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Early July Flora and Fauna

7/10/2020

In the past couple of months, I've been able to complete virtual tours for all of the TKC preserves that are accessible by vehicle, including multiple tours for a couple of them. This week, I wasn't able to get out in a boat to explore our island-based preserves, so no virtual tour this week. Instead, I will be highlighting a collection of flora and fauna (fancy terminology for plants and wildlife) that I saw this week on a few of TKC's preserve that I did visit.

I'll start with the big one. Andrews' Bog Orchid is a hybrid orchid that's been present on our Black Hole Preserve since at least 2017, when Rob Routledge, professor at Sault College, found it. I finally had the opportunity to see it myself this week. There are only a handful of other known records of this hybrid in North America, making this a pretty rare and significant plant to have on a TKC preserve. We are sure excited about it! There were actually four plants of this growing at this location, three of them were fairly small and one was fairly large in comparison. I hope that this hybrid will continue to thrive here for years to come!

Andrews' Bog Orchid hybrid between Lesser Purple Fringed Orchid and Ragged Fringed Orchid, both of which are present on the Black Hole Preserve. We actually looked for the Ragged Fringed Orchid during the same visit, but could not find it. We're guessing we just missed it though! My virtual tour last week showed the Lesser Purple Fringed Orchid, although it wasn't in full bloom yet.

Here are two more species of orchid that I saw during this week's visit to the Black Hole Preserve. The photos aren't great, as it was hot (33 degrees Celsius!) and the bright sunlight made it hard to see how my photos we turning out. The first one is Rose Pogonia and the second one is Club-spur Orchid.

Back on the Boyer Preserve, I was excited to get this photograph of a Tree Swallow returning to the nesting box to feed her young. This box was installed near the beginning of the hiking trails in memory of Sonya Barnett, a local nature lover who passed away this spring. so it has been great that's it's been used this spring. The young swallows in the nest were almost ready to fledge, and sure enough, two days later, the box was empty and all the birds were gone.

The meadow on the Boyer Preserve, just behind The Kensington Conservation Centre, is full of blooming flowers right now, attracting a wide variety of insects. I recorded 11 species of butterflies this week here: Northern Crescent (photo to the left), European Skipper, Long Dash, Dun Skipper, Least Skipper, Eastern Comma, Silvery Blue, Common Ringlet, White Admiral, Monarch, and Cabbage White. There were also a number of drangonflies, moths, bumble bees and other insects, but they are not all easy to photograph! Below are some more photos, each one with a caption saying what they are.

If you're someone who enjoys statistics as much as I do, there has now been 706 species of flora and fauna that have been recorded on the approximately 900 acres of land that The Kensington Conservancy protects. If you're interested in exploring some sightings, check out this project on iNaturalist, The Kensington Conservancy's Nature Preserves. I also keep track of how many species have been recorded within The Kensington Conservancy's Focal Area, which is 933. Lastly, the 2020 TKC Nature Challenge has seen 424 species recorded with a photo so far this year within our focal area!

I highly recommend signing up for iNaturalist and submitting your own sightings. The data that is collected from the community this way is invaluable and really helps us know what is being seen in our area! If you ever have any questions about iNaturalist, feel free to get in touch with me, I'm happy to help.

I hope you enjoyed the photos!

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Virtual Tour: Black Hole Preserve - Part 2

7/2/2020

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If you missed Part 1 of the Black Hole Preserve virtual tour, you can read it here.

This week's tour picks up at the beaver dam that I was unable to cross on my last visit. This time, I came prepare with chest waders! The water was a bit lower than last time, making the crossing less difficult. I'm guessing some water has evaporated during this heat waved we've been getting.

It was neat to see this beaver track in the mud as I crossed. Not often do you get to see their tracks because they're always in the water.

The beaver dam has a little rock island in the middle of it, making for a good spot to stop and look around. The photo above shows one of the many American white waterlilies that were in full bloom. To the left here is a photo of a Lesser Fringed Purple Orchid. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite in bloom yet, but it's almost there! Below is watershield, a wetland plant similar to lily pads. This plant has one of my favourite flowers.

After finishing up here, I finished crossing the beaver dam and quickly worked my way up to the high point that looks back over the wetland. I love the views from up here, it gives you such a different perspective of the wetland. I'll add a bunch more scenic photos like this at the end for you to enjoy.

To the south here is a little pond in the middle of the forest. While I wasn't really surprised, given how high the water levels are this year, this is definitely the most water I've seen in this pond. There were frogs everywhere, it seemed that every step I took spooked a couple more frogs and they dove into the water. I finally managed to see one before it took off and snapped a photo. A Green Frog!

Another neat species I found here was this damselfly. I haven't been able to narrow it down to species yet. Damselflies are very difficult to identify and really good photos are often needed, so mine might not be good enough. I have been able to narrow it down to a species in the Lestes genus though, the pond spreadwings. This makes sense, it's wings are spread out like a dragonfly (typically, damselflies have their wings folded in when resting like this) and it was found near a pond! The wings might not show up well in my photo here, but if you look hard, they're there.

I went back down the the water's edge to take a break in the shade. It was already starting to get pretty warm out and I knew it was soon going to get unbearable to be in the direct sunlight.

I sat still and wait to see if anything interesting would sing or show itself. There was what seemed like a variety of minnows swimming around here. Some were very small and some were pretty big! It's obviously not the easiest to photograph small fish in the water like this though, so I'm left with no idea what they were.

As I was sitting along the water, I could hear two Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers on the other side of the channel. It sounded like they were chasing each other around, which woodpeckers often do. Then, one flew up to the top of a dead tree and starting drumming away. This drumming is the woodpecker signaling that this is it's territory. They'll often find pieces of metal to do this, as drumming on the metal produces a louder noise, making it more effective. If you hear a woodpecker banging on metal, that's what their doing, they're not trying to get insects through the metal!

While I heard many species of birds, the photo opportunities were few and far in between. An American Robin posed nicely for me, a Great Crested Flycatcher landed ever so briefly at the top of a pine tree, and a Yellow-rumped Warbler was singing away.

Since I had waders with me, I was able to explore the wetland on this side a little bit more. In Part 1 of the Black Hole Preserve tour, I showed off some Round-leaved Sundew. I found lots of that again this time, but I also found some Spoonleaf Sundew. Both species are shown below, Spoonleaf Sundew first, then Round-leaved Sundew. Can you spot the difference in their shapes?

This dragonfly here is a Horned Clubtail. I was excited because this was my first time seeing this species! While it's not on the species at risk list, NatureServe does rank Horned Clubtail is N3 nationally in Canada, which means it's "at moderate risk of extirpation in the jurisdiction due to a fairly restricted range, relatively few populations or occurrences, recent and widespread declines, threats, or other factors."

The Black Hole Preserve provides great habitat for them, so hopefully they will be found here for a long time!

I saw quite a few butterflies during my visit as well. Eyed Browns were abundant in the wetland, they thrive in habitats with a lot of sedges. In the forest, I saw White Admirals and Northern Pearly-eyes. The first photo below is a European Skipper, a non-native butterfly. There were thousands of them throughout the property, which is typical for this time of the year. The second photo is a Long Dash, which is also a species of skipper, but is native to North America. On my walk out, I also saw a Common Ringlet, a Canadian Tiger Swallowtail, and a Monarch!

Two more plants to show. The one on the left is Torrey's Bulrush, a pretty uncommon species. This very small population of it was found by Rob Routledge, a professor at Sault College, a few years ago. He was very excited about it! The photo below is Allegheny Monkeyflower. Interestingly, the only place this species has ever been recorded in the Algoma District has been at the Black Hole Preserve. Rob found one last summer, but at an entirely different location within the wetland! I'm sure they are found in other local wetlands, but just haven't been recorded.

Thanks again for reading. There's still so much of the Black Hole Preserve that I haven't got to yet, so I'm sure they will still be more parts left to come.

As promised, here are some of the scenic shots from this side of the wetland!

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Virtual Tour: Ripple Rock Preserve - Part 2

6/26/2020

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This week, I returned to the Ripple Rock Preserve to tour the portion of the property on the south side of Highway 17. If you haven't yet read part one, you can do so here!

Three straight days of rainy weather this week prevented me from getting out until Thursday to tour the property. In order to beat the afternoon heat and get back for a 10:00am meeting, I arrived on site just before 6:00am. The sun wasn't poking up over the trees yet, so the lighting was still fairly dull. The photo to the right here is the view from Highway 17 looking at the wetland from about the west boundary of the property.

The forest is very dense on this side of the highway, making navigating much more difficult and tiring. When I would stop to look around for wildlife or interesting plants, the mosquitoes would then be all over me, basically forcing me to keep moving. I knew I wasn't going to last long out there in these conditions! I worked my way the south end of the property to the open-water portion of the wetland.

I spent some time standing at this location, looking to see what wildlife I could find. There were many Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles flying around, a common sight in wetlands around here. A Virginia Rail was calling from the other side of the wetland and various warblers were singing from the forest behind me. A Hooded Merganser flew in out of nowhere and landed in the water, as seen in the photo to the right. See that beaver dam behind it? That's the same beaver dam that a bobcat was seen crossing just a few days ago! You can check out the photo here. I obviously wasn't so lucky.

Northern Blue Flag is in bloom right now and there were a couple of them right here as well. A very pretty flower! Then a Red Squirrel came running down a tree and started yelling at me, just like every other time I'm in the middle of nowhere. These forest squirrels aren't as friendly as the ones that come to my bird feeders!

Just up from there, I found a great vantage point of the wetland. You'd never know there's so much open water back here based on what you can see from the highway! This wetland is part of the Kensington Complex, a provincially significant wetland. This means that it has extra protections against development and other activities that could compromise the function of the wetland.

After returning to the highway, I walked down to get a photo of the wetland from the perspective that I'm sure everyone is familiar with. No open water here, just cattails! In past years, Sandhill Cranes have nested in here. I did not notice them this year, but since I have been working from home, I drove by here significantly less this spring, so maybe I just missed them. In 2016, I was able to capture photos of one of the adults on the nest in late April, then in early June, both adults with their little colt! Sandhill Cranes usually only have one or two offspring each year and they sure are cute when they're this small.

Thanks once again for reading my virtual tour. The weather forecast looks great next week, so hopefully rain won't delay me again.

I've added a few more photos from my tour below. The photos certainly aren't my best, but I blame the bugs!

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Early July Flora and Fauna

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