Virtual Tour: Foster Parkland and Walking Trails

Welcome to my first virtual tour of TKC property! Over the course of the spring and summer, I hope to be able to introduce you to all of the beautiful land in the St. Joseph Channel area that we protect. To start us off, here is the property known as the Foster Parkland and Walking Trails, which I visited on May 6th.

This is a 40-acre property that was donated to TKC by Janet and Maurice Foster in 2009 in order to protect in perpetuity. The property came with a short series of hiking trails, which we started to expand upon in 2018 after we acquired a 93-acre property adjacent to it, the Boyer Preserve. We still refer to the entire hiking trail system as the Foster Parkland and Walking Trails in memory of the Fosters, but this virtual tour will only focus on the property known as the Foster Parkland and Walking Trails. I hope that makes sense!

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It was the perfect day to go exploring. The sun was shining, it was warm (but not too warm), and there wasn't much wind. I started off at the north end of the property, overlooking the Portlock Flats. ​This is one of my favourite views from TKC property. It's too bad that the photos never do the view justice. If you're ever on the trails, this is a great place to sit down, have a picnic, and just enjoy to scenery. 

Before I forget, if this interests you, in the fall, this is a great spot to come to see the fall colours!

There was a variety of birds to see up here. There were many Yellow-rumped Warblers and I managed to get a half-decent photo of one of them. A Merlin came flying in and landed in a tree, but unfortunately, only it's tail was visible. Some Double-crested Cormorants and a Belted Kingfisher also flew by. 

Red Maples are starting to flower right now! You can recognize these trees by the red "popcorn" flower buds that are visible right now. Here are a few photos that I took of them from atop the bluff.

From here, I headed south along the hiking trails, looking for whatever interesting things I could find. However, there did not seem to be much out of the ordinary. That wasn't totally unexpected though, given that it's still only early May! Much of the forest floors are covered in leaves from last year and not many plants have started to grow yet.

The trails on this property have a series of interpretive signs that teach you how to identify the local flora. Some of the signs are for herbaceous plants that aren't out yet, so I couldn't take photos of them. Some are beside trees though, and those are always there! Here's an example of the sign for balsam fir and a look at the tree itself!

​I soon ran into a Red Squirrel who was very unhappy with my presence. This was definitely not a squirrel that's used to seeing people! It was screaming at me so loud. I snapped this photo and was about to start taking a video, but then it ran off. 

The little creek that runs through the property was running fairly well, which was not a surprise considering all the rain we had last week. It'll be interesting to see if it will run all summer or if it will dry up!

I went to check out the small field that's on the east side of the property, which used to be where the parking lot and trail head for the trails was. There was not much going on here, so I turned around, but then I heard the familiar call of a Red Crossbill. I managed to locate it up at the top of a tree. Red Crossbills are a species of finch that have crossed bills designed for opening spruce cones. They generally aren't found in this area, they're usually in the boreal forest, but we had a very abundant cone crop this past year, so many have moved in to take advantage of that. A few minutes after this, I actually saw four more Red Crossbills fly by and I noticed one was a juvenile bird, so maybe they bred nearby!

Up at the south lookout, there were even more birds! This Pine Warbler was singing away from, as you might have guessed before even seeing the photo, a pine tree. I honestly got so distracted by all the warblers flying around here that I forgot to take more scenic photos from this vantage point.

Here are the two photos I did take of the views from here though, both zoomed in. One of the lake and one of Highway 17 west of Desbarats.

The southern portion of the Foster Parkland and Walking Trails property is a hardwood stand, making it easy to walk around in, but mostly all I found were a lot of oak and maple leaves. I did find a bunch of flowers poking up from the leaves though. I didn't recognize them, but they were all over once I started looking hard, so obviously they are something common. I was able to narrow them down to a species in the Hepatica genus, but then I had to refer to a local botany expert for the species. They are Round-lobed Hepaticas. Pretty looking flowers!

Here is some sort of clubmoss and fungi that I also found, but I haven't got to identifying them yet. Fungi is really hard to identify, I might never be able to figure it out!

At this point, I joined back up onto the trails that are on the Boyer Preserve and worked my way back to The Kensington Conservation Centre. If you're looking for a general update on the trails, they are in great shape. As I mentioned earlier, there are some wet spots in the usual low areas, but they were avoidable. There are also a few trees down over the trails, but they are all very easy to step over. Once this pandemic is over and we're back in the office full time, we'll work on getting them cleaned up. The trails are always open to the public, the parking lot is at 69 Boyer Drive in Desbarats!

After completing some other work I had to do around the conservation centre, I hopped in my car and drove down Mink Point Road to access the south end of the Foster Parkland and Walking Trails property. The only thing that I could really find that wasn't more of the same was this little moth. These brown moths are usually hard to positively identify unless you really know a lot about moths. I uploaded it to iNaturalist and was told that it was a member of the Caenurgina genus of moths. 

Thanks for reading my first attempt at a virtual tour. I'm sure with each week that progresses, there will be more and more flora and fauna to find, making for enough content that I probably won't be able to include everything that I find. Stay tuned!