairs to discover a little orange and white cat prowling around the kitchen. Raven had found him in one of the fields at the back end of our property. Dan picked him up and brought him back.

The poor thing is nothing but skin and bones and a ravenous appetite. He attacks the kibble like he’s afraid it’s going to jump out of the bowl and get away. It’s hard to guess how long he’s been out there fending for himself, but he wasn’t doing so well at it. Perhaps he’d been surviving on grasshoppers and dragonflies, which are all mostly gone now. I might have given him another week out there on his own, at most. If starvation didn’t do him in, then coyotes or foxes or hawks or fishers surely would have.

He’s extremely friendly, currently sitting on my lap as I type this. He doesn’t seem afraid of Raven, rubbing up against her and walking underneath her belly like they grew up together. It’s hard to say how long he’s been out on his own, or whether he’d had an owner at some point, although generally cats that have been wild for a long time become very scared of humans, and it takes a long while to earn their trust back.

We took him to the vet this afternoon, primarily because he had a wheeze and a runny nose and we were concerned about letting him be around our other animals, but also just to get him checked out. He weighed in at just 3.8 lb (1.7 kg), and has to be the tiniest cat I’ve ever met. He makes our other cats look huge. From his size, I figured he was a three to four month old kitten. We asked the vet how old he thought the little guy was, and he guessed about a year, based on the fact that he has all of his adult teeth, and some of the back molars are starting to get some tartar buildup.

The poor little guy, such hardship in only his first year of life! But things are looking up for him now. We’re not sure if we’ll keep him or find a good home for him, but either way his days spent out in the cold scrounging for food are over.

I can’t believe how much he reminds me of Jackie, another young cat who came to my family by similar means when I was in my early teens.

He seems really happy to be here.

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Posted in mammals

Tagged stray cat

A trip to the north woods

Posted on November 9, 2009 | 11 Comments

Pretty much since our forced departure from our waterfront home this summer, Dan and I have been anticipating our eventual return to lakeside living. We loved the area we were in, but expect the price of real estate there would put most waterfront properties out of our financial reach (at least until the moth guide hits the bestseller lists and I strike it rich). We’ve been eyeballing a part of the Frontenac Arch that’s a little further north, a little more remote, and consequently a little more affordable. It will be years before we have the savings to make the move there, most likely, but that doesn’t stop us from dreaming about it.

In the meantime, Dan has been considering placing a MAPS station in that part of the Shield Country, since it represents a substantially different habitat type than what’s found further south, near Frontenac Provincial Park, the location of his other stations. This afternoon was gloriously mild, and we decided to head north for a few hours to check out some of the area.

Frontenac County is divided into three townships: South, Central and North Frontenac. Our previous house was in South; the area we’re now primarily considering (unless property values conveniently drop) is North. The township of North Frontenac sprawls across 1,136 square kilometers (about 438.6 square miles), of which over 70% is crown land (that is, belonging to the Canadian government). Much of the private land is used seasonally. The 2006 population census reported just 1,904 permanent residents for the whole township – that’s a population density of about 1.7 people per square kilometer (about 4.4 people per square mile; compare to the value of 19.4 people per sq km in South Frontenac), one of the lowest densities in eastern Ontario.

We didn’t see too many cars on the roads, even the main one whose name included the word “Highway”. We followed a cottage lane off the main “highway”, one that I knew passed through crown land that we could stop and hike around in. We stepped out of the car and were met with a complete lack of human sound, that incredibly blissful silence that I have missed hearing since leaving the lake. There was nothing except the wind rustling the trees and the crunch of our feet on the gravel. I’m sure that in the summer, when cottagers are visiting their recreational properties, the woods aren’t quite so quiet, but there was no hint of it today. It’s one of my favourite sounds on earth – the absence of people.

The road we followed in ran along the south shore of Big Gull Lake, one of the biggest lakes in North Frontenac, at 21 km (13 miles) long and with a surface area of 2,540 sq km (980 sq mi). The lake has no significant inflow streams, and the majority of its water comes from springs and snowmelt. We passed a dam at the nearby town that helps to maintain the water levels. In the fall, the dam is opened to allow the water to drop, providing room to accommodate spring runoff. This usually occurs in mid-October, after the Thanksgiving weekend (usually the weekend in Ontario when most cottages are closed up). Apparently the minimum water level is usually reached in December, so it still has a little bit more to go. This afternoon, the weeds and pond lilies at the edges of the little bay were all exposed.

The portion of the road we walked along bordered a small bay. There were no cottages along this stretch, although there were a couple of powerlines that stretched across the water, and a dock on the far side, its owner not visible from where we stood. Big Gull, being a large lake, is home to many cottages; the most recent number I could locate had the estimate in the 350s. That said, the overall population of the lake is low, with many stretches containing no cottages at all. The lake has a shoreline of about 88 km (55 mi), and a large portion of that is North Frontenac Park Lands, a stewardship program and backcountry camping experience that helps to protect land around a number of the township’s lakes.

Whereas South Frontenac is predominantly deciduous forest, most of North Frontenac has a very strong coniferous component, especially along lake or marsh edges or rocky ridges. Black Spruce is a reasonably common species in this area, a tree that in South Frontenac I’d only see associated with bogs and fens. The landscape there is noticeably rockier, too, especially compared to our current location. Both features are characteristic of the Shield, and North Frontenac represents the southern edge of it. The land isn’t much use for farming, and the vast majority is forested.

Despite the warm temperatures today, we didn’t see much in the way of wildlife. A flock of geese flushed from the water of the bay, a Blue Jay flitting among the hemlocks, a White-breasted Nuthatch foraging on a dead snag. I didn’t see any insects, although I admit I wasn’t looking too closely. It would be nice to visit in the summer when the woods are in full vibrant song. As we were leaving the road, we passed a noticeboard where one rather hopeful resident had posted a request for information on any possible sightings of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in the area. I wish I had got a photo. I bet he got a lot of well-intentioned reports of Pileateds.

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Posted in birds, hiking

Tagged Big Gull Lake, Canadian Shield, North Frontenac

Sunday Snapshots: Being Harried

Posted on November 8, 2009 | 7 Comments

NB: I didn’t get a chance to post these on actual Sunday, as our internet service provider seemed to be suffering an outage. So they’re going up Monday, but I’ve backdated them to Sunday.

Here are another couple of species that have been frequenting our feeders, but that I didn’t have room to mention on Friday. Clearly, the female Hairy Woodpecker (above) rules the roost.