Getting bogged down

We are excited to welcome Megan Quinn back to our blog today. Megan works for Nature Conservancy of Canada in Eastern Ontario and today she shares a funny (and tiring) story about fieldwork in the Alfred Bog! This post was originally from the NCC: Land Lines blog. For more about Megan, see the end of this post.

Megan Quinn leading the field team through the Alfred Bog (Photo by NCC)

It’s easy for me to get to most of the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC) properties in eastern Ontario. I load up the driving directions on my phone, and the GPS takes me right to the trailhead. I might have a strenuous hike when I get there, but 90 per cent of the time getting there is simple because the property is right by a road.

Then there’s Alfred Bog!

The Alfred Bog, ON (Photo by NCC)

In 2021, NCC purchased a parcel of land in the middle of the Alfred Bog – the Horlings-Gleeson property. Located an hour east of Ottawa, Alfred Bog is one of only three raised bogs in southern Ontario. A raised bog is higher than the surrounding landscape and because of its domed shape, the only water entering the system is from precipitation. Alfred Bog is designated as a Provincially Significant Wetland and an Area of Natural and Scientific Interest. The bog is highly acclaimed for its classic peatland formations, which are rare to find this far south in Ontario. This results in a variety of interesting species calling Alfred Bog home, including moose, carnivorous pitcher plants and important waterfowl. Over the last 20 years, NCC has helped protect almost 1,800 hectares of the Alfred Bog.

I was incredibly excited to finally visit the property as part of my 2021 field work. There was only one problem: there are no roads that go to the Horlings-Gleeson property. The property is entirely landlocked.

So, how do you get to a property when there are no roads? Answering this question taught me a few things. Since this ecosystem is so sensitive, this NCC property is not open for the public to visit, but hopefully you can get a bit of a taste through the lessons I learned. NCC staff are privileged to be able to steward this important place. Our visits are timed to have the least possible impact as we carry out our vital work to check for threats and ensure we can write accurate conservation plans to protect the area.

1) Plan before you go

This trip required a lot of planning. My team and I spent time in the office looking at maps and satellite images to plan the best route in advance. We also collaborated with the local municipality and neighbours to learn more about the local area. After much deliberation, we came up with a route that traversed unopened road allowances, drainage ditches and old game trails, but we didn’t know if the plan would work until we got there.

2) Bring the right gear

Megan Quinn wearing hip waders to stay dry while working in the Alfred Bog. (Photo by NCC)

I knew that Alfred Bog would be wet; it is a wetland after all. But I wasn’t expecting our access route to have so many water crossings. It seemed like every few hundred metres, we had to cross a stream or were stepping in puddles up to our knees. Luckily, the team wore chest waders, so soaking our boots wasn’t a problem.

3) Bring multiples

Strenuous hikes always use more resources than you think. It was important to have more water, more food and more pairs of socks than we would normally bring for a field day. There was no running back to the car if someone realized they’d left their lunch, so staying organized and having all the equipment readily available made the day run much smoother.

4) Stop to take a break (and appreciate where you are)

Pitcher plants are one of the unique plants you can find in the Alfred Bog (Photo by NCC)

Taking regular breaks was a necessity, but it was also an opportunity to appreciate how beautiful the Alfred Bog is. Whether it was taking the time to study moose tracks or admiring the beautiful pitcher plants poking out of the moss, these are not things we get to see every day. The Alfred Bog is a unique ecosystem, and it was such a treat for us to be able to experience it first-hand.

5) It will be harder than you think

At the end of the field day, Megan Quinn had to lie down to recover. (Photo by NCC)

I’ve had workouts at the gym that were easier than the hike to Alfred Bog. We did all the preparation we could, but I don’t think anyone could blame us if we were in a bad mood by the end of the day. There’s nothing more frustrating than following a moose trail, realizing it led to a dead end in the wrong direction and having to back-track through difficult terrain. Or having to stop and get your boots unstuck from the bottom of a drainage ditch.

A good sense of humour is important for any field day, but especially the ones that require a lot of patience. I’m lucky to work with an incredible team in eastern Ontario, who kept smiling the whole day. Even so, at the end of the day, we all needed to lay down.

Growing up in the industrial landscape of northern England, Megan Quinn didn’t fully realize her passion for nature until she moved to Canada in 2004. After graduating from the Ecosystem Management Technician and Technology programs at Sir Sandford Fleming College, she worked a variety of jobs in the environmental field with a focus on the non-profit sector. Since 2018, Megan has led the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s Eastern Ontario stewardship team as the coordinator, conservation biology – Eastern Ontario. She also sits on the Canadian Committee for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Young Professionals Committee. Megan routinely volunteers in Europe to share environmental knowledge with international ecologists. In her spare time, she is a competitive horse rider, and enjoys creative expression through novel writing, and knitting.

Painting a picture through time

This summer, I completed several baseline inventories of new nature reserve properties. A baseline inventory is an initial report about the features of a property. The process includes making a list of all the species found, with a particular focus on invasive species and species at risk, and visiting every vegetation community to understand the stewardship needs of the property. I also record any anthropogenic or built features, including buildings, fences, signage, etc. Finally, I interview the previous landowner, any recreational users, and/or neighbours to learn a bit about the history of the land.
Many of the former landowners I interview don’t know a lot about the history of their property because they simply haven’t owned it that long. However, by examining both natural and anthropogenic features, I can begin to paint a picture of what a property looked like in the past. Understanding the past helps me understand why the property looks the way it does in the present and plan out important stewardship work for the future.

Fences are one of the most common features that tell us something about the history of a property. Today, people may install a fence around their yard for purely aesthetic reasons, but in the past, that wouldn’t have made sense, because installing a fence uses a lot of resources. The fences from the past (mainly cedar rail) had a purpose, and most often it was to keep something inside. Grazing cattle are the most common reason to put a fence in place, but horses and sheep are also possibilities. Sometimes, instead of fence panels, all I find is old barbed wire mostly buried under layers of leaf litter. This barbed wire is another good indication that someone was trying to keep something from getting away. Stone walls are another clue that land was used to pasture animals, but they suggest the land was likely abandoned before the mid-1860s when other types of fencing became more common.

Rock piles are a clear sign of former agricultural use. When trying to plant a garden or dig a hole, there is nothing worse than hitting a rock. This was no different for farmers trying to grow crops to support their families and livestock in the past. Rocks had to be removed to ensure the plants had the room they needed to expand their roots and thrive. These rocks would be moved into a pile, usually towards the edge of the ploughed area, and left there. Many of the properties I encounter have these rock piles and I can only imagine the hours of grueling work that went into creating them. Troughs in the soil can also be the result of past agriculture. If you’ve ever seen a freshly tilled/ploughed field, you will know what this looks like (see the photo below)– uneven ground that is a recipe for a broken ankle. Some abandoned fields were left this way after their last use, and you can still see the plough troughs today, even though the land is now fully vegetated.

Plough troughs in a freshly ploughed field. Now imagine this vegetated.

Trees can also be excellent tools for painting a picture of the past. Fallen trees and the resulting stumps can certainly be the result of windfall (trees that fell due to wind) but can also indicate fire or logging. Wind fallen trees usually have a fallen tree trunk beside them and look like they “broke off” at the stump. Flat stumps generally indicate logging; however, many signs of the earliest logging in Ontario have disappeared as the stumps have rotted and disappeared. But multiple-trunked trees can also provide a hint of former logging, as they may have grown back that way in response to being cut. The presence of old growth trees (older than 150 years) but a lot of gaps in age otherwise (that is, missing middle-aged and younger trees) is a good sign of fire: while the oldest trees probably survived the fire, the younger ones did not.

This list is only a few of the ways you can paint a picture of the past by looking at the landscape. From fallen trees, to rock piles and fences, you can learn so much about an area just by exploring. I love doing these baseline inventories because they give me a glimpse into simpler and yet often more challenging times and remind me of those who used the land before. And even more importantly, painting a picture of a land’s past informs my plans for its future and helps me to steward, restore, and care for it appropriately.

Note: I learned a lot of great information about this topic from those who trained me but also from a book called Forest Forensics by Tom Wessels.

Our “why”

2020 was a difficult year for everyone. It was challenging. It was tragic. At some points it didn’t even seem real. The beginning of a multi-year pandemic, locust swarms in Africa, and fires devastating Australia are just a subset of the terrible turns that 2020 took.

Implications for field biologists ranged from minor to significant. With many universities and institutions closed, some projects were put on hold or cancelled. Work was only permitted if considered “essential” – which, more often than not, didn’t include fieldwork. Even when fieldwork could be completed safely without traveling too far from home, it could only continue with additional safety precautions in place. It’s a virtual certainty that all fieldwork was affected in some way in 2020.

For us at Dispatches from the Field, 2020 was a tough year. When we started this blog six years ago, our lives looked very different. With changing geographies, changing life situations, new jobs, and new challenges, keeping up with Dispatches from the Field hasn’t been easy and the motivation hasn’t always been there. And 2020 just reinforced that. With the state of the world, we weren’t always on top of our game. We aren’t afraid to admit that. This past year was not easy.

So, the three of us (Amanda, Catherine, and Sarah) all sat down (virtually, of course) to figure some things out. Could the blog continue? Were we motivated enough to keep it going? Did we have the time? After much discussion, the answer was clear: yes. Yes, to all of the above. While the focus of the discussion was a lot of logistical stuff about dividing up the work and how we can attract more guest posters, what we really needed to consider was why we started the blog in the first place.

Dispatches was created to share stories about fieldwork, stories capturing the core of the experience and the moments that never make it into scientific papers. We wanted to teach people about important places and species by sharing engaging stories about our experiences with them. Our ultimate goal was to inspire people to care. When people care about something, it elicits action. It provokes calls to change. It results in movements to protect our beautiful planet. We need people to care more now than ever about the world, about our precious natural resources, about conservation and protection, about each other and about the incredible diversity of life on earth.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead famously remarked, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” In creating Dispatches from the Field, it was never our intention to change the world. But we hoped, by telling our stories, to inspire others to care. And if even a small handful of people start to care about a place, or a plant, or a rare animal because they connected with one of the stories we told, then that could be the beginning of a real push for change.

With that thought in mind, we are all really excited to keep this blog going. It won’t be easy; it never has been and it never will be. There will always be other stuff going on in our lives: new commitments, new changes, and new challenges. But at the back of our minds, we will remember why we are doing this, why we started it, and why we can’t let it go.

If you have a story you want to share please reach out to use at fieldworkblog[at]gmail.com.

Things that go Bump in the Field

I have spent a lot of time at a lot of different field sites over the years. I have spent days in the blistering sun, days in the frigid cold, and days in the pouring rain, but until this spring, I had never spent any time in the field after dark.

Every year, there is one field site with several kilometres of fencing that need monitoring to ensure the fence is in good working order. This work can take many more hours than we expect and is often completed in very early spring, so the days are still quite short.

This year, after a few days of repairing broken wires, straightening crooked poles and pulling tree branches out of the way, my field assistant and I were almost finished. It was nearing dusk and with a 1.5 km walk back to the road, we knew we had to leave shortly to make it out before dark. But we were so, so close to being done.

Let’s just go for it, we thought. We fixed the final panel of fencing and we started the trek back to the road where our vehicles were parked. But when I said it was “nearing dusk”, I really meant that it was already dusk, so by the time we were on our way out the sun had fully set and it was, well, total darkness. I have particularly bad night vision, so walking over ground was full of hummocks, rocks and small shrubs was particularly challenging for me. Given the terrain, a quick pace was far from possible, so I just trudged steadily along in the dark.

It was quiet. It was so very quiet. Since it was spring, birds were starting to migrate back to their Ontario breeding grounds, so the quiet skies were slowly beginning to come to life again during the day, but night was a different experience. There was only our heavy breaths and the slight rustle of leaves in the trees above to break the silence.

The only photo I got before the sun disappeared.

Suddenly, the quiet was interrupted by a very quick, almost vibration-like sound…and whatever made it was right behind us. Before we could even turn around, we heard a forceful “peeeent” from that same direction. My field assistant and I spun around, but halfway through our rotation, we heard the same vibrating sound again and it was gone.

We took a few more steps and then heard the same quick vibration sound followed by a loud “peeeent”. After this happened consistently for another 2 minutes, I knew I needed to figure out what was making this sound. The vibrating sound was definitely the wind rushing through feathers, so we knew it was a bird, but this was still very early in my birding career (I still knew almost nothing about birds), so that was about it. Something about the sound was oddly recognizable to me, but I just couldn’t place it. So, we walked slowly a few metres away and then turned around quietly and waited. As if perfectly on cue, the vibrating sound was back and as soon as it settled, I shone the light of my phone camera in front of us. And as soon as I caught sight of the bird, I knew exactly what it was, having watched this hilarious internet sensation many times. It was a woodcock!

As soon as I got a glimpse he was off again, and we continued to walk back to the road. The whole way back the woodcock followed us, “peent-ing” the entire time. Maybe we were bothering him and he was trying to get rid of us? Maybe he was protecting something? Or maybe he was just genuinely curious about what we were doing in his home territory so late in the day? Either way, when he escorted us to the car, it gave me a feeling of safety – like something was watching out for us in the darkness.

As we reached the vehicle and packed up our tools and equipment, I heard another nighttime sound, more immediately recognizable: the familiar call of the whip-poor-will was bouncing around in the distance. Having never spent any time in the field at night, that night was a very memorable experience for me. And it was certainly an excellent reminder that when you’re doing fieldwork or spending time in nature, no matter what time it is, you are never truly alone.

Good things in the world and on the horizon

I am a planner. I find comfort in knowing exactly when everything is happening. I plan out every month of the year, every week and every day. While I have become more flexible over the years, I still struggle when one of those things changes, especially at the last minute.

With a global pandemic being announced as a result of the coronavirus, I knew things would change in my schedule. Between Friday March 13^th and Monday March 16^th my schedule went from full, colour-coded, organized chaos to empty. All appointments, meetings, events, etc. cancelled or postponed. Watching the news was overwhelming: more cases of COVID-19 worldwide, more deaths, the first local cases. This of course causes us all to worry. My brother works at an airport – what does this mean for him? How will my Grandma weather this – will she have what she needs? So many questions, so many worries, so much change.

Since I am now working from home in the short term, I had to run into my office the other day to grab a few supplies and on the way home I stopped by one of the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s field sites. I parked by the roadside and walked up to the gate and just stared. Keep in mind, this is an alvar and it is March, so there it doesn’t look particularly exciting at first glance. But in the end, there was a lot to see, I just had to be patient.

I could see a small Prairie Smoke plant just beside the gate that survived the winter. It was covered in ice crystals. If you stared long enough, you could see the ice crystals begin to change shape and disappear as the bright morning sun melted them away into nothing. A bit of rustling caught my eye to the right where a large stand of Eastern Red-cedar trees stood tall and a Red Squirrel poked its head out and scanned the open area. A large Hawthorn in the distance had two birds perched in its leafless branches. I grabbed my binoculars from the car to take a closer look. Two American Robins sat still in the tree. Their beautiful red breasts were lit up like fire, catching the morning light in just the right places. A large crow flew overhead letting out a couple of loud “caws” from above. This spooked the robins and off they went into the tree line to the south.

I closed my eyes and felt the warmth of the sun on my face. For a moment I escaped the present. And I thought of the things to come. Soon, the alvar will be alive. Pink and yellow blooms will line the ground. Meadowlarks will return and sing their sweet songs from the tops of trees. The butterflies will flutter around like delicate paper caught in the wind.

For a solid ten minutes, I didn’t think about my schedule changing. I didn’t worry about my family. I didn’t even think about coronavirus. These moments reminded me that there is hope and there are good things on the horizon. The world is still filled with beauty, despite what we feel and what we see on the news. Nature can be refreshing and may give us the energy we need to weather this storm.

Wishing the best to all our readers in this uncertain time. You are all in our thoughts.

Perfectly perfect perfection…not!

Imagine the perfect day in the field. A day where the sky is clear and blue. The sun is warm, but not too warm. A cool breeze wisps across your face, leaving you feeling refreshed and comfortable. The birds are singing, and the butterflies are fluttering. You sit down on an appropriately placed boulder under the perfect shade tree to eat your favourite field lunch. After lunch you take a quick break to watch the clouds pass by above you. You see a dog, then a dragon, and then a snake. Ahhh, perfectly perfect perfection.

While the above scenario certainly does happen for field biologists, it is a rarity. Many field days are not as described above. In fact, most field days are not as described above.

Let’s take a project I worked on this past summer as an example. I was trying to restore an agricultural field into native grassland. This project involved having the farmer plant soybeans in the field in June, which keep the weeds down and deposit nitrogen into the soil. The farmer then harvested the soybeans in November, which meant we were ready to seed the area with native grassland plant species.

I could not have been more excited about a nice chilly autumn day in the field, with the sun warming my nose and the cool breeze keeping me comfortably content in a sweater. I imagined myself frolicking around the field spreading seeds of native plants species, while late migratory ducks flew overhead, and squirrels and voles scurried about trying to pick up the remnants of the soybean plants– a dream, really! And a dream really is what it was.

After some issues with the seed mix and volatile weather, by the end of November we were finally ready to go. Bags of seeds in tow, we were starting to walk out to the field when I heard a curious sound. Imagine for a second making enough banana bread batter to fill a small kids’ swimming pool. Then imagine putting on rubber boots and walking through that. “Slurrrrp…Slurrrp…Slurrrp”. Yes, that was the sound. The sound of our boots sinking into the deep rich soil of the field (which was really just muck at this point) . I had just been out there 2 days earlier… but since then we had gotten a lot of rain, which took the frost out of the ground and created muck. The best part – the ground was still frozen in some places, so sinking past your rain boots into the muck was a frequent but totally unpredictable occurrence. And let me tell you – it is NOT easy to get yourself out of that muck!

Seeding the field in one of the few not so “slurpy” spots

As we started to toss the seeds about, slurping as we went, the rain began. Not a crazy downpour, but a light rain that was *just* heavy enough to get us sufficiently wet for the seeds to start sticking to our hands. To make it possible to spread the seed, we had to walk hunched over, blocking our hands from the rain. So, there we were: hunched over, wet, shivering, boots slurping away in the muck. A very different scenario than the magical day I had envisioned.

In the end it took about 3 hours to seed 1 ha of land. When we were done, we quickly retreated to our vehicle. We stopped to get some warm tea on the way home and we didn’t talk once about how crappy the weather was or how our backs hurt from hunching over or how dirty our rain boots got our rental car. (OK – we did talk a bit about that last one!). But mostly we were focused on the project, forecasting what that field might look like in the spring… or two years from now…or ten years from now. How many grassland birds would soon call this habitat home? What new species would move into this community on their own?

Some days in the field are perfect, and we all cherish those days when they happen. Other days are not-so-perfect and that is just fine. But we cherish those not-so-perfect days too. Those are the days that prompt us to remember our reason for doing the work, forecasting the bigger picture and recalling our love for our jobs.

Technology in Fieldwork: Friend or Foe?

When I started doing fieldwork about 12 years ago, I didn’t use technology in the field. In fact, the only technology I had access to was an old flip phone that took photos so blurry I could barely tell if they were of plants or animals when I got back to the lab. I didn’t even pre-print my Excel data sheets and fill them in as I collected data. I just drew freehand columns in a Rite-in-the-Rain notebook and then spent hours afterwards trying to decipher my messy handwriting.

But over the last decade, technology has really boomed and it has changed the lives of field biologists everywhere. Take GPS, for instance. While hand-held GPS devices were certainly around 10 years ago, they tended to be clunky and slow, with limited functions – nowhere near as streamlined as current technology. In fact, they were often more trouble than they were worth. When I used to monitor roadside populations of wildflowers throughout the summer, I would simply remember where locations were based on landmarks, nearby street addresses, etc.

But now, I do my fieldwork using Collector, an mobile data collection app which allows me to take points instantly from my smartphone. If I were monitoring roadside wildflower populations now, I could just drop a point for a population, take a photo and attach it to the point and then navigate directly back to the point on follow up visits.
While GPS advances are very cool, the advent of iNaturalist is likely responsible for the greatest change to my life as a field biologist. According to their website, iNaturalist “is a lot of different things, but at its core, [it’s] an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. It’s also a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool. You can use it to record your own observations, get help with identifications, collaborate with others to collect this kind of information for a common purpose, or access the observational data collected by iNaturalist users” iNaturalist.

That explanation is much more eloquent than my description of iNaturalist, which can be summed up as, “a crazy-cool identification app that must be magic!”
When I was learning how to identify plants during my Undergraduate degree, I didn’t have access to anything like iNaturalist. To figure out what something was, I would excitedly bust out my plant bible, Newcomb’s Guide to Wildflowers, and open the book to the first page. Then I would carefully examine the features of the plant I was trying to ID. I would check if the leaves were alternate or opposite, determine whether the leaf edges were serrated, and then classify the radial symmetry of the flower. This information would lead me to a page number; with great anticipation I would flip to that page and quickly scan the images and descriptions. Inevitably, one of two reactions would follow: heart-beating excitement when my eyes stopped at a sketch that looked just like the flower in front of me…or sheer disappointment when nothing matched. In the second case, the next step was to flip back to the first page and take another look at the plant in front of me to try to figure out where I went wrong. Perhaps I miscounted the petals, or maybe the leaves were whorled, rather than opposite? It sometimes took a whole lot of trial and error, but eventually I almost always arrived at the right answer. And it was those mistakes that really made me remember the identity of the plant long after.

It is with some hesitation that I admit this, but I mostly use iNaturalist to identify things now. I just snap a photo of something in nature – be it a plant, an animal or a fungus – and iNaturalist gives me its best guess at the identity. It only takes a couple of seconds and it’s incredibly accurate. (Hence, magic app!) iNaturalist is such an exciting concept. In fact, I recently was part of a class visit at a Nature Reserve which involved a scavenger hunt as part of the tour. One of the species the students needed to find was Sensitive Fern, but this species is only really found in one small area, so it was easily missed by the students. To help them out, I pulled out my phone. I pointed to a specimen on the ground beside me and took a photo. Below is what iNaturalist came up with:

We proceeded to try the app on about a dozen more species of plants (even just the bark of trees!) and it was bang on every time. The entire grade 7 class was hooked on the app after that.

I love iNaturalist and all that it stands for. It intrigues people, it helps them learn about nature, and it fosters a curiosity about the natural world around us. It even helps collect important data about rare species and Species-at-Risk that monitoring biologists may miss. However, even though iNaturalist is useful in so many ways, it left me feeling very conflicted.

I can’t deny that iNaturalist has also made me a less engaged (or maybe a lazier) field biologist. To be clear, I don’t mean I am worse at my job now, by any means. In fact, I am probably more efficient. That being said, I don’t notice the things I used to notice about plants. I snap a photo and the answer is right in front of my eyes. I don’t spend 5 minutes flipping through the pages of field guides attempting to identify an unknown specimen. Moreover, when I do use iNaturalist, I often quickly forget the identity of the species – because I haven’t spent those long minutes working for my answer.
So, as I wind down this field season and think forward, I vow to reach for the book and not the phone next spring when I spot a new species or can’t recall what something is.

That being said, I think there is certainly a place for both technology and more traditional approaches as well. For those getting started, or in time sensitive situations, perhaps iNaturalist is the way to go. But maybe for those looking to thoroughly and deeply understand nature, the old school approach may be more suitable. Either way, I will continue to promote iNaturalist like the “crazy-cool magical app” it is, in hopes that more folks learn about, and begin to care about the natural world around us.

Do you use technology to do your fieldwork? Has the role of technology changed over the past few years? I would love to hear about your experiences! Leave a comment below and tell me – is technology a friend or a foe in your fieldwork?

Spring fieldwork feeds the soul

Those of you who have been following the content on Dispatches for the last four years know that when the spring finally rolls around, I am a very happy camper. Spring fieldwork feeds my soul. There really is nothing better than spring fieldwork. And for so many reasons. The trees haven’t leafed out yet, so you can see so much more than you normally could. There are fewer bugs. And you aren’t melting from the intense summer heat. Just over four years ago, I wrote a post about my eternal love and appreciation for spring ephemerals called “Spring wildflowers make my heart beat a little harder”. Back then, I was still working on my PhD, which was entirely focused on plants. Plants, plants and more plants. Now, working as a Conservation Biologist, spring fieldwork means more than just waiting for those first few early blooms. The sights, sounds and signs of life beyond just the plants poking through the soil are incredible, almost overwhelming.

This past weekend was filled with spring fieldwork activities. On Saturday, I was part of a garbage clean up, at a site near Napanee. Of course, being a garbage cleanup we found some interesting and unnatural things.

Of course there was a significant amount of trash.

Many, many, many, teeny tiny shoes

I even unintentionally found a geocache site!

Beyond garbage and other treasures, we found some pretty incredible signs of life. I lifted up a piece of old linoleum flooring to find these two guys below, a Blue-spotted Salamander and a Red-spotted Newt. This might be embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t actually think that the newt was real. I thought it was a toy, and promptly realized it was indeed very much alive when it opened up a tired, cold eye and glared at me. Don’t fret, I quickly lied that piece of linoleum back down to keep these guys warm and safe.

A very cold Red-spotted Newt resting. You can see the Blue-spotted Salamander along the left.

On Sunday, I was part of a hike along the south shore of Prince Edward County. The south shore is an important area of coastal habitat for migratory birds that juts out into Lake Ontario. I joined the hike to connect with partners, but also to start some baseline inventory work for the protected property in that area. The air was alive with chirps and whistles as birds sang to attract mates and establish territory. This past summer I became interested in bird song, despite finding bird song an exceptionally difficult thing to learn. I will admit, I am not very good at seeing birds. I have poor eye sight and I get motion sick looking through binoculars, so song seemed like the route to take. One of the first bird songs I learned last year was that of the Eastern Towhee who sings a very clear and obvious “Drink your TEEAAAAAAAAAAA”.

As we walked down the side of an un-maintained road I heard the distinct “Drink your….”.

Wait…what? I thought to myself “what bird sings “Drink your…” and then stops?”

And then again, “Drink your….”, “Drink your…”, “Drink your…” over and over and over.

“Does everyone hear that Eastern Towhee?” the hike leader asked. Everyone nodded, enjoying the sound. Quietly I then asked “But where’s the tea?” “They don’t always include the tea!” she laughed. Wow, if learning bird song wasn’t complicated enough already.

We continued along an 8 km stretch of wonderful meadow, alvar and woodland landscape, recording all the signs of life we encountered. At one point we heard a loud honking in the distance. We all debated if the muffled sounds were a goose, maybe a turkey or two. And then, if not perfectly timed, three Sandhill Cranes glided through the sky above us towards Lake Ontario. Other highlights included two ravens courting, beautifully dancing together in the sky, and some frog eggs including some eggs with tadpoles emerging in the flooded ditches along the road.

Frog eggs

Tadpoles emerging from eggs

Of course, I still go back to my real first true love of the spring, the spring ephemerals. I saw my first ones this past weekend, and just like the good old days, my heartbeat jumped a little. But now, it’s not just the flowers that make my heart skip a beat, it’s the flowers, mixed with the bird song and all the other signs of spring  that make me feel alive and ready to tackle another busy field season.

Round-lobed Hepatica – my first wildflower sighting of 2019 ❤

Fun in fens

One of my recent stories was about some unintentional “swamp-wading” I did when I was taking the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System course in North Bay, Ontario. If you recall, we were venturing out to a fen, but first we had to cross the swamp that surrounded it. Neck-deep in muck, soaked from head to toe, we made it…just barely.

A couple of days later, we ventured out to another fen, this one called Frair Lake. This fen was a little different though. As was becoming routine, all of the course participants piled onto a big, yellow school bus. The bus chugged along for a good half hour along winding country roads and finally turned onto a dirt road that led to a quarry. We all filed off the bus and then headed down the road, passing the quarry entrance and leaving it behind to the left. We hiked down a wooded path off the dirt road, passed through some dense forest and then there it was – the stunning, dark blue water of Frair Lake. It was 30 degrees C that day and the sparkling ripples of Frair Lake called our names, trying to lure us in for a refreshing splash…but we had to resist. We had lots of important field work to do and only about 7 hours to do it!

Working in groups of 4, our task was to conduct a field visit of the wetlands surrounding Frair Lake, and prepare our own wetland evaluation for the site. I won’t get into all the details of what a wetland evaluation involves, but it broadly covers characteristics of the wetland including size and condition, the types of wetlands present (i.e. bogs, fens, swamps or marshes), hydrological components (i.e. flood attenuation, water quality, etc.), biological components (i.e. wetland productivity, soil type, etc.), social components (i.e. presence of wild rice, furbearers, etc.) and various special feature components (i.e. presence of species-at-risk, winter cover for wildlife, etc.).

Eager to get the day started, we set off on our journey around the lake. At first there was some swampy habitat with lots of towering black spruce trees, but because of the high temperatures and lack of rain, the ground was relatively dry, so this was an easy hike around. We quickly collected data on the vegetation forms and communities present, took some soil core samples to determine the different soil types and continued on with our day. “This is sooooo much easier than navigating that swamp,” I thought quietly to myself.

But then we reached a transition point in the wetland, where the tree cover disappeared and we were left with what appeared to be very mossy and low vegetation. As we stepped onto this we noticed that the ground was certainly not stable. We had just arrived at what are lovingly referred to as the Frair Lake floating mats. These floating mats were actually considered fens, another type of wetland. True fens are not really common in southern Ontario, and I had never experienced fens until this course. Fens are peatlands, which simply means they are peat-covered lands. They have little tree cover, are dominated by mosses and sedges and have a higher pH than bogs. In fens, floating mats of Sphagnum moss often extend out into the water, with poorly decomposed peat at the top, and more well-decomposed peat towards the bottom, giving them a squishy and sinking feeling under your feet.

Stepping out onto the fen, I took a few small and nervous steps. Despite being soft under my feet, it was actually quite easy to navigate and kind of felt like walking on a cloud. But we quickly learned though that the stability of this floating mat was not consistent throughout. We first noticed this when a member of another group was walking towards us and, well, the next second he wasn’t. One of his legs had pushed through the floating mat and into the water of Frair Lake below. We helped pull him out and he was just fine, despite a very wet leg. I had a few close calls throughout the morning myself, losing my footing or almost sinking deep enough to break through the peat. We continued around the lake on the floating mats, identifying lots of unique fen species, searching for species at risk and admiring the beauty of this spot.

A photo of Frair Lake taken while standing on a floating mat

Another photo of Frair Lake – You can see my group member Bill standing on the floating mat.

As the day came to a close, we finished the loop around the lake with wet feet, covered in sweat and a good number of deer fly bites, carrying notebooks filled with data and having acquired a very deep appreciation for the beautiful wetlands of northern Ontario. I have spent a lot of my time in the wetlands of southern and eastern Ontario, but there is something so different about the wetlands of the north. It might just be the fact that they are much bigger and much more pristine than their southern counterparts, or that many of the wetland types in the north are different from those in the south. It all felt so new and exciting to me. Whatever it was, it has me longing to go back and experience even more.

One of many gigantic pitcher plants growing on the floating mats

Full mind, huge heart, tired eyes

I had a wonderful summer of fieldwork…my mind is full, my heart is huge and my eyes are tired. I think that’s what all field biologists strive for at the end of a summer field season. I still have a significant amount of fall fieldwork to do, but I wanted to take a few moments to reflect on my summer in the field.

My mind is full

I learned SO much this summer… SO SO SO much! I learned new plant species I had never seen or heard of before. I started noticing more of nature including butterflies, dragonflies, birds, reptiles and amphibians.  I noticed the arrangement of holes and cavities in trees. I noticed the behaviours of birds during mating season and the incredible defense of nests during nesting season. I started learning spider species (surprising given this), recording calls of birds to look them up later and taking photos of tracks in the mud. My mind is still overloaded from everything, I noticed and learned this summer, and I hope every field season from here on out is the same.

Grass of parnassus – new species for me!

My heart is huge

I love field work. I love being outside. I love nature and everything about it. My heart was in the Frontenac Arch for most of the past decade, and now my heart is stretched across so many new places I have grown to love: the scrubby wonders of the Napanee Plain, the always adventurous Prince Edward County, the quiet beauty of the Kawarthas, the wavy coast of eastern Lake Ontario and the rolling hills of Northhumberland County. Next summer will come quickly, and it will bring many more new places to fall in love with, I’m sure.

My eyes are tired

Fieldwork can be tough. Most of your time is spent hiking to specific points, carrying lots of equipment, and in weather or conditions that aren’t ideal. For instance, this summer, I did a lot of “bushwhacking” which according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “to clear a path through thick woods especially by chopping down bushes and low branches”. My definition is a little different. My definition of bushwhacking is “to get from point A to point B through thick vegetation, which often has thorns, prickles, and other irritants present, while trying to disturb the natural environment as little as possible and leave some sort of remnant path to find your way back”. A little wordier perhaps, but all very true and relevant to my summer in the field. Thick red cedar on alvars, cattails twice as tall as me, and prickly ash pricklier than ten prickly things were common settings to be “bushwhacking” through. But the reward is always worth the hardship in the end. Check out a couple of the epic places we found as a result of some serious bushwhacking.

Open alvar pavement (a globally rare habitat)

The most picturesque stream I have ever seen

So as I wrap up the summer field season, and start the cooler, wetter, wilder fall field season, I sit here smiling with my full mind, huge heart and tired eyes and I think about all the possibilities the next summer field season will bring.