Public presentations; the Lyme Disease factor; some retirement projects

 I almost deviated from my initial plan for this next post, as I keep coming up with myriad thoughts and inspirations that I want to move on to. But they will have to wait a bit longer.

During my career, I gave many presentations on some aspect of natural history to a variety of groups.  They included:

 -quite a few featuring various aspects of Rondeau's natural history, both on the job at the park as well as to a few naturalist clubs across southwestern Ontario and even an occasional school setting;

-the Role of Fire in Southwestern Ontario, especially as it pertained to prairie and savanna. These were given to different groups within OMNR as well as a separate fire group;

-Endangered Species, a Quarry and an OMB, mainly given to internal OMNR audiences;

-Walpole Island natural history, to a WIFN community group;

-Natural History on Pelee Island, mainly to OMNR audiences; 

-Birds of Rondeau, to what formerly was the Sydenham Field Naturalists

-Natural Areas of Chatham-Kent, given to the general public at the Chatham Library.

 

In retirement, I kept getting a few more requests for presentations, and while I did a couple, I was a bit fatigued. I had contracted Lyme Disease on at least 5 occasions beginning in 1976 and fatigue is a frequent result. If I gave a presentation, I wanted to be at my best, and since as time went on, it was never a guarantee, I became more hesitant in accepting these requests, some of which were quite a distance from home. So I began to decline all requests, but decided to continue on with my sharing of the wonders of nature via my Nature Nuggets blog, beginning in 2014. To date, I have made over 740 posts, with over 12300 photos. It has been a lot of work, but it is something I can do on my own time, and if fatigue is a factor, it can wait for another day. It also gets me out with camera and binoculars regularly, on a sometimes long walk, so it is good exercise as well. I can do a little natural history interpretation when I meet folks on the trails or wherever. And of course I continued to gather material for both of the books I produced.

I did keep busy with various natural history field projects that I was asked to take on in retirement. Some of them included:

-doing butterfly surveys in several places where the Rural Lambton Stewardship Network/Ontario Nativescape had established tallgrass prairie sites over several years. These were fun, and it also meant that Marie could join me, as she always had a certain interest in butterflies. We were able to do these surveys over a three year period in the summer. Some of the butterflies we documented were:

Black Swallowtail

Great Spangled Fritillary

Marie, my butterfly survey companion

Monarch

Painted Lady

-I worked with the natural heritage staff of Walpole Island FN on several projects, to examine and provide recommendations to manage some of the best savanna habitat for some endangered species, including the White Prairie Gentian (Gentiana alba). No question that some of the best habitat for tallgrass prairie and oak savanna in Ontario, arguably Canada, is on Walpole Island.

 -I was contracted to help inventory an abandoned railway, as it was being considered to be turned into a publicly accessible hiking/biking trail across most of Chatham-Kent. There were some quite interesting sections, featuring some tallgrass prairie remnants with some endangered plant species. This first photo shows the general nature of the trail...

 ...and this next photo shows a fairly wide section made up mostly of tallgrass prairie type vegetation. It was initially an unknown section for this habitat, so it was rewarding to find this and several more sections like it. The trail has been open for hiking/biking for several years now.

Another project was to update some natural history features of the Bickford Oak Woods, which I had a role in preserving while still in my OMNR career, as described in an earlier post. One of the main targets for this project was to add to the database of tallgrass prairie, an overview shown first...

...and also some of the forested wetlands that were a major part of the site.

-there was also some project work done with the Fingal Wildlife Management area, not far from St. Thomas. I worked with a couple of others to focus on some overall values, but in particular the breeding birds.

 

-Another birding project that I volunteered with, was the Colonial Shorebird Surveys, and I had two areas to focus on: the Blenheim Sewage Lagoons and the Tilbury Sewage Lagoons. The main times were during spring and autumn migration periods. There were often some interesting shorebirds to document, but one of the more intriguing finds was this American White Pelican, which decided to settle down at Tilbury for awhile. While pelicans are generally increasing in numbers, and even nesting in southwestern Ontario now, during the time I was doing the surveys, they were almost impossible to see anywhere in the southwest especially.

 In addition to some of these field projects, which were quite rewarding, Marie and I managed to get out just to explore familiar places, such as birding at Rondeau. This next photo shows Marie along the Spicebush Trail, along with my mother, Helen, looking up some information about a bird they were investigating.

And one of my all time favourites is this next photo. We had been walking along the Tulip Tree Trail and I wanted a photo of her beside the trio of Tulip Trees. With a smiley, somewhat mischievous look, she gave the tree a hug and I captured it! I have this on a 12" X 12" canvas print to look at every day.
 

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