Roaming around two of the best natural areas of C-K!

 In addition to several evenings of black lighting, I've been out to two of the most interesting (to me) natural areas, as there are always things to enjoy and photograph.

Closest to home is St. Clair NWA. I usually go in the early evenings, when some birds are on the move, or feeding towards the end of the day. This Great Blue Heron was busily feeding....

...and this one was perched, probably for over night.

There are usually 4-5 Great Egrets somewhere scattered across the NWA....

..and the occasional Green Heron.

A highlight is to see and photograph Northern Harriers. On some occasions I have seen three or four, and with most of them being young-of-the-year, indicate a fairly successful breeding period.

Sandhill Cranes are sometimes quite close to the trail, at least until they detect me getting too close....

...so generally they are more often seen in flight.

On one occasion during the smoky weather conditions, I photographed the sun about an hour before sundown, where it was just glowing through the smoky haze.

White-tailed Deer are regularly seen either in the NWA or in the fields immediately adjacent.

On the plant side, the Swamp Rose Mallow is quite widespread, but not often close to the trail. This first photo shows a dense stand of it but well away from the trail.

On occasion one may find a few close by.

And Buttonbush is evident in a few spots.

At Rondeau, I have been more focused on plants, both the rare and not so rare. Here are just a few examples, but more on plants in a future post.

One of the rarest I keep an eye on, is American Ginseng. This first photo shows it just past flowering, with this one featuring a single fruit.... 

...while this next one shows some buds finished flowering, and three fruits developing. As they mature, the fruits will turn red.

Certainly not a rare species is next: Nightshade.

Back to a rarity is this Broad Beech Fern, which I only know from one location, that being along Spicebush Trail where it grows in several quite dense clusters.

Not far from the Broad Beech Fern is this Richweed, not really rare, but not all that common either. It is indicative of a rich hardwood forest of southern Ontario.

And again not far way is this fruit showing up on Goldenseal, a provincial rarity.

This next one is Cylindrical Blazing-star, growing in the open grassy dunes of the southeast. It is just starting to flower and in a few days there will be a light purplish glow across these grassy areas.

There is a single location for this next species: Oswego Tea. I missed the peak flowering by a few days, but caught at least one or two in relatively good condition.

Just something else in the general vicinity are the following: while doing my area of the annual butterfly count, I didn't see many butterflies, but I noted the Osprey nest atop the tower just outside of Erieau.

And shorebirds are increasing in diversity and numbers as they have completed their breeding cycle and are returning southwards. One of the highlights of recent days has been a Stilt Sandpiper. The shorebirds at the Blenheim Sewage Lagoons are always popular for shorebirds, but it seems this year not so much in the sprinkler cells. In one of the largest lagoons they are quite abundant, but more distant and therefore more challenging to photograph. This one was taken a couple of years ago, showing it still in the remains of its breeding plumage, and at the sprinkler cells.

 Lots more to feature in a future post!

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Rondeau, Blenheim lagoons, etc

I've been out and about regularly these last few days, usually to Rondeau and area. Birds are becoming quieter, since the nesting season is winding down. There are more young out begging their parents for food, and some nesting species are still busily gathering food for their young still in the nest, such as what this Red-headed Woodpecker is doing.

The Red-headed young has now left the nest.

A Prothonotary Warbler is also feeding its just hatched young. Both male (shown here) and female are busily going back and forth regularly.

The spring wildflowers are long gone, well they are not showy, but are putting forth fruit. The interior of the forests are deep green and enjoyable to explore and photograph on a cloudy day.

South Point Trail

Along woodland edges and other open areas, there is a steady stream of newly opened flowers to be viewed. While travelling along Bennett Ave last autumn, I noted the bright red berries of Winterberry (Ilex verticillata), so I checked it out a few days ago, and....bingo....it was just nicely out in flower. This is the first time I have seen it in flower at Rondeau. The camera came out to record the occasion, naturally.

Ilex verticillata

At the north end of the park, along the maintenance loop, were the bright red flowers of about 20 stems of Bee-balm, a.k.a. Oswego Tea (Monarda didyma). It is a very uncommon plant of rich woods in the Carolinian Life Zone. I sometimes see hummingbirds hovering about, feeding on the flowers, but not today.

Monarda didyma

I don't often go along this short trail once the spring migration is over other than to check on the Bee-balm....the mosquitoes are usually quite plentiful here......so I was surprised to see several small stems of the endangered Red Mulberry (Morus rubra) in a couple of locations. Red Mulberry occurs naturally at Rondeau but not at this exact location; in fact some of the best quality stems of any in Ontario can be found at Rondeau. It is likely these individuals were planted a decade or more ago, when a researcher was doing his graduate work on the species here and at a couple of other places where they occur naturally.

Morus rubra

Red Mulberry has very distinctive leaves. They are quite large and roundish, with some of the ones on these trees attaining a length of almost 10". They are a bit rough/hairy above and below, and they have long tips, called 'drip tips', which help shed water after a rainfall.  The leaves show very little, if any, lobing. The much more common, and non-native, White Mulberry, has much smaller, shiny leaves with very little in the way of a drip tip, and they often show lobing.

Along this trail there were quite a few odonates in the sunny open area. Damselflies were abundant. I got a few photos of the dragonfly White-faced Meadowhawk, both male and female.

White-faced Meadowhawk female

White-faced Meadowhawk male

In some sunny openings or at the edge of the forest, one can find the impressive Michigan Lily (Lilium michiganense).

I did not use a flash for this image. I simply metered on the bright orange flower, and chose an unlit background, so that the lily would really jump out. Flash can produce similar effects, but with the shiny/waxy flowers, there is more likely to be distracting hotspots produced.

Out along the southeast beach of Rondeau, the Eastern Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia humifusa) is in flower.

The presence of this species at Rondeau is a conundrum. It doesn't occur in the park naturally, but some well meaning individual who had a particular love of this species planted several clumps along the southeast beach in the mid 1990s. The habitat works well for this species, and it is spreading steadily. There are now at least 20 clumps of varying sizes. The conundrum is that it is a legally endangered species under the provincial Endangered Species Act. And in Ontario it only occurs naturally at Point Pelee National Park and at Fish Point Provincial Nature Reserve (on Pelee Island). The small population at the latter location is not doing well at all. So now there is a planted population in a nature reserve zone of Rondeau.

What to do? Do park managers sacrifice the integrity of a nature reserve zone of one of the most significant provincial parks in the province to allow a legally endangered species from elsewhere persist? Or do they attempt to retain the natural integrity of the park and nature reserve zone by removing it? The questions are easy to come up with; the right answers are not.

Moving along....I hiked part of the Marsh Trail. There is lots of Common Milkweed scattered along it, and I thought I might have seen a few butterflies. They were really few. Some Red Admirals and a couple of Viceroys were about all there was to see on this trip, although the windy conditions might have been a factor.

Viceroy

In a low wet meadow adjacent to the trail was a beautiful display of Swamp Candles (Lysimachia terrestris).

The view from the observation tower is always fun to see, except for the steadily increasing number of wind turbines across the bay. I reported in an earlier post about counting 178 wind turbines from the lower level of the tower. On this most recent visit, from the upper level, I can advise that I counted a total of 203 towers!

If you look towards the south beach, you get this next view, complete with the absence of wind turbines.

I stopped at the Blenheim Sewage Lagoons one evening recently as well. The shorebirds are starting to build in numbers and diversity. There were probably as many as 100 shorebirds in all, including a group of small 'peeps' that never landed where I could see them. But there were a dozen or more Least Sandpipers, 9 Lesser Yellowlegs, 2 Short-billed Dowitchers and the usual Killdeer and Spotted Sandpiper.

Short-billed Dowitchers

Spotted Sandpiper

Duck diversity wasn't high, but this male Canvasback (on the right), shown alongside a male Blue-winged Teal starting its moult, was still around.

Perched in the fence along the east side of the lagoons was this young Baltimore Oriole. It made composing the photo using the 'rule of thirds' a lot easier :-).

Baltimore Oriole

And finally, at the end of the day recently, I raced off to the north end of Bear Line, where one can get a great view of Walpole Island across the Chenal Ecarte, and is a perfect vantage point from which to capture a sunset.