April showers.....

...and you likely know the rest of the saying. While it is a cute little saying that has been around forever, it isn't entirely true. After all, there were lots of flowers in April...what stimulated them? And it is fortunate they are present in April. Since at times the birding is a bit slower than most birders would like, why not take a few moments to diversify one's interest and check out other things?

Some of my fellow bloggers have already highlighted wildflowers they have come across, which is great. Allow me to share some of the things I've encountered in various woodland settings over the past few days.

One of the earliest species is the Hepatica, either Sharp-lobed or Round-lobed. The difference is in the subtle shape of the tips of their leaves, which often are not all that visible when the first flowers appear. The flowers can be quite white....

Hepatica

 ...or an attractive shade of purplish blue.

 Cut-leaved Toothwort can be fairly abundant in places.

Lots of Cut-leaved Toothwort

Cut-leaved Toothwort

Blue Cohosh can occur in two species: the earliest one being Giant Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum giganteum) with its purplish leaves, and the slightly later one being Blue Cohosh (C. thalictroides), with its greener leaves.

Giant Blue Cohosh

Blue Cohosh

 Purple Spring Cress is an attractive purplish flowered plant, usually growing in wet woods.

Purple Spring Cress

Dutchman's Breeches is often fairly abundant, and easily identified by the spray of white flowers resembling pants hung upside down.

Dutchman's Breeches

Similar in some ways to Dutchman's Breeches but not nearly as abundant, is Squirrel Corn. The dissected leaves are similar but the flowers are more heart-shaped.

Squirrel Corn

While I was busy photographing this Squirrel Corn, I had an audience. This Raccoon was watching me, enjoying the warm, sunny day from its tree limb perch.

Spring Beauty is just that...a very attractive pinkish flower with darker purple lines.

Spring Beauty

 A very abundant spring flower is Trout Lily (a.k.a. American Dog-toothed Violet). Its mottled leaves are extremely abundant on the forest floor of rich woods. However only a very small per cent of plants will have flowers, and even then, they will only be fully out on a bright sunny day. If the sun disappears behind a cloud for a few hours, the petals close up.

Trout Lily

Trilliums are just beginning to appear in flower. White Trillium, Ontario's provincial flower, is by far the most abundant.

White Trillium

Red Trillium (a.k.a. Stinking Benjamin since the flowers have a stinky smell to attract flies, which transfer the pollen) is far less common. The red flowers usually hang down and are less noticeable than the more upright flowers of the White Trillium.

Red Trillium

A very rare colour form of the Red Trillium is sometimes found, although in several decades of exploring woodlands, I have only seen it on a couple of occasions. I will be checking a known spot for it in a couple of weeks, where one plant has appeared for the last three successive years.

An undesirable wildflower just beginning to appear is Garlic Mustard. It is highly invasive, and produces massive amounts of seed. The seed can be transferred from one location to another on the mud of one's boots, so be careful when you are tramping around an area with this species!

Garlic Mustard

Spring flowers are not limited to herbaceous plants. Spicebush, a very common shrub in southern Ontario's wet woods, is in flower before the leaves appear.

Spicebush

Eastern Cottonwood also has its flowers appear before the leaves. This next image shows the male flowers of this species.

Eastern Cottonwood

Other trees are beginning to flower, and will continue for the next several weeks. Some are distinctive and can be told easily before the leaves or flowers emerge, such as this next one.

Bitternut Hickory

The bright mustard yellow leaf buds, visible all winter, are just beginning to expand into new leaves. This is a distinctive characteristic of Bitternut Hickory, an uncommon but widespread tree in southern Ontario deciduous woodland.

Even bigger trees, herps and dragons

The last few days have been quite nice to be out in. Regular readers will know that I am trying to document as many of the largest trees in Rondeau that I can get to. At the moment, I have documented over 200 individual trees. The main details I've included are species name, diameter at breast height and the GPS coordinates.

On the weekend I came across the biggest tree I've measured so far. It is an Eastern Cottonwood, but instead of its normal open habitat setting, this one was in one of the deeper parts of the Rondeau forest.

 This individual measured 163 cm dbh at first, but since I had to go around a large Poison Ivy vine, I decided to reduce the diameter to 158 cm. This is more than 20 cm dbh larger than the next largest one I had measured to this point in the project. I had my tripod with me this time, and with the delayed shutter, I was able to get myself into the photo for scale. I purposely converted it to black and white....the reason being that an historically well known and significant tree was photographed in B&W back in 1908, and is shown below. It is of a huge Sycamore tree. I posted this one a few weeks ago. Big Syc, as it was affectionately known, died in 1969, fell over in 1972, and even today is still a large decaying log on the forest floor. At its peak, it measured about 165 cm dbh, which is just slightly larger than the Eastern Cottonwood I came across a few days ago, so the similarity in size, and the similar wet woods habitat, gave me the idea to put myself in a similar pose. The big difference, however, is that Eastern Cottonwoods grow relatively quickly and seldom live more than 100-125 years. Sycamores, on the other hand, grow more slowly and may live for more than 300 years. Given the normal growth and longevity for Eastern Cottonwood, it is possible that this individual may not be any more than 125 years. However I think that the figures normally quoted for their growth and longevity are for open grown trees under very good growing conditions. In my opinion, growing in the middle of a wet maple-oak-beech type forest, the growing conditions may be somewhat different, and it is possible that this individual may be quite a bit more than 125 years of age. We will probably never know, since the inside of the tree is likely mushy and there is no way to count the rings even with a good increment borer tool. Nonetheless, since cottonwoods apparently grow about 2 cm diameter per year, it may just surpass Big Syc in a few short years. You can bet I will be out remeasuring it to see!

Big Syc in 1908

A short while after discovering this huge cottonwood, I came across another, not quite as large. It was a mere 142 cm dbh. I expect I will find more, and when I get around to measuring some of the large Silver Maples, another fast growing species of wetland habitat, there may be some trees that supersede the cottonwoods I measured this day. I will probably have to wait until a drier time of year to get the right height for measuring at the standard breast height....right now most are sitting in up to a metre of water.

Oak trees grow much more slowly than cottonwoods do. I was pleased to find this large Red Oak, measuring 123 cm dbh. Right close by and in the background of this next photo is a White Oak, which is just shy of a metre dbh. The Red Oak shows a decided lean, a typical characteristic of an old growth tree. Undoubtedly both of these oaks, even though they are smaller than the big cottonwood, are considerably older.

While covering the section of forest I had planned for, there were a good number of birds out and about. No warblers, however, but lots of Northern Flicker, Golden-crowned Kinglet, Brown Creeper, Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers as well as smaller numbers of Eastern Phoebe, Pileated Woodpecker (I think one was creating a nest hole), Hermit Thrush, Winter Wren and the like. Turkey Vultures were plentiful, and an adult Bald Eagle floated overhead.

It was a rather warm day, the kind where it makes one think of a tasty ice-cream treat, which made me think of the caption for this next photo.

Baskin' Robin

I noted a couple of Mourning Cloak butterflies, as well as Eastern Garter Snakes and a Northern Brown Snake.

Eastern Garter Snake

The Northern Brown Snake was on the move and did not want to stick around for my photography efforts.

The sunny warm conditions encouraged amphibians to get busy. There were lots of Wood Frogs vocalizing throughout the sloughs, along with a few Spring Peepers. A single American Toad was noted dead on the road.

Wood Frog

Today I went to check some areas along Lake St. Clair, specifically the Angler Line wetland where Yellow-headed Blackbirds were found last year, as well as the Lake St. Clair Trail and the waterfront of Mitchell's Bay. It was another warm day, but much windier.

The land birds were not of a great diversity, but I did see things such as Eastern Phoebe, lots of Tree Swallow, Northern Flickers, etc. There were still lots of waterfowl on the lake, but well out from shore since the wind speed and direction made it popular for wind sailors/surfers.

In the quieter areas of the old canal that goes along the trail, I found a lot of Painted Turtles.....about 46 in all. I'm sure they were trying to play catch up on getting their internal physiology going, now that at least for the short term, the weather is warming up.

'Tired' Turtles

I also saw my first dragonflies of the year. This pair of Common Green Darner were already 'in wheel', so the reproductive phase of their season is now underway!

I didn't see any Yellow-headed Blackbirds.....they may be out there but the wind might have kept them lower.

At the northeast corner of the waterfront parking lot was this quite large Eastern Cottonwood. It is open grown on a very good site. It measured 143 cm dbh.

Big trees, birds, butterflies.....and snakes!

The last couple of days have been more spring-like, and great to be out! On Wednesday, I went out to Rondeau in search of Big Trees, and found some :-). On this day, I concentrated most of my time in the vicinity of the south half of the campground, as well as the day-use area between the campground and the maintenance area.

There are some big trees there. You've probably driven by this first one on many occasions. It is right along Rondeau Park Ave, immediately south of the campground. It is an Eastern Cottonwood, a fairly fast growing species. It measured 135 cm dbh, which is exactly the same diameter as the huge Red Oak I posted about previously.

Eastern Cottonwood, 135 cm dbh

A large Black Walnut was nearby, but measuring a mere 113 cm dbh.

Both of these two, although they appear to be open grown, are quite tall without any large lower branches. The next two are oaks, and are open grown and the one in particular shows the remains of two very large lower branches, which have been cut off for some reason. Since it was in the campground, maybe they were cut off to prevent interfering with camping trailers.

Black Oak, 120 cm dbh

 Clearly this is not a forest grown tree where the trunk would be straight and unbranched for 6-10 metres or more. The extra bulges where the lowest branches used to be happen to be at the height where official measurements are to be made (1.4m).

Red Oak, 131 cm dbh

Overall I managed to measure about 70 trees, most of which were in the 80 cm to 135 cm range, and would qualify them as representing older growth. So far I've measured about 100 trees, and have barely scratched the surface......the more I look around specifically for trees in that size range, the more I see from one end of the park to the other......I probably have only a couple of thousand more to go! And I am intentionally not measuring anything below 70cm dbh, unless it is a species which seldom grows that big even at the best of times (e.g. Sassafrass), or I would have a lot more to do. While some references on Old Growth indicated that any tree bigger than 50 cm might be an indication of old growth, there are a huge number of trees at Rondeau which are in the 50-70 cm range.

In spite of the snow still on the ground in patches, when the sun was out it was fairly warm at ground level. But I was a bit surprised to see these two Eastern Garter Snakes out basking. I suspect they must have just emerged that day. I noticed a small hole about a metre away, going into an old tree root where they might have accessed a suitable cavity below the frost line.

In addition to these two snakes, I saw my first butterfly of the season...an Eastern Comma, but it was so active and flying steadily away, I didn't get any photos.

This Killdeer was a bit more cooperative, and it was successful in getting some small worm-like creatures to feed on.

Yesterday, I decided to take a break from measuring trees (although in my travels, I certainly was on the lookout for them). I figured with the clear skies the previous night and the southerly winds, some new bird migrants might have shown up. I was successful in finding a few, and even got a few photos of some.

There was a significant arrival of Northern Flicker, as I saw at least 11 in various places.

Eastern Phoebes were widely scattered. I saw at least 9.

There was the typical mix of Brown-headed Cowbirds, Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles in various places.

Brown-headed Cowbird

This immature White-crowned Sparrow was near the Visitor Centre. It might have been the one that was seen coming into the feeder most of the winter, but I hadn't seen it for a couple of weeks. Turkey Vultures have been around for a few days; some were roosting in trees rather than soaring around.

imm White-crowned Sparrow

Turkey Vulture

I also saw a single Tree Swallow flying low over the still frozen Rondeau Bay, and heading south! There were more Golden-crowned Kinglets around than I've seen in awhile, and a Brown Thrasher was scratching around in the leaves at the side of the trail. Black-capped Chickadees and Tufted Titmice were singing away, and it seemed like there were more Brown Creepers around.

I stopped in at Erieau at one point, hoping that with much of the bay and lake still frozen, waterfowl might be a little more concentrated, providing some photo ops. There were lots of Canvasback in flooded fields just outside of the village, with a few other typical species also present.

Gadwall

Red-breasted Mergansers

Bonaparte's Gulls were around in greater numbers than I have seen for several months. There were at least 40, and some were sporting some darker head feathers.

While scanning the marina slip for different gulls, I noticed some movement on the far side. A little distant for a good shot, but still identifiable as a mink.

Camera equipment for sale
A few posts ago, I mentioned that I have a new Canon 100-400mm L II lens. It has been working extremely well, and I am looking forward to using its close focus capabilities for birds, butterflies, dragonflies, etc as the opportunities present themselves along the trails. But this means that my faithful older Canon 100-400mm L lens is no longer needed, and I am willing to sell it. Many of the butterfly, dragonfly and even bird shots of the first year of this blog were taken with it.

In looking at some of the main camera dealers, a brand new version of this lens is $1870.00, plus tax. A used version of this lens on their web site is $1300.00, plus tax.

I am willing to sell my lens, which is in very good shape, and includes a Pro 1 77mm UV filter, for $950.00.

I also have a Canon 1.4X II tele converter. A used one retails for $320.00 plus tax. I am willing to sell mine for $250.00.  Update: this item is now sold.


If you are interested in either piece of equipment, just let me know.