- by John Dickson, Owen Sound Field Naturalists
Twenty years ago this Spring, I registered for my first Huron Fringe Birding Festival (HFBF). Having just turned 50, I had decided to take up birding as an active pastime, and this wonderful festival helped me to rediscover the learning and pleasure I had somehow left behind at the age of ten.
This year, due to COVID-19, and generous sponsorship, the 23rd HFBF has announced these seven exciting and free webinars scheduled for 7:00 pm on each evening of the Festival Virtual-Lite, which will run during their normal Festival dates of May 28 - 31 and June 3 - 6, 2021.
May 28 - Birding in Algonquin Park with Michael Runtz
May 29 - Black Bears of the Bruce Peninsula with Dr. Martyn Obbard
May 30 - Fifteen Years of Ontario Piping Plovers with Andrea Gress
May 31 - A Holistic Approach to Learning Bird Songs and Calls with Ian Shanahan
June 4 - Birders Gone Wild: 24 hour Bruce Peninsula Birdathon with Ethan Meleg
June 5 - Bird Banding at the Bruce Peninsula Bird Observatory with Stephane Menu
June 6 - The Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas -3: Focus on the Females with Mark Peck
To learn more and to register, please visit - http://hfbf.ca/
With the arrival of Spring there has been a flurry of shared observations: trees beginning to leaf out; Scarlet Cup and other colourful fungi popping up, sometimes overnight; wildflowers already blooming; choruses of toads, frogs, and insects; migrating birds stopping here for a brief visit, or perhaps like many of us, they consider this area an ideal one in which to raise their families.
Sightings of note here include Eastern Meadowlarks, American Kestrels, Sandhill Cranes, a few Trumpeter Swans and several hundred Tundra Swans that staged this year at Lake Eugenia, and Eastern Bluebirds. I had my first sighting this year of an Eastern Phoebe, just this week, as well as the newly brightening yellow feathers of a male American Goldfinch.
Congratulations to Bob Bowles, formerly of the Markdale area, on the recent naming of the Robert Bowles Nature Centre near Orillia. Bowles has created a wonderful legacy of nature learning through Naturalist Clubs, his Ontario Master Naturalist Certificate Programme through Lakehead University of Thunder Bay and its satellite campus at Orillia, plus his popular television shows.
The Owen Sound Field Naturalists, (OSFN) have three presentations lined up for this month, all offered free to the public via a ZOOM link sent to members or available on request at www.osfn.ca:
Foraging for Edible and Medicinal Plants, with Alexis Burnett at 7PM Thursday April 8, via ZOOM. This presentation will focus on learning how to ethically harvest plants for food and medicine from the wild. Burnett will talk about both native and non-native plants and explore what it means to work with these groups of plants in a way that helps to sustain and regenerate local populations.
Sat April 17: 2pm Celebrate EARTH WEEK with Beth Gilhespy. Reflections on Wildlife and Wild Space Conservation Keynote Speaker Beth Gilhespy shares her experiences and insights. Sponsored by Caframo.
And as a special bonus: Peter Middleton with: Peacocks, Tigers and Temples - Birding in the Heart of India, at 7PM Thursday April 29, via ZOOM
To close, Nature quotes from Sailing Alone Around the World, by Captain Joshua Slocum, who sailed from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia on July 2, 1895 aboard the sloop Spray. On July 5, having cautiously skirted the deadly shifting sands of Sable Island, Slocum “ ...was in a world of fog, shut off from the universe.” and later that day Spray “dropped into a smooth lane, heading southeast, and making about eight knots, her very best work...
“The fog lifting before night, I was afforded a look at the sun just as it was touching the sea. I watched it go down and out of sight. Then I turned my face eastward, and there, apparently at the very end of the bowsprit, was the smiling full moon rising out of the sea.”
In the first week of April 1896 “With the vessel in good trim, though deeply laden, I was well prepared for another bout with the Southern, misnamed Pacific Ocean...
“On April 14, the Spray making good headway on a northwest course, Hurrah for the Spray! I shouted to seals, sea-gulls, and penguins; for there were no other living creatures about, and she had weathered all the dangers of Cape Horn.”
