Mid July action

Plants and insects abound right now, providing lots of opportunity to photograph! I've been out regularly, here and there, in the Rondeau area.

Open areas with Common Milkweed and other wildflowers are always good for attracting insects. Along the South Point Trail were things like this American Lady on a Black-eyed Susan.

American Lady

Something that caught my eye was a whole bunch of caterpillars feeding voraciously on some willows. This large distinctive caterpillar is the larva of a Mourning Cloak.

Mourning Cloak larva

Mourning Cloak

On a raspberry leaf, I noted this brightly coloured critter. It is a Red-banded Leafhopper, one of the more bizarrely coloured insects. It is very small, only about 5-6 mm in length, so the way you see it on your screen is several times life size! I find these more often on a milkweed plant than any other species.

A female Eastern Pondhawk was in the area. It is one of the more gorgeous dragonflies, in my opinion.

Other dragonflies were around, including many White-faced Meadowhawks. They would be perched, then dash out before returning. They were catching smaller insects, such as midges and mosquitoes, and are voracious predators.

Here a female of the species chowing down on a recent capture, followed by an 'in-your-face' view.

Woodlands are attractive on a heavily overcast day. I enjoy the Spicebush Trail in these conditions.

The ferns are quite lush at this time of year, with a good diversity: Ostrich Fern, Sensitive Fern, Silvery Spleenwort, Maidenhair Fern, Broad Beech Fern, Marsh Fern, Cinnamon Fern, Royal Fern, Rattlesnake Fern and others are scattered along the trail, sometimes in abundance. A healthy fern diversity means a healthy forest.

Broad Beech Fern

Silvery Speenwort

There is lots of Spicebush along this trail, not surprisingly. Here is a clump of Spicebush stems. Do you see anything else in this photo?

If you look closely on the largest stem, there is a moth. It blends in quite well, and a casual passer-by would easily miss it. It is a moth with the common name of Tulip-tree Beauty.

A common plant in the damp areas of this trail include the Wood Nettle. The flowers are very tiny...not spectacular at all! And yes, being a nettle, the stiff hairs will sting.

Wood Nettle

One reader of a previous post asked why there was no mention of Helleborine (Epipactis helleborine) in my post of early season native orchids. Well there are two reasons: first of all it is not a native species, but an orchid that came from Europe. And second of all, at Rondeau it is not an early season orchid. However it is just coming nicely into flower these days, and is quite widespread along this trail. An image is below.

Epipactis helleborine

The limey green season

I love this time of year at Rondeau, when the vegetation is such a vivid green, the breeding birds are in full song, the mosquitoes are almost non-existent, or at least tolerable, and on weekdays, there is hardly another person in the park. The trails, indeed almost the entire park, is all mine :-).

One can really appreciate what the natural world has to offer, when you are in it by yourself. The only sounds, sights and smells are those of nature. You aren't distracted by human chatter, passing vehicles and such.

And it can be a real opportunity to see wildlife when it is less inhibited. Just recently I was walking along the trail shown in the first two photos, Spicebush Trail, and there is at least one pair of Pileated Woodpeckers that have a territory overlapping this trail's area. I had been photographing wildflowers since there was a profusion of them, and during the middle part of the day the birds were quieter. So the only lens I had was my 100mm macro lens, on a full frame camera, which had very little telephoto effect. I noticed some movement out of the corner of my eye and there, ripping into a rotting log, was a female Pileated Woodpecker. They are not typically tolerant of humans, but this one was an exception. She could see me, I was sure, but made no move to fly, so I cautiously crept closer, getting a few photos as I got closer. The one shown below was taken with my macro lens....I was no more than about 3 metres from this bird and as I got closer I wondered if I would have to use my macro feature! In all my years at Rondeau, this is the closest I have been able to approach.

After watching her for a few moments, she moved off to another rotting log a short distance away. And I went back to shooting wildflowers, which are abundant in this early spring season, but still revelled in the encounter with this magnificent bird.

Violets are extremely common, and there are several kinds. Some violets have flowers on the main stem that also has leaves, such as this Smooth Yellow Violet.

Other species have the flowering stem separate from the leaves, such as this Wooly Blue Violet.

Similarly, the Long-spurred Violet has flowering stems on separate stems from the leaves. They are easily distinguished by their much paler colour and the very long spur at the back.

Wildflowers didn't use to be so lush and abundant at Rondeau, due to the extremely high number of white-tailed deer. At one point there were about 600 deer overwintering in the park, and when the first bits of greenery showed, the by now ravenously hungry deer devoured the fresh plant material....it was a welcome change from dry twigs all winter! But it played havoc with the wildflowers. Back in about 1978 there were two deer exclosures constructed, to demonstrate the impacts of a high population of deer browsing. The response of wildflowers from no deer browsing pressure in those exclosures since that time has been dramatic.

This first photo shows typical spring wildflowers and greenery inside the deer exclosure.

For this next photo, I turned around 180 degrees and took a shot showing what the wildflowers looked like in the unprotected area.....same camera, same lens.

The exclosures are just south of Bennett Ave and also just south of Gardiner Ave. They can be viewed by the public, although the trails to them aren't as obviously marked as they once were, so take a look for yourself next time you are in the area. It is dramatic!!!


Some wildflowers are easily recognized by most people. Trilliums, for example. But these next few photos show trilliums that you probably have never seen before.

This is actually a Red Trillium. I don't have the Photoshop capabilities to produce something like this :-). I had never seen one with six petals before. I have seen trilliums with four petals on occasion, but never six. This individual occurred along the Spicebush Trail in 2013. It did not reappear in 2014.

This is also a Red Trillium.....very rarely a yellow colour form will occur. I have only seen this on 3 occasions. This one was growing right next to a typical Red Trillium as shown in the next photo. Interestingly I first found this individual in 2013, and the same one appeared at exactly the same spot in 2014.

Other typical spring wildflowers are as follows:

Wild Blue Phlox

Wood Anemone

The next one is a species that you have walked by on numerous occasions if you have been on Spicebush Trail, but chances are you have never noticed it. It is known as Mitrewort, and is quite diminutive. This first photo is an overall shot, and you can see a spike of tiny white flowers. The whole plant is often less than a foot high, with two small paired leaves.

As one gets a closer look, the intricate details become obvious.

 And if you get really close, you may be amazed at the level of detail in this tiny flower, which in real life measures only about 3 mm in diameter! I took this with a 100 mm macro lens at minimum focus, and then put on all three extension tubes (an additional 68 mm) to increase the magnification. Then I cropped it heavily on the computer, to illustrate the detail seen here.

You really have to get on your hands and knees to see this beauty, and even then it is handy to have a hand lens. The macro world is fun and fascinating to explore!

As I completed the loop of the Spicebush Trail, the very southern section had another Pileated Woodpecker show up, and he was quite agitated. Actually he was agitated before he got close to me, but I don't know what about. This is the male, as the red crest extends from the beak to the back of the head, whereas in the previous image showing the female, the area closest to the beak is brown, not red.

A New Conservation Area and Birding Site....Now Accessible

There is a new conservation area which has been in the works these last few months.....the Keith McLean Conservation Lands, and it is just a short distance outside of Rondeau Provincial Park.

Keith McLean was a farmer and conservationist, who spent his entire life at this location. My wife and I, shortly after we were married, lived immediately across the road from Keith for more than 5 years and knew him quite well. He was very community minded, and extremely generous. He didn't have any heirs, and when he died in the fall of 2012, he left his property to the St. Clair Region Conservation Authority (SCRCA). This property is over 300 acres (121 ha). It has been farmed, and in fact is predominantly farmland even to this day. However over the years, some was retained in wetland and woodland while other sections were planted into trees and tallgrass prairie. His lotus ponds were a local point of interest, and Keith welcomed everyone to stop in and view them.

In addition to the land itself, Keith left some financial support to SCRCA in order to manage this land, with the eventual hope that much of it would be restored to nature. He wished above all that these lands would be open to the public, and so they are. There is a bit of a trail system that follows farm lanes and other areas, which go by or through some of the habitats that were retained or created, as shown in some of the following images.

A viewing tower adjacent to the lotus ponds, and also overlooking some of the wetland. The next two images show part of the wetland as viewed from the tower. Being so close to Rondeau, and more or less at the head of Rondeau Bay, what birds might be found here in the future? It looks like a great spot to attract White-faced or Glossy Ibis, or a Tri-coloured Heron, Snowy Egret, etc. Maybe the agricultural fields will have the Rondeau area's first Smith's Longspur! But until that happens, it will be a great place for rails and other marsh birds. I got a brief glimpse of a Virginia Rail here today.

The next image is also taken from the observation tower, looking in the opposite direction across some of the lotus ponds towards the house.

So if you are in the area, be sure to check it out. Work is currently going on at the house as it is being prepared for a property manager.

There is a different diversity of habitats than what Rondeau has to offer, so the birds may offer some greater diversity as well. Also the tallgrass prairies will be in fabulous colour in mid-summer but grassland birds are likely to be found here before then. And it may be a worthwhile location to view migrating raptors in the fall.

Whatever the season, be sure to enjoy the generosity that Keith left for us!

Immediately adjacent to the Keith McLean Conservation Lands is wetland and terrestrial land that was left to the SCRCA by the brother and sister Les and Melba Bates, who both passed away several years ago. These lands are not accessible to the public but visible from the adjacent road/causeway, however.


I spent a bit of time at Rondeau while I was in the area. Due to the light drizzle, bird activity and song was not plentiful, and I didn't see any other birders. However along the Spicebush Trail, I noted several Palm Warblers and a single Nashville Warbler as well as a Blue-headed Vireo and lots of White-throated Sparrows and a couple of Swamp Sparrows. There were more wildflowers out also.....Dutchman's Breeches, below, are coming out nicely.