Exploring some amazing natural areas

 Once we got settled into Chatham, it was certainly different than being a resident of Rondeau. The new job continued to expand into all sorts of opportunities, including with Walpole Island First Nation...

Island Prairie, WIFN

...various things related to Tallgrass Prairie, and Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve....

Ojibway Prairie PNR

a reclaimed prairie patch on city of Windsor property

....and the Erie Islands, including Pelee Island. This first photo is from back in the day when, believe it or not, Double-crested Cormorants were considered rather rare. When a population became established on Big Chicken Island, about half way between Pelee Island and East Sister Island, the plan was to band and monitor this populations. A Conservation Officer, shown on the extreme right, handled the boating duties and took a small crew of us out. There were two people from the Canadian Wildlife Service, and three of us from the Ministry of Natural Resources, who went out for the banding.

Lighthouse on Pelee Island

All of these topics were a very, very major focus of my career, and each topic will require one or more posts to cover even the basics, as you will see as future posts get added.

In the early fall of 1988, Marie, Tim and I ventured into the Great Smokies National Park area, the first of many trips we took with the kids. The Smokies were amazing to visit, and Tim enjoyed it as well as a 2-year old could.

This photo shows the 'smoky' appearance, which is frequently what the area looks like.

But one of the more significant things of the fall, was an opportunity for me to go to Costa Rica. At one of the several natural history outings I led at Rondeau for organizations such as the Federation of Ontario Naturalists, a couple of folks who participated had been planning to start up a natural history tour company. So after a few weeks, I got a phone call asking if I would like to join a small group going to Costa Rica as a sort of familiarization tour, to explore potential for future tours. Essentially all it cost me, aside from the time, was the air fare. And so off I went with about 7 others, exploring the cloud forests, the coastal mangrove swamps and various places in between. It was very exciting and a great opportunity. And so as it turned out, I ended up going to Costa Rica three more times, all as a representative/leader for what became known as Quest Nature Tours. The first time was in the fall of 1989, when I was a co-leader for a special group that was made up of strong supporters of the World Wildlife Fund. And in 1990 I went back as the main North American leader two more times! I don't speak Spanish, so there was a local leader with us at all times, as well as the driver of the small tour bus, so the language issue wasn't a problem. There were plans to continue with future tours, but the Gulf War of 1991 brought international travel almost to a halt, so plans for 1991 were cancelled. As it took awhile for that type of travel to build again, I did not go again, but it was for the good, as otherwise I would be gone for about two weeks at a time leaving Marie at home with a very busy young lad.

Being a leader wasn't without some challenges, although the most serious one was when on about the second day out, one of the participants could hardly wait to go swimming in the ocean we were staying near, so ventured out by himself without telling anyone. And he got caught in a rip-tide and was dragged well out, and fortunately someone in a small boat noted his dilemma and rescued him. Whew!

Of course I had camera and binoculars with me on all of the outings, and there were so many highlights of things to see, which I captured on my film camera of course, so I had to go through so many slides and scan a few representative ones to insert them into this blog. But it brought back so many memories, such as a few of them shown here.

Bare-throated Tiger Heron

This Boa Constrictor came to visit us one evening, and was hanging out in a tree right outside a door of our motel.

Next is a Caiman, a smaller version of crocodile, although it can get quite large. It let me get quite close before it dashed off! Fortunately it retreated, as it took off so much faster than I could have escaped if it had decided to attack me.

There were a few Crested Caracaras to be seen, especially in the more open areas.

Emerald Toucanet

On one occasion, we were staying right along the coast, and had the opportunity to venture out well after dark to observe female Leatherback Sea Turtles come ashore to lay eggs. This species is the largest of all living turtles. We managed to see several on a couple of nights in the autumn trips....

...and on another trip, in about March of the next year when again, we were staying along the coast, we saw a small number of recently hatched turtles, scamper from where they had emerged, heading to the water!

Next is a photo of the typical cloud forest of Monteverde...

...and this is the typical scenery along the narrow, winding road we had to go up to get to Monteverde. No guard rails here, and the road was literally right at the edge!

We saw so many things, such as Scarlet Macaws, Three-wattled Bellbirds, and a few members of the monkey family such as this White-faced Capuchin.

The opportunities with Quest Nature Tours were amazing, and I am so thankful for that opportunity! And before long, another significant travel opportunity came along, although it was much more related to my work. During one of my annual evaluations with my supervisor, the question came up about what other work-related opportunities would I be interested in, and I responded saying a chance at doing some natural history field work in another part of Ontario would be nice. And so when a colleague from another MNR district approached me to see if I would be interested in spending some time doing wildlife surveys along the Hudson Bay coast at Polar Bear Provincial Park, I checked with my supervisor and was given the green light! So over the course of 10 days in late June of 1990 I wandered about the sub-arctic coastline habitats along the western extreme of PBPP doing wildlife surveys! We had periodic radio contact with folks from the MNR office in Moosonee, but being so far away it was iffy at times, and we were really on our own. But the excursion was something else. Of course I took my camera, and got lots of photos, some of which I shared with the organizers of the survey project, so when the second year came along, they asked me if I would come back and concentrate on photography since it was an area that so few people even within the local MNR office ever got to. So back I went, for two weeks in late June/early July of 1991, and while I spent more of my time doing photography, I also managed to do a few of the survey routes as well.

This first photo shows the Albany River, which enters into James Bay, not too far from Moosonee. 

  

Next is the extremely wide open sub-arctic tundra landscape.

There were a few trees a little farther inland.

In the second year, our camp was closer to the east side of PBPP, along the Brant River. En route we saw some fabulous parts of the sub-arctic landscape from the air.

Our camp was adequate, using prospector tents for accommodation. For outhouse facilities, it looked like this. 

This was an amazing time to be at this provincial park. It was still light enough to read at 11 p.m., and it started to get light again by about 3 a.m., so there were lots of hours in each day to document things. We got by on very little sleep!

Woodland Caribou came by on occasion, as did Arctic Fox.

We had Willow Ptarmigan nesting almost right in the campsite. The females are well designed for nesting in this landscape. This next photo shows a female on its nest. Can you see it?

...while the more vividly coloured male was not far away.

Nesting Semipalmated Plover

An unexpected highlight was to find a nest of a Parasitic Jaeger....

....and this breeding plumaged Pacific Loon had a nest on a small island just a little way out. This male got our attention more than a few times.

And as our campsite in the second year was close by the Brant River, we managed to catch a few fresh Brook Trout that were coming upstream to spawn.

In a few places where there were trees, we found Bonaparte's Gulls nesting in them. Quite different than any of the gulls or terns nesting in southern Ontario!

In between the various forays I experienced as described above, I also did some more usual things in these early years, such as helping some forestry colleagues in the office to evaluate the impact of severe drainage on a recently established tree plantation.

 So these are a few of the highlights of that time period. God is so good to allow me to experience some wonderful elements of His creation, no doubt about it. But some of the major challenges related to places like Pelee Island and several others, and some of the family times growing and traveling, will be featured in a few of the upcoming posts, so stay tuned. 

 

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