Posted May 4, 2015
Fellow Outdoor Ed. Guy, Al Woodhouse and myself, have an annual competition to see who can see more species of birds at his respective outdoor centre each year. My yearly totals for the past 3 years have been 103, 96 and 89. Al generally beats me by 15 or so. This year I have re-doubled […]
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Posted May 3, 2015
I had my first chance to get out and explore the wetlands and forest trails at Blair this weekend. With the warm weather we’ve had the last week or so, I found many of the spring wildflowers in bloom. Some plants flower for a only a short time, and it’s easy to miss out on […]
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Posted April 22, 2015
I have had the trail camera on a mink den, with no luck lately. Just a couple of passers-by. [wpvideo 9Ty97G6B] [wpvideo XlxjVDJE]
Posted April 21, 2015
While cleaning out our bird houses, we pulled out a nest that had four baby red squirrels in it. We carefully put the nest back in the box with the babies intact.
Posted March 24, 2015
I left the trail camera at the mink den for three nights before retrieving it. There were sixty 30-second videos on it. Twenty videos missed whatever set the camera off. Thirty-one videos had raccoons walking by. There was one grey squirrel, and one red squirrel. Seven videos had the mink on them. It looks like the injured foot […]
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Posted March 23, 2015
March Break weather in southern Ontario provided just the right balance of cold nights and warm days to persuade our sugar maple trees to give up their first runs of sap. Making maple syrup is easy. Follow these simple steps: Drill hole in sugar maple tree, tap in spile, hang bucket, and add a lid. […]
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Posted March 20, 2015
I too hope the Laurel Creek mink will survive with this injury. I imagine swimming would be difficult, and much of a mink’s food comes from the stream – fish, frogs, crayfish. My daughter Sydney and I went out for a walk along the Grand River yesterday with our cameras, but both of us broke […]
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Posted March 20, 2015
Yesterday I got another video of the mink at Laurel Creek. It doesn’t seem to have any use of its front left paw. I hope this injury doesn’t affect the potential for young mink at this site. I suspect our resident is a female. It has been at this den all winter, and I read that […]
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Posted March 16, 2015
We made our first syrup of the year today at Laurel Creek. Lots of friends around to help.
Posted March 3, 2015
Last Thursday as I was leaving Laurel Creek, a red-tailed hawk was eating a rabbit beside our driveway. I didn’t have a camera, but the next day, this was the scene in the snow.
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