nature – Page 2

The “artificial” natural forest

This morning I drove out Ottawa way to join my sister and mother who were doing a horseback ride in support of breast cancer research. The ride was organized by a local group that helps maintain the trail system in one of the largest tracts of forest near Ottawa, and in fact southern Ontario south of the Shield. At 26,000+ acres, the Larose Forest stretches for miles. Within its boundaries are about 160 km (100 miles) of trails and roads. The pink ribbon ride did a loop through a portion of these trails. I came along partially for logistical support and camera-handling, and partially to visit the forest. While they were off on their ride, I hiked through a small portion of the trails. (You’ll be able to see more photos from the ride itself at my mom’s blog.)

The forest has an interesting history. Most of it originally started out as a plantation forest, and its history as such can still be seen among the tall, straight pines that grow more or less in lines. Enough time has passed that it’s just starting to lose its plantation feel – a few pines have come down out of the rows, and the understory has been growing up, disguising the straight lines.

The plantation was the result of the dedication of Ferdinand Larose, who was hired by the Ontario Department of Agriculture to address the barren sand plains that had been left over as a result of aggressive logging in the latter half of the 1800s. Virtually all of the virgin trees were eventually removed, leaving nothing but an empty desert. Agricultural practices took over, but the denuded landscape was suffering from heavy erosion. The Larose Forest began as an initiative to try to curb some of this erosion. It is now identified as the second-largest plantation forest in southern Ontario (I’m not sure what is the first, and the websites didn’t say), and the largest tract of forest in eastern Ontario.

The land was bought by the county from private landowners and manually replanted. Red Pine was the first species to be planted, followed by White Pine and White Spruce, and later early-successional deciduous species such as birch or poplar. At the peak of replanting efforts, in the 1940s and 1950s, some one million trees a year were being planted. The last significant planting took place in the 1970s; annual seedling numbers had been reduced to about 200,000 by that point.

From the outset the forest was intended to be a harvested resource, but also a multi-use public land. Logging still takes place at low, sustainable rates, and until recently most removal of felled timber was done by horses. Revenue obtained through the logging is returned to the forest for maintenance of infrastructure such as roads and signage. The trail system is used by hikers and mountain bikers, but also horseback riders and dog sledders. ATV riders have their own designated trails. Unfortunately, hunting also takes place in the forest – I say “unfortunately” not out of concern for the animals, though it is unfortunate for those that get taken, but rather for non-hunters who are at risk during these periods (even though hunters are supposed to avoid the hiking trails). I try to avoid anywhere there might be hunters during the open season.

Although the oldest parts are only 80 years old, the forest already contains a remarkable diversity of creatures. Much of their species lists come from a BioBlitz undertaken in 2007. Other lists are maintained and added to annually. A total of 141 species of birds have been tallied from the forest, including such rare or threatened species as Evening Grosbeak, Northern Goshawk, and Whip-poor-will. Other groups, including herpetiles, mammals, butterflies, odonates, vascular plants, and others, have also been documented. They’ve even got a moth list, which stands at 211 species, probably representing only a handful of nights of effort, given that any mothing parties would by necessity need to be brought in and run off of a generator.

There appears to be some development pressure on the forest, as there always seems to be with large tracts of “unused” land. Everybody seems to have an idea on the best way to utilize the space, and a lot of these people’s plans don’t include nature appreciation as part of it. So far, however, development remains as pressure and not as present activities – and hopefully it stays that way.

A year in photos

The final installment of my blogoversary series is a selection of my favourite photos from the past year, two or three per month. I had planned on choosing just one per month, but just couldn’t make up my mind. In fact, in the summer months, when we had just moved to the new house and the lake and forest were green and verdant I had several dozen I could have picked out, but I settled for three a month. Some of these have been used in posts over the year, others are new, photos I liked but that didn’t fit into a post.

Ten weeks in review

At the end of the winter I decided to document the changing of the seasons through spring into summer, following the melting of the snow, leaf-out of the trees and the blooming of the wildflowers. I chose a couple sites to do this at. One was the creek that flows under the road a short distance from my parents’. I cross this creek every time I visit my parents, and for a while I was going there every week or two, so it was a great opportunity, and very picturesque.

This week when I stopped, I could barely see the creek for the trees that had leafed out so completely since my last visit. I felt I’d reached the endpoint, and am posting the series now that it’s finished. Unfortunately, I missed last week, and it seems to have been one of the largest steps. The last photo is rather startlingly green as a result!

March 19

March 26

April 3

April 8

April 21

April 28

May 6

May 11

May 27

Signs of spring

Yesterday was the first day of spring. The sun was out today and the birds were singing. My mom heard the first Red-winged Blackbird calling from the swamp. I heard a flock of Sandhill Cranes flying by, out of sight. I’m also fairly certain I heard a Brown Creeper, though I wasn’t able to find him, either.

I walked about my parents’ property looking for other signs that it was indeed upon us. For instance, the ice on the little pond, above, was beginning to melt. I checked it for frogs, eggs, or little aquatic invertebrates, but saw no signs of life yet.

The icicles on the eaves of the house are also melting.

The buds are coming out on the maple trees in the front yard.

I spotted some green grass! Admittedly, this was in a footprint along one of the regularly-traveled paths through the snow, but still. Grass.

But the most conclusive sign that spring is finally here:

The driveway has turned to mud.

Solitude in the heart of the city

This morning I got up early, leaving Blackburnian still asleep in bed, and slipped out the door with my camera and sketchbook to go to one of my favourite spots in the city. Unlike the Rouge, this area is just a short drive, perhaps ten minutes along in-town roads, located in a section of the Don River valley. I discovered it a couple of years ago, when I was hired by the city to do a report for them on one of their properties. This was the area I chose to use as a control site during my study. I chose it initially because it was un-groomed, natural and wild, and over the course of the next several months I really fell in love with the location.

It’s accessed from a small park and playground, through a short, narrow mini-ravine that runs between two rows of houses. The trails are used almost exclusively by the local residents for jogging and dog-walking. I encountered very few people on the trails during my surveys. This morning, in the hour and a half I’m there, I meet no one. This is one of the things I love about the place; it’s quiet, peaceful, relatively undisturbed, and you can almost forget you’re in the heart of the city.

Halfway down the entry trail I notice these snowballs. The sides of the mini-ravine here are steep, and evidently something, perhaps a fallen twig or bit of bark, began sliding down the side of the slope, gathering snow about it as it went. It’s not the typical snowball you see when snow rolls down a hill, and I have to assume that the object slid rather than rolled, and spun as it did so to create these neat doughnut shapes.

The entry trail meets up with the main network, and I turn to follow it to the north. It runs along the base of another set of homes. I think how magnificent the view from their back porches must be, and then I think they must command a real premium on house price for such a location. Indeed, most ravine-backing homes are way out of my price range in the city, usually starting at $500-600k for the small run-down places, and going up to well over a million for the really nice ones. Toronto is a wealthy city. It has to be, in order for so many people to live here, with property prices being what they are. In the neighbourhood where we rent you’re lucky to find anything in good shape for less than $300k. I couldn’t afford to buy here on my own. Even Blackburnian and I together would be hard-pressed to find something we could afford jointly. Who are these people, making all this money?

I turn west down a small side trail, and am afforded my only real view of the city as a backdrop to the park, with a few tall apartment buildings towering over the treetops, at the far side of the Don. A short distance down the trail and the city melts back into the trees, hidden from view, and forgotten, for the moment.

The side trail comes out at a bluff, overlooking a bend in the Don where a gravel bed has been exposed. During my surveys I always scanned the gravel for Killdeer or Spotted Sandpipers, but never saw either, despite it looking like a good spot for them. I did once see a Black-crowned Night Heron fishing from one of the low-hanging trees, but the bend, for all its nice scenery, was always disappointingly empty.

I pause, and look out over the river. The sun is peeking above the trees and casting a warm glow on the bare canopy of the forest across the way. It hasn’t yet reached the river, or even where I’m standing. I briefly consider stopping here, but decide I’d like to sit someplace in the sun, and move on.

The trail goes down a small incline (decline?) and where it levels out it passes through a small grove of spruce. Their lower branches have been pruned from them years ago to make room for trail users to pass through, which gives them an unusually domesticated look, for someplace far from the nearest backyard. In this natural tunnel I recall frequently encountering chickadees, kinglets, and Yellow-rumped Warblers during my spring surveys. There is no one here at the moment.

In other areas, though, the trees are full of song. The cardinals have woken with the dawn, and perch in the upper branches of the poplars, illuminated by the warm orange rays of the rising sun. There are at least a dozen of them, I estimate, throughout the area. They all belt out their declaration of possession of their claimed bits of woodland. “Cheer! Cheer! Whit-whit-whit-whit! … Birdy, birdy, birdy-birdy-birdy-birdy!”

The other birds join in. I hear a pair of White-breasted Nuthatches arguing back and forth at each other over the ownership of a particular patch of cedars, and briefly glimpse a short chase as they dash through a small clearing. A pair of male Downy Woodpeckers has at it over the attentions of a female, who seems rather blasé about the whole episode. House Finches fly over the site in groups of two or three, and I hear the odd male singing. Chickadees move through a patch of hawthorn, calling to one another, and a trio of crows perches atop the maples and caw loudly. The birds seem to be as happy about the sunny morning and approach of spring as I am.

I come out from the spruce grove along side the river, at a lower area along its banks. The river takes another turn here and is lost from sight, winding its way through the city toward Lake Ontario. It is beautiful here, natural and undisturbed, but along its length it will run through less pristine areas, ultimately coming out through an industrial zone at its mouth before exiting into the lake. A freeway runs north and south through a large part of the valley system, but is far enough away here that I don’t notice it. A rail bed also runs along the valley, and a train thunders by while I’m there. It’s just beyond the ridge, and I can’t see it, but I can certainly hear it. I’ve seen salmon in these parts of the river before, and it seems at odds with the surrounding city, particularly considering the state of the mouth of the river. Nature forges onward.

I decide to take a trail branch that I’ve never been down. On this section of the trail I had always been in the middle of my survey and was unable to follow the side branches. They were often muddy, too, compared to the main trail. However, a few people have been down here recently, and the snow is packed enough to walk along comfortably. I come through another small grove of spruce and the trail widens into a small open area. The sun is streaming in here, and the spruce protect me from the wind. The clearing feels cozy, and I decide this is the spot. I find a log to settle on, and pull out my sketchbook.

I am not ordinarily a field-sketcher. Usually I’m too busy watching birds or taking photos to settle down somewhere and sketch. I admire those who do, though. Debby at Drawing The Motmot is a fabulous field-sketcher. I absolutely love her rainforest studies, which are done in pen while sitting in the field, over as many as three days.

While I have the skill to execute those sorts of drawings, I am sure, I also know I don’t have the practice, or the patience, right now. There’s too much to do, to look at, and I haven’t disciplined myself to sit still long enough to study the landscape and develop the eye necessary to render such detail so accurately. I content myself to sitting for perhaps 20 minutes, soaking up the warm sun, and casually sketching the trail in front of me. Perhaps I’ll make an effort this year to pause more often and sketch a little more.