Melancholy Musings

Last Friday I posted an item on Facebook that started like this: "this was one of those perfect days where everything comes together in a very nice way".

And today I find that a sense of melancholy has entered my soul.  It's not unusual for people to have this feeling as summer ends and winter approaches but for me, it is very unusual.  Summer is my least favourite season.  Both winter and autumn vie for top spot as I prefer the cooler temperatures and there is something supremely satisfying about having the wood stove going.

So why is the end of this summer bringing on this state of melancholy?

Maybe it's because it was so incredible.

The bobolink worked filled my days in May and June.  Searching for nests, surveying new locations, banding and attaching geolocators.  The time flew by.

 

female bobolink

  

bobolink nestlings

And then there was my anti-shrike force field, that thing that prevents me from seeing a shrike despite living in an area known to be one of the few areas in Ontario where this endangered bird breeds.  Where others would claim to see a shrike on a regular basis, I saw none.  

That force field took a hiatus this year and allowed me to see and have access to more shrikes than I ever thought possible. First, there was the shrike that, apparently, only I could see.  Thank goodness I had photographic evidence.

evidence of "my" shrike

Then in August, I was given the opportunity to feed the captive bred shrikes that were moved up here in preparation for their release into the wild.  It wasn't quite as exciting as I thought it would be as you aren't supposed to make eye contact with the birds when you are in the cage.  It's hard to check out a bird when you aren't supposed to look at it.

Count out 15 tablespoons of mealworms, 30 super mealworms and 75 crickets.  The mealworms, both regular and super, were easy but have you ever tried counting crickets?  They never stop hopping!

Then, even better, the pre-release check when the birds are actually in hand and you can get a good look at them.  They are gorgeous!

 

receiving the pre-release antibiotics; look at the gorgeous mottling on the head

Finally, best of all, there is the release itself when you can't help but wonder how the birds feel when they are finally able to stretch their wings completely.  It's a great big world out there.

out of the cage

contemplating the great outside

Today, though, the field cabin was closed for the last time this season.  The bobolink folks are long gone. After joining me on a hike in QE2 Provincial Park, the shrike field biologist packed up her car and has left the area.  

Queen Elizabeth 2 Wildlands Provincial Park

And so, the melancholy has arrived.

After an ice cream and a final goodbye, I decided to head into town to get gas for the car and chips and beer to make me feel better. 

If these things don't work, I simply have to remind myself that I'm living in an area I love and I'm doing work that I love and I have finally found a place where I belong.  The hummingbirds are still entertaining.  When they are gone, the seed feeders will be hung out again and the blue jays, woodpeckers and chickadees will return, keeping me busy until spring when the next bobolink, shrike and hummingbird seasons begin again.

five on the feeder

Life is great!

And then the barking started

There I was, 3:30 a.m., sound asleep in bed.  Nice and cosy, fresh breeze coming through the open window, cat sleeping beside me.

And then the barking started.
And I was instantly awake and smiling.

I had been anxiously waiting all winter for the return of the whip-poor-wills - anxious because last summer I'd heard very few and I was concerned that the terrible downward spiral of the WPWI population had hit Carden.

Since the singing started a few nights ago I have spent many sleepless minutes (hours) in the middle of the night, smiling and relieved that, for now at least, the WPWI is still present in Carden.

Then I wondered if I would hear again the sound that I had heard for the first time ever in May last year.  And, later, several times throughout the summer.

Last night it happened.

It's not really a "bark".  It sounds more like a cat working on heaving up a fur ball.  There is definitely a back-of-the-throat element to it.  But it brought a smile to my face to hear it last night.

The fox was back!

This time, though, the barking went on for a long time.  There seemed to be an almost plaintive tone to it.  I began to worry that the fox had been injured on the road.

So at 3:40 a.m., I was dressed and headed out to make sure it wasn't.  With headlight in hand, I wandered down the now silent road and saw nothing.  The barking had stopped shortly after I got outside.

The WPWI, however, were singing brilliantly - two of them, to the south and to the east.
The spring peepers were peeping in the distance with an American toad or two adding to the song.

The sky was full of stars and a quarter moon and yet more stars.  As I stood there looking up at the Big Dipper (one of the few constellations I can identify), a woodcock peented from nearby and the leaves from last fall were rustling as new growth pushed up towards open sky.  There was not a bug in sight or sound.

A WPWI began to call from the north, sounding as though it were not more than 100 m away.  I cut through the already long grass, soaking my pants, seeking a view of this bird.

 Scanning with the headlamp, a pair of glowing green eyes sat frozen in place over by the fence line.  Was it really eyes or just a reflective sticker?  Eventually they moved - maybe a WPWI, not scary at all.

Then I remembered the recent reports of bear in the area and reconsidered going any further.
With a sigh, I turned back towards the house and slept well for the rest of the night, content with the world here in Carden.

Carden Sounds

After a night of high winds and rain (and a leaking window), the morning brought another surprise - no power.  So what to do? What to do?

I went back to bed for a bit.  Got up, studied dragonflies for a bit.
And then, after a phone call from a friend, I decided to do the Carden thing - take a trip down Victoria Road and over to Wylie Road.  And what a trip it was.

The first bird of note: a shrike.  I'd seen one in this very spot last week; it seems it's sticking around. And the sound associated with the shrike is.......human swearing as it flies out of range just before I can push the shutter on the camera.

While stopped for the shrike, I become aware of other Carden sounds.

Upland sandpipers are wolf whistling in the distance and peeping right there on the fencepost.
Meadowlark lemon is everywhere. There are peents and rattles and that glorious clear song celebrating the arrival on the breeding grounds.

A savannah sparrow pops up from the grass and stands on a fence post but, again, not quite long enough to be captured by the camera.
Red-winged blackbirds chack and gurgle over territories.
Starlings whistle and squeak and murmur.

Both a great blue heron and a turkey vulture flap and soar overhead, soundless.
Snipe are winnowing high up in the sky and wheeting from deep in the grass.

Further along the road, the cattle munch the new grass found deep within last year's brown remains.
Turning onto Wylie, there is a bluebird, sitting silently beside the babbling roadside stream.

A chorus of chorus frogs strum their combs.
The tires splash through the ever-present puddle.

A song sparrow settles into a tree, practicing its song between bouts of grooming.
A kestrel sits in a dead tree watching my approach and takes to the air when I'm just three steps away from the fence which would have provided support for an over-extended camera.

A tree sparrow quietly explores a sumac while robins whinny and sing.
A lone leopard frog snores once, twice; a couple of geese argue with honks on a distant pond.

A single chipping sparrow trills and, out there, someone sings a song both repeated and varied.  Was that a brown thrasher?
As I move along to try to locate it, I am distracted by an even more distinct song.  Looks like a grackle but sounds very much different.  Rather like a rusty gate.  Rather like a rusty blackbird.  Hard to see the rust against a difficult sky but the gate and the eye and the bill are right.

A pair of mallards quack - how quaint the sound - as they move further away from my approach.
Then the rain starts plopping, leaving ripples in the water.
The wind rustles in the trees; the nose sniffs, running in the cold.
Back in the car, turn on the heater.  Warm, warm, cold fingers.

Stop at the puddles to listen again.  Turn off the heater, hear the chorus of combs and see the sandhill crane, no bugling this time, just steady wingbeats carrying it off to the distance.

On the return trip up Victoria Road, mourning doves coo their sad song.
The windshield wipers are squeaking.

A turkey gobbles and shimmies his wings, trying to entice his two female friends that he is better than the other turkey tom gobbling from the adjacent field.

A quick stop at the pond, a pair of bufflehead dive and come together and eventually flap the water in an anxious flight away from an unseen danger.

These are the sounds of Carden today.

Spring comes to Carden

Today it was warm for the second day in a row.
Today I went out without winter coat or winter boots.
Today spring has come to Carden.

After a morning of working on the computer I decided that I really needed to get out to enjoy the day.  Where better to go than to check out Wylie and Alvar Roads.  On the drive down Victoria Road, I saw that Alvar Road was still too snowy and icy to travel so I continued down and along over to Wylie.  Along the way, kestrels lifted from the hydro lines as my car passed by, crows flew overhead and the brown fields looked lifeless.

And then I saw what always makes me smile: the cattle are back on the landscape.

I can't tell you why seeing them out makes me feel so content except that there is something so basically natural here.  These are not manicured paddocks, not maintained, not groomed.  These animals have the chance to live in a very wild way, dealing with natural things like coyotes, lightning strikes and junipers.  They go into the trees for shade when it gets hot and wander the acres looking for food when they are hungry.  The cattle in Carden go out on the land in spring and don't come in again until fall turns the grasses too brown to consume.  Some have their calves out there; some are just fattening up for a different fate.

So after pausing to connect again with this life, I forged ahead. And Wylie did not disappoint.
It was in its usual challenging condition.

After careful maneuvering around potholes and puddles, I was eventually stopped by snow.

So I parked the car and continued on foot.  As I walked I could hear a couple of crows having an argument with a raven.  A killdeer was calling and the red-winged blackbirds were exclaiming over their territories.

And then I was stopped again - too much water to ford.

I took a few moments to look around, to listen to the wind and the birds and to wonder why this desolate landscape resonates with me so much.

And then I turned around and headed back to the car.

Nearly there, I encountered this little bit of wildlife as it made its way along the road.

On the drive back down Wylie I was stopped by the sight of a bird flying into a tree.  It was not a starling or a red-winged blackbird.  This was something different but the light was bad and I could not be sure what it was until she flew down beside her very blue mate.  I watched as this bluebird pair travelled along the fenceline.  Then they landed and I thought I could take a picture of them.  But as I focussed in my attention was drawn away by something else even more unexpected.

What was that I was hearing? Was I mistaking it for a variation of the call of a red-winged blackbird? There it was again.  And on the other side of the road, again. The unmistakable sound of a fingernail being drawn across the teeth of a comb.

Could it possibly be that there were chorus frogs there in the long wet grass feeling spry with the sudden warmth?  I sat and listened for several minutes and it surely did sound like that to me.

I drove further south along the road and then turned the car back northward, hoping to see the bluebirds again.  Crossed the massive puddle for the third time but no sign of the birds so I parked the car and waited.  I never did see them again.

But they have returned.  More will be coming.
And soon this desolate land will be filled with bobolink and grasshopper sparrows, upland sandpipers and snipe, butterflies and dragonflies and wildflowers.
It's already started.
We just need to wait a little bit longer for the Carden landscape to show its colours.

The Down Side

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I love just about everything about this area.  Even the bear, while frightening at first, was a great experience.

Now it's time to relate something I do not like about this area.

It's "a dead zone".  It's "a marginal zone".  "Don't bother".

These are the things I've been told time and again when I do research into getting decent internet access.  It's disgusting that, in this area just an hour and a half from Toronto, there is no decent high speed internet available to residents.  The providers all know this and still do nothing about it because "there aren't enough customers".

When I first moved here, Bell dial-up was the only thing available.  Dial-up!  In the 21st century!  It was ridiculous.

A year or so later, I received a flyer in the mail - if the house still had a TV tower, there was now a possibility of getting high speed internet in my area.  Quickly I picked up the phone and called.  "We-ell, you live in a dead zone.  It might be possible but more likely it's not."  Hopes not yet dashed, I set up an appointment for a technician to try to install the receiver at the top of the TV tower.

Up he climbs.  And spends many long minutes rotating the receiver to get a signal that is at least marginal.  Okay, high speed internet has been connected though the signal is so poor that the speed is barely better than it was on dial-up.  But at least I would no longer have to hear that terrible sound of dial-up connecting.  I was thrilled.

Over the next three years, that feeling diminished steadily as nearly monthly, the internet would be down.  "A weather system is interfering with the signal."  "Snow has caused a piece on the tower to freeze."  "You really shouldn't even be a customer as the signal is so low - you are in a dead zone." "There are too many customers on right now so the signal is low." "The equipment on the tower is so old that it will never be able to get a good signal all the way up to you."  "Just wait, all the towers are being upgraded to WiMax.  By the end of 2013, you might(!) have good internet."  "A new satellite has just been launched.  Maybe you should switch to satellite (at a significantly more expensive monthly rate) (and you'll not get a signal when the weather is bad, and there is a significant lag time)."  "By the way, the monthly rental fee for the receiver is going up again (if I'd been able to purchase the thing, I would have had it paid off by now but the gouging continues because purchase was not an option)."

Time and time again, I spent hours on the phone with the technician.  A 15 foot extender pole was installed, putting the receiver up the equivalent of three storeys high.  New cable was installed from the dish to the computer.  Nothing worked.  Yearly, I would research internet providers hoping to find one that was available.  Nope....nobody else in this area because......this is a dead zone!

Finally in February of this year, the straw broke the camel's back.  Internet had been down for several days and I once again looked into other options.  Fortunately the neighbour came through.  He's had a Bell TurboHub for about a year now and it's been reliable for him.  But maybe it wouldn't have to be Bell.  Rogers and Telus also have this technology.

More research.  The technology uses cell phone signals to provide internet access.  Rogers signals barely make it to Uphill - scratch that option off the list.  Telus looks good - my Koodo phone works well enough and that uses Telus cell signals.  Then I discover that this technology is not available in Ontario at all.  Only B.C. and Alberta get to use it.

Sadly, that leaves me with Bell.  I thought I was done with Bell when I got rid of my land line in 2012.  Now I was having to go back to them for internet.  Sigh.

The neighbour brings his TurboHub over to make sure I can get a signal in my house.  It works.  In to town I go to purchase the TurboHub.  One hundred dollars later, I am back home and testing the hub in the various windows of the house to see where the best signal would be.  Great - the upper window facing south is best.  So I set up the computer for wireless......and it's not working.  The hub is working, the iPod is receiving, the laptop is receiving but the computer is not.  Sadly, it's so old that it doesn't have the infrared receiver and so will never be able to go wireless.

Down to the computer the hub is placed.  A little disappointing as the signal is not quite as good but it works.

I'm in......not yet heaven.  There is a bit of a lag time that I have to get used to.  I'm limited to using 2 GB per month so have to be careful how much I use it.  But it's working and it's essentially reliable.  I change my email address as I'm losing my email account with the previous provider - go gmail, it's great!  I call the previous provider and make arrangements to have the receiver retrieved from its high perch.

And I settle in, mostly content.

And then one morning, I start the computer and I have no internet.  I call the help line.

"You are in a marginal zone.  We should just cancel your account right now.  Have you tried the hub anywhere else?"

Back onto the hamster wheel running but getting nowhere.

I don't cancel the account.  I do take the hub to an area outside this dreaded dead zone.  Still no signal.  It's the hub itself.

I call the help line again.  I say it's the hub.  I'm told, "no, it's probably the tower.  I'll check and call you back in half an hour."  Two hours later, the return call is useless because the technician has been on a long technical call with someone else and hasn't been able to check the tower.  "Check with your neighbour to see if his hub is working."  Unfortunately by now it's after 11 pm.

So I have to wait until he gets home from work the next day.  But in the meantime, I go down to Sutton and test the hub in the library there.  Still not working.  I tell you, it's the hub.  "No, that is highly unlikely.  It is something else.  Check with your neighbour."

The neighbour brings over his hub and sets it right beside my hub.  His works perfectly.  Mine is still not.

Finally the help desk accepts that the problem is the hub.  "You'll have to take it back.  Oh and by the way, if this had happened during the first 30 days post purchase, you would get a replacement immediately.  After the first 30 days post purchase, a new hub will have to be ordered because replacements in this case come from a different source.  It could take as many as 30 days to get the replacement."

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!

I've wasted at least 3 days getting the help desk to accept that the hub is the problem and have thus fallen just outside the 30 day range.

In to town I go, steaming.  Yes, the hub is being returned outside the 30 day limit.  It will take 2 to 3 days to get a replacement (that's better than 30).  And we have a loaner you can use in the meantime (!!)"

Finally, some good news.  As the rep prints off the multipage form I have to sign in order to get the loaner, she removed the sim card from my hub and puts it into the loaner.  I say, "There is some concern that the sim card might be the problem."  "Oh no," she says.  "That's not likely."

Hmmmm.  Okay well she should know, right?

I complete the thirty minute drive home and plug in the loaner.  Still no internet!  Cuss word, cuss word, cuss word, string of cuss words.

I call the store and am told to come in for a new sim card which will cost "$5 plus the $20 activation fee".  "For a sim card that is only a month old?"  "Well, there is no warranty on these things but come in and we'll waive the cost."

Another 30 minute drive into town.  A new sim card is provided.  It is put into the original hub to test.  Nope, the hub is still  not working properly.  So both the hub and the sim card were the problem.

Thirty minutes back home, STILL NO INTERNET.  At this point, I am so frustrated I just start crying.
Then I call the store again.  This time, I talk with Kim who says "Well of course your sim card won't work.  The loaner is not set up to read that sim card."  "So how do we fix that?"  "We don't," she says. "The loaner is intended only to test if there is a signal at your location."

Can I say it again?

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!

The next day, I receive a call to tell me the replacement has come in.  It's taken only one day!  Back into town I go.  Brandon takes care of me.  I ask him to test the replacement.  He removes the sim card from the loaner and puts it into the new hub.  I mention that the new hub hasn't been set up to read that sim card (see how quickly I learn).  He shakes his head.  Fifteen minutes later, he still can't get the new hub to work.  I repeat that bit about the sim card.  "Oh, let's try the card that came with the new hub!" he says.  Success!

It's been two weeks.  The new hub is working well.  The signal is decent even in the near constant snow we've been getting this month.

And I am keeping my fingers crossed that this new hub will last more than a month.

After all, the Bell employees just laughed every time I asked them, "what if this hub dies as well?"

Oh, that won't happen!

Keep your fingers crossed.  And if I don't respond to your emails at some point, I'm probably without internet.  Be patient and hopefully I will be back online some day.

NOTE: as I reread this in October, I discover that only a part of this story has been told.  The replacement hub did last longer than one month.  Then three months after I got it, it too stopped working.  Replacement came within a week.  That one lasted only two weeks.  And took two weeks to be replaced.  I'm now on the fourth hub since February.  Now that's a GOOD product (can you hear the sarcasm?) that Bell continues to sell to unwitting fools like myself.

And now I'm thinking I might just need to go back to xplornet.  I'm going to have to wait though.  The contract that allows me to use this great Bell product goes until Feb. 2015 and it's going to cost me nearly $400 to get out of the contract despite the fact that I've already gone through 4 hubs and I'm in a marginal zone where the speed I receive is less than 1/10th of the speed I'm paying for.

Sigh.....I really do love this area.  I just wish it had better internet.

Firewood

When I moved into this house, I experienced the wonder of wood heat for the first time in my life.  Sure I'd had a fireplace in a house or two previously but to actually heat the house with wood was a new experience for me.  This house had a combination wood/oil furnace as well as a wood cook stove in the kitchen.  The furnace, however, was ancient and massive.  The neighbour had warned me that there may be issues with the connection to the chimney.  So I was loath to use it.  The oil part of the furnace was smelly and inefficient so before long, I had replaced the furnace with a high efficiency dual speed propane furnace.  It is a very nice furnace but what I have found is this:

At a thermostat reading of twenty degrees, the propane heat is still a little chilly.  This is a 150 year old house with little insulation and many ways for wintery air to get in.  When the wood stove is on and the thermostat is reading twenty degrees, I am very comfortable.  Somehow, wood heat at the same temperature as propane heat feels warmer.

I am as happy as can be when the fall temperatures get low enough for me to start lighting the wood stove.  I love that heat.  Despite all the work involved in handling firewood, I have no interest in ever giving up wood heat.

I am also happy to have the stove going because I have no electric oven and so cannot bake anything during the warmer months of the year.  The casseroles get started come cool autumn weather; the water for the teapot gets heated on the surface of the stove and the teapot itself sits on a tile on the stove to stay warm all day long.

Have I said it before?  I love my wood cook stove.

Did I mention this earlier?  Firewood takes a lot of work.

Prior to the Never Ending Rains of October, I had managed to about half fill the woodshed with wood from the stacks at the other end of the property.  During the Never Ending Rains of October, I was unable to move any wood in but was burning it at a rate much higher than usual for October.  We have had five days now with no rain.  And a couple more days to come if the weather forecasters are correct.  I've been busy as a beaver, despite being unable to breathe thanks to the flu, moving firewood into the shed.  It's nearly filled - maybe by tomorrow I'll be done as I don't want to rely on the "accuracy" of weather forecasters.

I've calculated that the shed can hold four bush cord of firewood though I try to stuff in as much in every nook and cranny as I can as four cord doesn't take me through the winter.

During my first summer in this house, I spent hours looking for someone who could supply me with firewood.  I seem to be outside of the range of most of the folks who advertise in the local paper as the "local" paper originates an hour away.  Finally, I managed to find someone and had him deliver two bush cord.  It was September before the wood was delivered so I moved it right into the shed.  And that was where the fun started.

Never having stacked firewood before, I quickly realize that spatial recognition is a great asset to have.  Fortunately, I do have that to a degree.  What I did find, however, was that, as I was stacking subsequent stacks of wood, I continually worried that the previous stack would somehow topple over and I would be buried.  Of course, this never happened.  But those two cord were stacked very very carefully.  And they didn't last the winter.  They were also not quite dry enough so the wood didn't burn all that well.

I managed to find a different source of wood the next spring.  The fellow had a woodlot down the road and didn't deliver so I moved three bush cord of wood in the trunk of my eleven year old Toyota Corolla.  What a riot!  What a lot of trips in the car.  I found that a single cord took twelve trips.  But at least I had wood nicely stacked out in the sun to dry all summer.  Okay, so maybe not so nicely stacked as I was constantly having to deal with stacks that had fallen over.

In the fall, it was time to move the wood in.  There in the back of my mind continued the notion that the stacks might topple and bury me.  Again, they did not.  Again, the wood did not last the winter.

And so the next spring, I got four cord of wood.  By now, I had a brand new Toyota Corolla.  After only a minor pause to consider the implications, the new car was put into action to haul firewood.  With the larger trunk, each cord required only ten trips.  Several times that spring, I thought I would never make it.  But the wood got moved, and it got stacked to dry.

Come the fall and time to move the wood into the shed.  Here is when I realized that I needed to make each stack higher in order to be able to fit the four cord in.  And here is when I lost my fear of falling stacks.  I developed a system where I would create a stack as high as I had before.  Then, in front of that stack, a second stack about three feet high.  Using a step stool, I would step onto the shorter stack and fill the taller stack right up to the rafters.  It's taken me three years to perfect the system but it's working pretty well now.

In this shot, you can see that the wood is up to the rafters.  You can also see how I've used wood to fill in the space where the stud comes out.

The beautiful sight of stacked wood.

Oh, and by the way, if you have ever tried to balance yourself on a stack of wood three feet high and sixteen inches deep, you quickly realize that it takes a great deal of careful maneuvering to bend down, pick up a piece of wood, stand up and shift that piece of wood above your head so that it can be stacked correctly.

So when you find yourself cozying up to a friend's wood stove after a cold day skiing, be sure to pause a moment to appreciate the amount of work involved in getting that wood from woodlot to stove.

And now I'm off to check the stove to see if it needs more wood.

Finally

Well, here I am, finally back to writing this blog.  It's been a while since I've been on.  Over the months, I've considered writing a story about this or that but when it came to sitting down at the computer and actually composing one, I lacked the motivation.  Often, I would wonder just what would give me enough impetus to finally overcome my apathy.  Was it going to be the fantastic fall colours, the best I've seen in years, probably thanks to the severe drought we had this summer?  Nope.  Or how about my upcoming adventures in beekeeping and how I got started with that venture?  Almost but not quite.  The closest I came to starting up again was when I first went out on my newest passion, geocaching.  But then I came down with the flu and spent a week filling kleenexes, swallowing ibuprofen and sucking on throat lozenges.  Finally today, I have the urge to write.

What, you might ask, is the cause of this?

Well, I was moving firewood into my wood shed earlier today.  I had managed to move about half of what I needed to move before the never ending rain of October started.  Now, we've finally got some sunshine and dry days and this wood really needs to be moved before the snow flies.

Anyway, while taking a break from moving wood, I found myself standing outside trying to train the blue jays to not be such pigs.  They really are clever creatures and should be trainable but a full feeder is apparently too much temptation.  After spending some time at this very important (?) activity, the near freezing temperature and a bit of common sense got the better of me so I went inside to find a voice mail message on my phone.

And here we finally come to my motivation.

The voice mail message was from the daughter of a friend of mine.  I haven't seen Marion in years (and here you might notice that I am straying away from my personal guideline of naming no names) but we were good friends in our days back in Ottawa.  When the daughter introduced herself, my first thought was, "oh no, Marion has died".

It wasn't Marion but her husband Ken.  Ken has had Alzheimer's for a number of years.  He's been living in an extended care facility for a while now.  And this past weekend, Ken died.

I must admit, I feel that I never really got to know Ken too well.  My memories of him consist mostly of this: he was a quiet and kind man who, every four weeks for about five years, would, without complaint, retreat to the basement to watch TV while we four gals would play bridge.  He was the only husband to be found in our merry band of bridge players and, really, the only sign of him when we were in his house was the faint smell of cigarette smoke wafting up the stairs.

Like everyone who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Ken deserved a better end to his life.

And so, to Marion and her children and grandchildren, I wish for you fond memories of your husband, father and grandfather.  Try to remember him as he was and not as what he became.

Stay healthy!

Wonderful Carden

On Wednesday evening, I made the trek to the mailbox on the corner to see if any mail was awaiting me.  Shortly after crossing the road I heard the whisper of a familiar song.  I stopped, waited for the oncoming traffic to pass by and listened intently.  Yes, there it was again - the unmistakable song of the whip-poor-will.  We don't usually hear them this late in the season but the sound reminded me (as if I needed reminding!) of just how wondrous this area is.

I moved here in 2008, having left the flats of eastern Ontario far behind.  I'd lived in the Ottawa area since 1992, first in Ottawa itself and, later, in a small town about an hour's drive south of Ottawa.  It was at Mud Lake at the Britannia Filtration Plant where I first encountered birding and fell in love with it.  After joining the Ottawa Field Naturalists' Club, I went on numerous outings and called the bird line daily, all to see some amazing birds.  On a regular basis in spring and fall, the bird line announced the presence of sand hill cranes at a farmer's field east of Ottawa.  And off I would go to catch a view of these spectacular birds.  Not once did I see one.

On owl outings, the subject of woodcocks would come up.  They were back, you should see them.  Go out at dusk to see their fascinating display.  Never managed to see or hear a single one.  On drives home from Ottawa, I would occasionally see a wild turkey, nothing more than a dark speck in a distant field.  Once, I managed to hear the burble of a bobolink; another time, I watched in awe as a pileated woodpecker flew away.  And the whip-poor-will was nothing more than a picture in a book.

It was early May when I moved into my current house.  The first month was taken up with removing the carpet, replacing the electrical panel and painting.  Finally, it was time to get outside to trim the cedar hedge which had grown so tall that it was nearly hitting the hydro line above.  There I was, sawing the tops off the individual trees when I heard the oddest sound.  It was definitely coming from something flying overhead so I ran over to get out from under the canopy of the maple and there, up there above my head, were three sand hill cranes flying overhead.  All those hours when I had searched for them in the Ottawa area and here they were flying over my house.  I would learn later that they have been around for years, nesting in the Park to the north.  Since then, I've seen or heard them on multiple occasions but the thrill has never worn off.

In the summer of 2009, I discovered that I had to bring the bird feeders in overnight or the raccoons would get them.  One dusky evening, I heard what I thought was a late goldfinch.  All summer I was amazed with how late the goldfinches continued to call in this area.  It wasn't until late spring 2010 when I realized that those goldfinches that I was hearing were actually woodcocks.  Once again, the bird long searched for in Ottawa had shown up right on my property.  Now I stand and enjoy their peents and other vocalizations for just a few minutes every evening in spring when I bring the feeders in.

And the turkeys......

One morning during my first winter here, I was returning from the mailbox and noticed some odd tracks in the snow on my driveway.  Turkey tracks.  Four young males came by regularly that winter, cleaning up the seed that had fallen to the ground from the feeders.  They were very skittish and would run if they saw me at the window.  During the following summer, a turkey hen started bringing her nine chicks to be fed by me.  This continued all summer and into the winter.  The band disbursed in the spring but Dude and his entourage of three males continued to come by every day for their feeding.  Slowly the entourage disappeared until only Dude was left.  He was so used to me that he would let me walk right up to him.  He loved to have his seed served on the bumper of my truck so that he didn't have to reach all the way to the ground to eat.  I last saw him on April 24.  Hunting season started on April 25.  I mourned that darned bird for over a year.  I still miss him.

As for the bobolink, this summer I have had the pleasure of watching fledglings fly, of seeing males gather for a chat on the telephone lines, of following females visually as they cautiously approached their nests with food.

For two winters now, a pileated woodpecker female has come by on a daily basis, sometimes up to three times per day, for her daily serving of peanut butter.  She prefers crunchy peanut butter over smooth.  Often she will announce her presence if she finds that the blue jays have already eaten all the peanut butter and she will wait in the dead elm until I put more out for her.

And then there is the whip-poor-will.

I can still remember clearly that evening when I was, yes, bringing in the bird feeders.  A bird was calling loudly in the distance and to remember the song so that I could look it up, I started trying to make a phrase of what it was saying.  And yes, it was indeed saying whip-poor-WILL.  Since then, I have been awakened at two in the morning by the calling of whip-poor-wills and it still makes me smile.

Two years in a row I completed whip-poor-will surveys covering territory further east of here.  For both years, the birds were singing as I got into my car to head out, I spent two to four hours stopping at designated stops to hear not a single whip-poor-will and when I returned home, the sound was still ringing out over my house.  This year, instead of following a route, I chose to do a square from the breeding bird atlas instead.  Incredibly, the 2005 atlas indicated no presence of whip-poor-wills in the square that includes my house.  I was pretty sure I could correct that information.  With a quick trip down Victoria Road and along Alvar Road, I managed to confirm that whip-poor-wills are definitely in this square.  At one stop, I had nine different whip-poor-wills calling.

And THAT is the wonder of wonderful Carden.

Faded Embers

The embers have faded; the light has gone out.

This story starts in December 2009.  I had just deposited an inheritance cheque from my father's estate and had popped in to the pet store that was next door to the bank.  I'd been having problems with the cat from next door spraying my house.  Pretty unpleasant stepping our your door and smelling the spray from an unneutered male cat.  I'd once bought something called Cat Scat Mats from Lee Valley which had been very effective at a previous house where I had the same problem (why do I attract these whole spraying male cats?).  So I entered the pet store hoping to find something similar.

Instead, I found a tortoiseshell cat sitting in a cage in the middle of the store.  As I approached, she got up and stretched and rubbed the bars of the cage hoping for a stroke or two from me.  I've always liked torties  so when I saw that she was a cat available for adoption from the SPCA and not just a kitten mill cat that pet shops like to sell for exorbitant prices, I decided to take her home.  Of course, I couldn't actually take her home there and then as she still had to be spayed.  Two weeks later, I received the call from the SPCA that Lilith had had her operation and was available to take home.

Okay, okay.....Lilith was a horrible name for her.  Instead, she was renamed Ember as the tortoiseshell colouration reminded me of glowing coals.  Ember was tucked away in a bedroom until the other two cats got more used to her smell and eventually she was allowed to have the whole run of the house.

And that is when all our lives changed.  The red gene in cats tends to make them feisty and Ember had decided that she was going to rule the roost.  She smacked the others if they ever dared to get close, she took over favourite sleeping spots and she decided that my lap was the best sleeping spot of all.

I, on the other hand, found her too needy.  She was always craving more attention from me but, like the others, I learned to tolerate her presence and we all settled into our new routine.

In June of this year, Ember stopped eating with her usual vigour.  I spent countless hours in the grocery store trying to figure out what flavour of food she would like this week.  And I spent even more hours at home trying to cajole her into eating.  All this was happening while I was in the full throes of bobolink monitoring as well as responding to the Weed Nazis who were insisting that I address the "grass complaint" that had been filed against my property.

In July, Ember went to the vet whereupon it was discovered that she had a heart problem and fluid on her lungs.  She was put on a diuretic and heart medication.  After a month, she still hadn't improved and last Friday I made the decision to put her down.  It was the right decision as Ember had lost the use of one of her front legs, she was still having difficulty breathing and she was quite thin despite having a good appetite.  That doesn't mean that I did not shed copious tears.  Despite the fact that we had never really bonded, she was a part of my family and would be missed.

Having said that, the original two cats are in their glory.  They have reclaimed their favourite sleeping spots, they've stopped having to sneak around corners to avoid being smacked, they have regained the personalities they had before Ember came into the household.

It's been just over a week since her last day.  I still occasionally look out into the porch to see if she is there sleeping.  I expect her to come out from under the table in the kitchen when she is hungry.  When one of the other cats stomps all over my lap with her pebble toes, I think of Ember who could sneak onto my lap and settle down without my ever even noticing.  She would lean against my back when I sat at the computer, she loved to run and bounce off the walls to turn a corner and she terrorized the turkey feather tied to the stair railing.  And on that last day, during that last hour, when the vet was waiting for the technician to return from lunch, Ember and I sat in the examining room and she purred for me one last time.  She let me scritch her head and give her a tummy rub, both of which she had so liked me to do but couldn't tolerate while she was sick.  And her little orange toes kneaded the air one last time.

It was over in a moment
In a moment
It was done.

With a prick of the skin,
A push of the finger,
The spark was diminished
The life force was drained

A shift of position
One last weary sigh
The cold crept in even deeper

Her heart or mine
Your life or not
The memory still lingers
As I say good-bye

It was over in a moment.
In a moment
She was gone.

Ember, I hope you are running the fields in some happy place.
Bye bye baby girl.

Who's That Foxy Lady?

So I've already mentioned my wonderful neighbours - the mow-aholics next door and the feisty old lady across the street.

Now I've found I have a new neighbour.

Perhaps this neighbour has been here all along but has been so quiet I didn't know she was there.

Or perhaps she's been bullied by the larger and more aggressive neighbours and so had been biding her time before making her presence known.

Happily, since I've mowed my paths, the raccoon seems to be avoiding my place.  I say happily because, although I actually do enjoy watching the raccoon feed - sitting on its round bum and contentedly looking around while its front feet and jaws do all the work - its visits have been getting increasingly frustrating.  You see, instead of just arriving earlier and earlier each evening to beat my taking in the feeders, this one decided to start coming in the morning as soon as I had put the feeders out.  So instead of the birds being able to eat all day until I bring the feeders back in, I've been completely unable to put any feeders out except for the nectar feeders and the niger feeder.  Apparently, niger seed is not good enough.

I imagine it won't take Buster (now listen, buster....you leave those feeders alone!) long to adjust to the mowed areas and the battle will start again.  But for now, I've been able to put the feeders out in the morning and leave them out later in the day.

That said, I do still take them in at night.  The bear hasn't been around in nearly two weeks but I'm sure it's still hanging around somewhere close.

Yesterday evening, everything but a few small nectar feeders had been brought in.  I was standing near the small feeders, watching the female hummingbird try to get some only to be chased away by the male.  She would fan her tail trying to look bigger and tougher but he wasn't backing down.  She would duck and swoop and make a feint towards another feeder; he did not fall for any of it.  There was no way he was going to let her eat.

As I watched these struggles, I turned my head to check out the hummingbirds at another feeder.  And that is when my new neighbour appeared.

I'm not sure where she came from - was it from across the road?  Did she brave the endless Friday evening traffic?  Or had she been in the long grass that has not yet been cut?

Anyway, there she was trotting up my driveway towards me.  She had a large rodent in her jaws and seemed quite unconcerned about anything.  I remained still as she approached.  When she got to within two meters she stopped briefly.  While she never made eye contact with me or even looked in my direction she had obviously picked up my scent.  In the blink of an eye, she had turned and started running back the way she had come and I saw her no more.

She was beautiful, this foxy lady.

And I hope I get to see her again.

Ah, Neighbours

Neighbours.......you gotta love 'em!

Or do you?

I live in the middle of nowhere.  To the east, I have no neighbour for several kilometres.  To the north, some fields and then the Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park.  To the south, woodlot going down who knows how far.  Sadly, to the west, I have a neighbour.  Even worse, the neighbour's father visits on a daily basis, expounding his wisdom, doling out criticism and generally voicing his views on life to which everyone else must agree .

But no problemo.....the neighbour and I are friendly, the father I mostly ignore, finding things to do when he shows up.

Until this week.

On Monday, I received a visit from Municipal Enforcement.  "Someone" has filed a grass complaint against my property.  Gee, I wonder who that "someone" could be.  There's nobody else who would care.  There are fields to the east and west and south that look no better than my yard.  But "someone" has taken offense that my yard has been left natural.  It looks as natural as all those fields around me which are not offensive.

Again I say, I live in the middle of nowhere.

So why should it matter to anyone that I am leaving my yard as natural as all the natural space around me?  Natural, that is, except that I make an effort to control the invasive plant species that grow in my yard.

I admit, things did get away from me a little this year.  What with going to Pelee, doing the Carden Challenge and spending three full days working at the Carden Nature Festival, I've been pretty busy.  Add to that, I am now working, heading out at dawn to monitor birds all over the Carden area.  So yes, there are areas in my yard that are quite out of control.

But I didn't need to be told by Municipal Enforcement who would have left me alone had this complaint not been filed.  I was already on the verge of doing some trimming.  Now that I am being forced to, however......well, that is a whole different kettle of fish.  I am nothing if not contrary.

I have nothing against mowing except for the fact that it is a complete waste of resources.

That said, I mow when and where I have to.  For example, I have a path around my property where I patrol during my morning rounds.  Lately, because things are out of control, I've been getting wet up to my hips as I push through the grass and clover and goldenrod.  Thanks to the morning dew or overnight rain, my pants are soaked by the time I am heading back inside.

So I mow the path.  I've mowed the grass growing under the clothesline.  I've cut around the numerous hollyhocks and peonies.  I've left some goldenrod but chopped down others because they are threatening to take over everything.

I have left the burdock alone as they are choking out the invasive goutweed.  And before you get all up in arms about the burdock being invasive as well, I allow the plants to flower - the bumblebees love them - and then I carefully cut off every stalk that exhibits burs.  Since burdock reproduces only by seed, the burdock without burs cannot spread.  In fact, because they are biennials, they often die after flowering.

And in the meantime, the ghastly goutweed and the Campanula.are being smothered out by these buxom burdock beauties.  What!, you say - you are trying to get rid of the Campanula?  Sigh.  The plethora of invasive species that the previous owner of this house either planted or didn't control is incredible.  I have garlic mustard, goutweed, yellow loosestrife (not as bad as its purple cousin but can be a problem as well) and, yes, Campanula.  Did you know that there are almost 500 species of Campanula?  Out of this number, one is considered to be highly invasive.........yup, that's the one I've got.  It spreads everywhere easily.

But I digress.

So now a complaint has been filed.  The fellows from Municipal Enforcement were quite nice and informed me that, as I was planning to mow this week anyway, they would not make the complaint official.  That was nice.  But now I am wondering if this "someone" is planning to start a regular campaign of complaints.  Now I have decided that I do want the complaint to become formal so that if and when this "someone" (feel free to insert another word here) continues to complain, I have the basis to take this to a higher level.

In the meantime, relations with the neighbour himself have become somewhat frosty.  Not a problem for me as I can get along quite well without but I sense that he is feeling uncomfortable.

Ah, neighbours.....you really do have to love them.

How do you do it?

Sorry I haven't been on much lately.  I've been working - actual paid work.  For the first time since I moved here in 2008, I've got a job.

I'm doing some bird monitoring work - I'm getting paid to watch birds.  In other words, I'm getting paid to do something I like..

Carden is an environmentally sensitive area which needs as much help as possible to save it from nefarious characters who would willingly plow it under or dig huge pits, characters who have no appreciation of the natural wonder of this place, who see only the bottom line, the almighty dollar.

And then there are the other characters who work hard to save this area.

Can you guess which group of characters I'm working for?

It is a tricky thing to deal with these two sides.  Both views need to be balanced and I like to think that the work I'm doing is contributing to that balance.

Carden is also a politically sensitive area.  There are inflamed opinions, exaggerated passions and there are folks with very short tempers.  When I first began the third of my three projects earlier this week, I was filled with trepidation at facing these short tempered locals.  I would pull up to a monitoring site carefully, trying to stay out of view as much as possible.  By Friday, I had encountered, and managed to hold my own, with enough of them that trying to be unseen while I work was unnecessary.  And this is fortunate because in many cases, invisibility was impossible.

Before I started, I realized that I was having some difficulty locating the birds I was looking for.  I thought I would never be able to do the job properly.  On the first day, I did eight sites though I returned to the first four the next day because I lacked the confidence to believe that the numbers I'd found were correct - they were!

By Wednesday, I had developed an incredible knack of finding the birds that were already skulking in the grass.  And a good thing too since I probably should have started looking for the birds last week when they were still singing and posturing.  This week the majority of posturing for girls was already complete and the boys were resting up from it.

I'm not going to get into the details of any of the projects because, while this is the first job I've ever had that I like, it's still a job!  I have to get up in the morning and leave home.  I have to be away from home for extended periods.  The laundry is piling up, the dishes stay unwashed.

I miss hanging out on the computer.  I miss doing the morning counts of the birds showing up at my feeders.  I miss sitting on the couch and reading.  Heck, I miss my life of retirement.

It's been a while since I've had a nine to five job and frankly, I don't know how you do it.  How do you do it?

Pelee Perfection

The cast of characters:
The Leader
The Roommate
The Plant Expert
The Chauffeur and his wife, The Tea Maker
The Map Reader
The Limping Man and his wife, The Golfer

This trip to Pelee started back in March when we were on a Kawartha Field Naturalists’ outing to Presqu’ile.  The leader of that trip mentioned that he was going to Pelee and there was a motel that he used that was clean and had reasonable rates.  I was all excited that a trip to Pelee might be planned but no one that I asked was interested or available to go with me.

At a later KFN meeting, our Leader announced that he was planning to go to Pelee and anyone who was interested could join him.  At that point I had given up on going, not being able to afford to pay for a room all by myself.

Then we had the KFN annual general meeting at the end of April.  I learned that many others were now going on the trip and I spent much of the meeting trying to figure out how I could afford to go as well.  I’d been offered a ride but the motel was the stumbling block.  Everyone already had a roommate; I still couldn’t afford a room by myself.

On the drive home from the meeting, I realized that I had just spent over two hours trying to figure out how to go on this trip.  It dawned on me that, if I had spent this much time working on it, then I should just blow the budget and go.  The very next day, I called the motel to book a room and I contacted The Chauffeur to see if there was still room for me in his vehicle.

Just prior to the trip, The Roommate contacted me to say that her husband could not make it and was I interested in sharing a room.  Was I!!  It was all falling into place.

Excitement was building.

On Tuesday morning, I packed my goodies into the car and headed on down to The Chauffeur’s house.  From there, we went down to Lindsay to pick up The Map Reader.  Several hours later (are we there yet?) we stopped at a Tim Horton’s for a bathroom break and a tea.  And that is when I knew that the trip was going to be a great one!

We spent most of that stop laughing!

Finally we arrived in Leamington and checked into our rooms.  The Leader’s carload had arrived earlier and spent the afternoon at Hillman’s Marsh.  That’s where we were heading now.

We spent a couple of hours there, figuring out how to identify the different shorebirds that were there.  At one point, The Plant Expert wanted to see a semipalmated sandpiper so I started pointing one out.  Unfortunately, I was leading him to the semipalmated plover.  Ooops!  We laughed.

We stopped near the parking lot to examine the bumble bees that were every where on the wooden buildings.  Finally, The Plant Expert identified them not as bumble bees but as carpenter bees and we discussed their bare bums.

Back at the motel, we gathered in front of the room of The Chauffeur and The Tea Maker, pulling chairs over and opening wine and beer for our first tailgate party.  I cannot describe just how wonderful it was.  I’ve always wanted to take part in one but was usually the one with the room on another floor who never heard that a get-together was planned.  I truly felt as though I belonged and it felt great!

Where does the prothonotary warbler get its name?  The Golfer had a wonderful little book on warblers and informed us that the name referred to the special religious scribes who wore yellow hoods.  This bird was the only one I absolutely HAD to see in Pelee.  All else would be gravy......and there was a lot of very good gravy to be had.

During this tailgate party, we realized that we actually had a quorum for a KFN directors’ meeting so we made some changes to the club.  Just wait until the next directors’ meeting....it’s gonna be fun.  We laughed.

After dinner that first night, we all headed to our rooms.  It was like the bedtime scene on The Waltons with everyone calling good night to everyone else.  On the second night, we were too tired and went to our rooms in silence.

Inside the room, The Roommate explained that she needed a lot of time to get ready in the morning so an alarm was set.  When she saw that I had already set aside everything I would need in the morning, she fretted and got herself ready too.  Our preparations made us hot, particularly as the thermostat in the room indicated that the temperature was 77 degrees.  Fortunately, the roommate also prefers a cold room for sleeping so we set the air conditioning to 60 degrees.  In the meantime, we stripped off the bedcovers and blankets on our respective beds and settled in under the flimsy sheet.

I thought that we would read for a little and then go to sleep but we ended up talking for a couple of hours.  It was a real bonding experience and I thank my roommate for that.

During the night, the temperature in the room dropped and kept dropping.  First I pulled up the blanket.  Then up came the bed cover.  It was chilly!

By morning, the temperature had dropped to 59 degrees.  Now that was cold!

The Roommate got up before the alarm which had been set for 6:20.  By 6:40 she was proudly ready to go.  Well, we were both ready, but it was nearly an hour earlier than we needed to be.  We laughed.

Down to the restaurant for breakfast.  The Plant Expert who claims that he has trouble with words couldn’t remember if the eggs he wanted were easy over or over easy.  The Chauffeur made a happy face of his sunny side up eggs and hashbrowns.  We laughed.

The Leader had already been out for coffee and was feeling good.  On the second morning, he didn’t and a whole new side of him showed up.  He really did need that coffee to get him going.

We had a disappointing start on Wednesday.  The day was overcast and it began to rain on the way to the Park.  We took the tram towards The Tip and then walked the rest of the way.  Few birds were found and it was chilly.  This was the start of our visit to Pelee and we wondered what all the big fuss was about.

As we trudged back from The Tip, The Plant Expert showed us various plants to make up for the lack of birds.  Then we arrived at the tram turnaround circle and the glory of Pelee came into effect.  The number of birds was almost overwhelming.

We were a relaxed group.  There was no rigid maintaining of the larger group.  Instead, over the day, we kept breaking up into smaller groups which would, without planning, come back together again and then break up into different groups.  The ease with which we did this was miraculous.

At one point, I was looking at a bird and trying to describe it to The Leader who, we thought, was looking at the same bird.  It has an eye ring......No it doesn’t.  Look at those two distinct wing bars.  I couldn’t see any wing bars.  It took some time before we realized that we were actually looking at two different birds.  We laughed.

I first started birding when I lived in Ottawa in the early 90's and discovered the warbler mecca called Mud Lake.  It’s at the Britannia Filtration Plant and I spent many hours there alone and with groups led by the Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club.  There I learned about warbler neck.  You get warbler neck by spending hours looking up at the tops of the trees trying to find that elusive warbler.  Many of the others in our group hadn’t heard of the term before and.......we laughed.

Later, The Plant Expert pointed out a large sycamore tree.  We had to take a picture of him hugging it to show how large it was and then another picture of The Tea Maker and The Plant Expert not being able to wrap their arms fully around the circumference of the tree.  We laughed.

Another time, The Chauffeur came back to me to say that he was confused with all the orioles.  We had seen the very orange male and the yellow female.  But he had seen one that was a different colour.  When I showed him a picture of an orchard oriole, he pumped his fist in the air, proud of himself for having a) seen his first orchard oriole and b) for having picked up that it was a different bird.

It was a long trip back up the tram route.  At one point, the tram came along so we stuck out our thumbs but it drove right on past.  Sore feet and parched throats didn’t appreciate the neglect.  We did not laugh.  Later we learned that the tram could stop only at the assigned stop.

In the afternoon we took the tram down to the halfway point and headed along the trail where the prothonotary warblers were being seen.  It took a little looking - I missed the first sighting - but eventually we all got good looks at the pair which appeared to be nest building.  My trip was made.

That night, we went out to the chinese restaurant for dinner.  The placemats listed the animals of the chinese horoscope and we all identified what animal we were.  We had three rats, a horse and a tiger but the rest I don’t remember.  We fell silent when the food arrived, hungry after a long day of birding.  And then we laughed, particularly when The Leader starting rolling out the puns.

The next morning, the three carloads took their separate routes.  One left early in the morning in order to get back in time for a golf game in the afternoon.  The Leader took his crew to Rondeau Provincial Park and our vehicle went back to Pelee to check out the boardwalk.  There we were thrilled to see black terns almost close enough to touch.  One poor male arrived to give his potential mate a lovely silvery fish but she was having nothing of it.  Time and again he tried to give it to her and she kept turning away from him.  Frustrated, he flew off, circled the marsh a couple of times and returned to her.  She continued to ignore him.  Eventually, he flew off and dropped the fish then returned and settled into the nest that she had been working on.  A little housekeeping would surely do the trick.  Unfortunately, we didn’t stay long enough to see this relationship reach its conclusion but I’m hoping for good things for this male.

The drive home was a long one.  We were all tired.  At one point, we noticed The Leader’s car blow by us about 40 kph faster than we were going.  The Plant Expert was fast asleep in back seat and The Roommate looked on the edge of unconsciousness in the front seat.

Through superb decision making by The Chauffeur, we made it through the Toronto rush hour traffic without being held up.  When we exited the 407 though, the traffic was building up at the lights and stop signs.  The tailbacks, as The Tea Maker called them, were going to seriously impede our arrival home.  Then The Map Reader took control of the map and led us through the countryside, taking back roads which bypassed the traffic and got us back without much further delay.

The trip to Pelee was over.  Before the trip, I had claimed that it would probably be a one-time event for me. I wanted to experience Pelee in the spring but figured I would hate the crowds of people so much that I would never want to go back.  Well, the trip for next year has already been discussed.

If it is half as good as this one was, it too will be a good one.

Other Memories:
- handdryer at Tim Horton’s
- no Boston cream donuts “What sort of a country is this?”
- The Tea Maker using the camp stove to boil water for tea
- assigning deduction marks to The Leader for the weather
- The Limping Man suffering in silence and keeping up despite having gout
- The Leader’s rule - if you hear it, you can’t count it until you see it; which then became if you see it, you can’t count it until you hear it
- The Roommate was so cold before bed on the second night that she had to have a hot shower
- lining up the dead soldiers (empty beer and wine bottles) and taking photos of the group sitting proudly behind this extensive display.
- The Tea Maker breaking her reading glasses and The Limping Man finding a spare pair in his pocket and giving them to her

Who's that knockin' at my front door?

And so the saga continues.....

If you've read two of my previous posts (Close Encounters and I am so Ashamed), you will be aware that a bear has decided that it likes this neighbourhood.

I've told you about it standing on the first step up to my porch and my feeble reaction to that.
I've told you about the nectar feeders that got crunched and the terrible smell coming off this bear.

Now I have to tell you about the next installments to this story.

Since that Thursday night when the bear ate four of my best nectar feeders I've been very careful about bringing all feeders in.  That includes the peanut butter feeder which I'm using a lot, lot, lot these days as the hairy and pileated woodpeckers come by at least 8 times per day to get peanut butter to feed their nestlings.  But bears are, apparently, attracted by the smell of peanut butter.

This regime was going well.  I hadn't seen the bear but more importantly, I hadn't smelled the bear.

And then I was doing my feeding rounds on Friday morning.  The Carden Challenge was starting at 6 pm that day and I was focussed on the planning for the event as I walked around the property.  As I came near the end of my route which takes me past the back of the house and over to the kitchen window, I noticed something odd about my woodshed door.  Something was wrong with it.  It was broken!

Looking more closely, I noticed that pieces of my little tabletop barbecue (new this year and used only once) were strewn on the ground beside the broken boards of the woodshed door.  The bear had made another nocturnal visit, broken into the woodshed and cleaned my barbecue for me.  As the woodshed is actually attached to the house, I could very well say that the bear broke into my house!

Sigh.

The neighbour says he has some boards that can be used to replace those broken by the bear but I'm thinking solid steel might be the better bet - three inch thick solid steel.  I jest, of course, because I am committed to being braver about this bear.  I cannot, after all, continue to be shamed by the 94 year old woman living across the road.

So I'm not letting this bother me.  Three days later and the door has still not been repaired.  Okay, okay, so this may be because I was busy doing the Carden Challenge and the Carden Blitz during those days.  But I'm really not letting this bother me.

I managed to put the barbecue back together again.  The grill is slightly bent but the barbecue is otherwise okay.  I used it to grill a hamburger on Friday before the Challenge.  Knowing that I could no longer leave the barbecue in the woodshed, I have set it on the steps down to the cellar.  The bear will have to break through 2 doors to get to it.  Unfortunately, if I don't remember it's there when I go down to do the laundry, I am likely going to break a neck or a leg when I trip over it.

And so we arrive at tonight.  I had had to bring many of the feeders in at 4:30 thanks to the raccoon who is arriving earlier and earlier each day, trying to get to the feeders before I bring them in.  It has its favourite feeders and tends to leave the others alone so those I left out until early dusk.  Finally, it was time to bring them in.  As I stood at the feeders, I heard the crackling of branches across the road.  A large dark shape moved around - obviously it was the bear but I took the time to get my binoculars out of the car to look at it......see how brave I'm getting.

Yup, it was the bear all right.  So I brought in the rest of the feeders leaving out only three nectars feeders that I can access from the front porch.  The hummingbirds were still feeding and I couldn't bear to leave them without their feeders.

In I came at no great pace.  And then peered out the window every five minutes to see if the bear was going to cross the road.  At one point, the raccoon seemed to arch its back like a frightened cat and it ran away onto the wood pile.  Ah, I thought, the bear is coming.  But I waited and looked and couldn't see it.  After I had given up looking, I happened to be passing the window and saw a black shadow pass by the end of the woodpile.

Bear was back.  He wandered around the yard a bit, headed over to my shed (the one not attached to the house) and I thought he was going to head over to the neighbour's property.  I ran upstairs with the binoculars and checked through every window but no bear.

Then I remembered the three nectar feeders still out on the porch.  Checking carefully, I opened the door and brought them in, deciding that the bear had likely headed north.  Then I thought to check the woodshed. The door was still broken after all.  Upon going out into the porch that links the woodshed and the house, there was that bear smell.  I looked out the window (there's more of that bravery...or is it foolishness?) but no bear.

He really had gone north except......when I returned to the living room, I noticed that he was right up on the front porch where I had just been to bring in the last feeders.  He sniffed but found no feeders to crunch.  He even sniffed the front door.  Then he strolled back across the driveway.  At that point, I opened the window and started yelling at him.  He looked over his shoulder at me and then went back to sniffing at the tree where the peanut butter feeder normally hangs.  I kept scolding him and finally he tired of my nattering and trotted off across the road.

And that is my story.  It's late now and I'm off to bed, hopefully I won't be dreaming about bears knocking at my front door.

The Carden Challenge - a not-so-brief summary

This past weekend I participated for the second time in The Carden Challenge.

This is a 24 hour birdathon whereupon teams of four try to identify as many bird species as possible.  In preparation for my first year last year, I had crammed using the website Dendroica to learn bird songs.  At the time, I could have told you what a blue jay sounded like but a meadowlark was outside my repertoire.  In other words, my knowledge of bird songs was very limited.

After studying several hours per day for about a month, I was able to add over a hundred birds to my songbook.  And it all proved to be worth it as our team managed to locate 112 species of birds - most of them by sound alone.  We took first place in the recreational birders category and managed to get more species than some teams in the competitive category.

This year, the organizers of the Challenge wanted to incorporate a little biodiversity into the event and so added a third category - Critters.  In addition to birds, participating teams in this category were to also identify as many species as possible in mammals, dragonflies/odonata (odes for short), butterflies/lepidoptera (leps for short) and amphibians&reptiles/herptiles (herps for short).

Our team were enthusiastic about this new category.  We were decent enough with the birds and had some members with some experience in the other areas.

Only one other team signed up to do the Critters - the team was absolutely loaded.  They had three experts in birds, herps, dragonflies and butterflies with a multitude of years of experience.

We had one member doing the dragonflies and butterflies with 3 years of experience, I just learned my frogs and snakes last year and am still learning bird songs of some relatively common birds.  A third member has been birding for just 3 years and had no experience or interest in any of the other categories.  Our fourth was the only team member with any decent amount of experience in birds and herps and some limited experience in butterflies.

All this to say we were going to be blown out of the water by the other team.  We figured on placing second but at least wanted a respectable representation.

At the wrap-up dinner, in a room filled with exhausted participants, many of whom had worn the same clothes for 24 hours, the final tally was done.  Shockingly, it was our team that was awarded first place in the Critter Category with 8 more points than the other team.  The jaws dropped on the other team - disbelief that this dream team should lose to us?  Or was it astonishment that we should have done so well?

Later when we were talking with them to try to figure out how we beat them, we learned that a clerical error on their part meant that they had missed out on 10 points.  So we lost......by only 2 points!  And we really proved ourselves!

We identified 115 birds, beating the other team by 4.  In fact, we could have got more but with half an hour left, we had already beaten our record of 112 from the previous year.  We had one definite and two probable birds that we could have easily found in that half hour but decided not to.  We didn't want to raise the bar too high for next year.  

We missed getting a turkey which I had heard but no one else on the team had so we couldn't count it.  The barred owl on Victoria Road just did not co-operate as well as the clay-coloured sparrows which were abundant but not when we were looking for them.  The yellow-throated vireo was singing robustly just 15 minutes before we got to the location whereupon it disappeared so we never got that one either.

We got 11 mammals, beating the other team by 4.  Not sure whether they considered bats but we did so were able to get a brown bat.  Driving home at 11 pm, a creature sitting in the middle of the road turned out to be a porcupine.  Just 10 yards further, was maybe a raccoon?, maybe a skunk?......nope it was a juvenile porcupine.  Nice to see the family together.  Closer to home, a raccoon peered at us from the side of the road.

We got 10 herps and were beaten by 7 by the other team.  They managed to get 6 snake species in one location; we searched and searched but came up with only two - a garter snake and a water snake.  We did well with frogs and got 2 out of 3 expected turtles but really busted on those snakes and had no time to look for salamanders.

We got 25 dragonflies and 25 butterflies - they got 26 of each - them with their 2 experts and us relying on our member with three years experience.  She really worked hard!

So we had a good time and we were unbelievably successful.  And we were swimming in food.  The other three members each brought enough food to feed all four of us.  I had provided the housing and a bottle of wine for Friday night and breakfast materials for Saturday morning.  We used the beds and wine but not the food, opting to hit the road for the dawn chorus and to eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches provided by our ode/lep identifier.

We are already planning for next year.  We will be better prepared by having scouted out good spots for salamanders.  Every spot I had thought would be good ended up being too dry thanks to this drought that we are having.  We may also set up some snake boards in different areas.  One property owner has already offered her land as a possible spot for us to set them up.

The route that I had developed based on last year's birdathon and dragonfly counts worked pretty well but needs some tweaking.  We lost almost an hour chasing a phantom bird (Kirtland's warbler) that only one team was able to find.  We ended up driving Alvar Road East (between Wylie Road and Victoria Road) four times on Saturday morning - way way too often for a road that is labelled as "Use at your own risk".  Once would have been enough.  Other than that, there was very little backtracking or running over the same road multiple times which had been our major weakness last year.

I have to say it truly was a fun experience BUT probably the most valuable thing to come out of it is the improvement to my knowledge of the area.  I'd been picking the brains of a local birder well known in the area since November, trying to find out where a bank swallow can be located, is it likely that a tennessee warbler will be seen here, how does the song of a vesper sparrow sound different to the song of a song sparrow.  I'd been avidly reading the listings of nature sightings hoping to gain information on where to find more critters.  And I'd been talking to locals to find out what was out there.

In fact, I've learned so much about the area that I had my lunch paid for last Wednesday by a friend and much better birder who was picking MY brain for locations of birds.

I've learned that frog choruses, with the exception of the spring peepers, will often stop as you pull over to the shoulder of the road but if you wait long enough, they will start up again.  I have explored locations for snakes and ponds for turtles.

And now, when I drive down the road, I am hearing and seeing more than I ever had before.  That bird on the wire isn't just a bird but a kestrel.  The kingfishers like to hang out on this particular wire and the chorus frogs can be found in this pond but it's mink frogs in that one.  Instead of the frog chorus being one overwhelming song, I can now pick out the leopard frog and the bullfrog, the wood frog and the tree frog.  There are ponds which are good for common green darners and others that are good for elfin skimmers - both dragonflies.  Butterflies tend to be just about anywhere but there is one particular field which is good for finding the baltimore checkerspot - our expert found, and was able to add to our tally, a caterpillar of this butterfly.

And so my appreciation for the area, which had already reached a pretty substantial level, has grown by leaps and bounds.

And I am grateful to my friend for that first invitation to join her team for the Carden Challenge last year.