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Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 102: The Magic of Birding
The ordinary act of looking up transforms into an extraordinary journey through Doug McRae's eyes. A lifelong birder whose fascination began with a childhood case of stuffed birds, Doug takes us deep into the enchanting world of avian observation that connects people to nature in profound ways.
Through our conversation, Doug reveals the essential tools of the trade - from selecting the perfect pair of binoculars (aim for 7-10x magnification and avoid zoom features) to navigating the differences between Peterson's simplified field guides and Sibley's comprehensive illustrations. But equipment is just the gateway; the real magic happens when you begin to recognize the patterns, behaviors, and stunning achievements of birds themselves.
Perhaps most awe-inspiring are the migration feats Doug describes. Imagine a tiny warbler with "a brain the size of a pea" navigating thousands of miles between Central America and specific trees in Ontario's boreal forest, returning to the exact same locations year after year. These incredible journeys happen without GPS, maps, or human assistance - just ancient instincts encoded in creatures weighing mere grams.
Modern technology like the Merlin Bird ID app has transformed bird identification, though Doug cautions against relying solely on technology. "Without doing the work, it doesn't commit to memory," he explains, emphasizing that truly learning birds involves effort, observation, and sometimes "getting scraped up in hawthorns" to catch a glimpse of something special.
Whether you're drawn to backyard bird feeding, keeping life lists of species seen, or perhaps embarking on global expeditions to witness rare birds, the birding community offers welcoming entry points through local naturalist clubs and organizations like the Ontario Field Ornithologists. Ready to discover what's happening above you? Look up - a whole world awaits.
How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show. My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be for more fishing than it was punching you so confidently.
Speaker 4:You said hey.
Speaker 1:Pat, have you ever eaten a drum? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 5:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. But they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world.
Speaker 5:On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. People to live their lives under the canopy. Well, good day everyone. And, as always, I'm not going to say it this time, but you know the routine If you got it, ask it. If you want it, ask it, let us know, and we'll be more than happy to.
Speaker 5:Anyways, as always, thanks to our listeners across Canada, the States, switzerland, everywhere, down in Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, you name it, canada, et cetera, et cetera. We really appreciate you listening. Now we brought back another guest because, well, this guest was on the show talking about the Northumberland Land Trust, happened to mention something that I've been trying to get somebody with some experience on, and Doug McRae happened to say he was a birder. So, welcome back, doug, and we're going to talk about birds.
Speaker 4:Thanks very much.
Speaker 5:Yeah, no problem. No, I have tried. I don't know how many people who try and get to talk about birds from the ministry and from birders and former deputy ministers who were avid birders and do all kinds of postings on Facebook. And then I met some former ministry people that were listed as oh, you should talk to this guy, get him on. And I talked to him oh, I can't go on the podcast, I wouldn't know what to say. I don't anyways. Anyways, but when we were talking about the Northumberland Land Trust, doug kind of went into it and I thought, hey, I got somebody that can talk birds. So tell us, doug, well, first of all let's go back to the land trust in case somebody didn't catch that podcast and tell us a bit about the land trust, a little bit what you do there, and then we'll get into the birding stuff.
Speaker 4:Okay, sure, thank you. So yeah, the Northumberland Land Trust this is Northumberland County in Southern Ontario. We're sort of a little bit around the midway point of the North Shore of Lake Ontario it's a registered charitable organization that accepts donations of land for conservation purposes and we manage that land for conservation. So we are essentially a private landowner, but anyway, we're growing by leaps and bounds. Right now We've sort of had a supercharged period and we now have almost 20 properties, over 2,000 acres, protected, and we have more in the pipeline.
Speaker 4:And I'm on the board of directors and it's all volunteer and so, yeah, I'm quite involved with that and I'm on the land securement committee, I'm on the stewardship committee, which determines how the properties are managed, and it's an incredibly gratifying thing for all of our board members and our volunteers. It's, I think it's, the most cost-effective form of conservation going. So I'm'm all on board with that and I come into it with skills as a naturalist, particularly a birder. I've been a birder since my early childhood and so that's what I kind of bring to the table in that organization.
Speaker 5:Well, very good, and so now okay. So probably some of those listeners listening to the podcast may not. What does a birder mean? I mean, I go to Swiss Chalet. Tell us what a birder is, doug.
Speaker 4:Well, I think that's a pretty broad term and it has a broad range. I'd say a birder is anyone who looks at a bird and finds it interesting and you know. You could be someone who has a feeder in your backyard and you just enjoy the birds at the feeder. You might not even know what species they are, but you just enjoy them. Or you could be at the other extreme you could be someone who spends large amounts of money traveling the world to see all of the species out there, which are just over 10,000. So it really has a broad range of applications. But I would say the core is that you're someone who likes, you know, enjoys looking at birds.
Speaker 5:Yeah. So what now? You mentioned about somebody with feeders. I got to tell you my brother-in-law, rick, out in Manitoba, rick has seven feeders out in his and they just love watching the birds with the grandkids coming in and it just really gives them some satisfaction, which does for a lot of us. So what got you into birding there, doug?
Speaker 4:Well, I'm not exactly sure because it happened so long ago I don't really remember. But I've been interested in birds since I was probably four or five years old and no one in my immediate family was particularly interested, like my parents at least. But I have a suspicion. I used to spend some of the summers at my grandmother's cottage and my grandfather, who died before I was born. He was a lawyer and in the Depression sometimes people couldn't pay and someone gave him a case of stuffed birds. It has 53 birds in it. They were all shot in the Peterborough area around 1905. And as a baby I would wake up at the cottage with this thing in the room. So ever since I was an infant I woke up to this case of 53 dead birds and I'm now, as we speak, looking at it. Right now it's in my living room, it's one of my prized possessions and I have to wonder if that wasn't what sort of got the curiosity rolling.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's a little bit different. For all I know, I've been fascinated with birds for years and years and years, and I recall I grew up up in Oshawa and down by the lake where we lived there was this elderly lady that lived just next house to us and she was a tea drinker and I can't remember which tea brand, but they used to give out these little figurines in the box of tea and she had all kind of bird ones out of there that I found fascinating when I was oh, that would have been. I was three, four years old at that time and found it very fascinating and may have got us started then.
Speaker 4:I remember those. I think it might have been red rose, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 5:I'm not sure which one it was, but she had, they had lots of them, and it was kind of interesting that they would give out these little figurines that are probably collectibles now to some extent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and there was a lot of bird ones in there. So, doug, what does a person?
Speaker 4:what kind of equipment does a person need to get involved in, say, birding? Okay, well, that's another really broad range. You can get by with a fairly small amount of equipment or you can go all out and spend tens of thousands of dollars on equipment. So binoculars are the first thing you need, and then, if you want, you can also get what's called a spotting scope, and with binoculars it's always the old adage you get what you pay for is true, and if you buy a little $40 pair of binoculars, I guarantee the first time you bang them hard against something, the lenses are going to slip out of position and they're useless. So I would recommend you know if you're serious about it. I'd recommend putting a little money into it and think of it as if you buy a decent pair of binoculars. They should last 15, 20 years, and so think of how much you spend per year on them for good visibility. But what you want to look for in binoculars?
Speaker 4:Binoculars have two numbers. It might be something like seven by 50 or 10 by 50. The first number is the magnification. Don't go higher than 10 because unless you're a brain surgeon and have an incredibly steady hand, it's also magnifying your handshake, right, yep. The second number is the width of the lens that's furthest from the eye, in millimeters, and that sort of tells you how much light it lets in. And the bigger that second number the better, because that means you're getting lots of light.
Speaker 4:If you have little opera glasses, for example, they're fine in bright daylight, but at dawn and dusk, which is when most birds are active, they're very dark and they're hard to see. So you know, I'd say stick with between seven and 10 power and go, try to go for a multiple of five. So you know, 10 by 50, seven by 35, at least that. And I would avoid binoculars that are insta-focused with that lever on the top, or zoom binoculars. I mean it sounds like a great idea but the mechanisms are just not very strong and they tend to break. But you can spend anywhere from, say, you know, you can probably get a half decent pair for a couple of hundred dollars, or you can go to an excellent pair for twenty, five hundred or three thousand dollars.
Speaker 5:Oh yeah, yeah, I recall my first. I was a member of the Oshawa Naturalist Club when I was an early teenager and I got a gift and I still have them. I think they're about six by 30s, I think so. They weren't. I think what seven by 40 is pretty much I would call the standard in the industry, and they kind of go up and down from there. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 4:No, that's a common one yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think it's seven by 40, but these ones were the next size down, which was about a six by 30, I think, which was still good, and I still have them to this day. Actually, my mother uses them to watch birds at her house, yeah. But yeah, it's good to have a good set of binoculars, and those binoculars are oh, how do you say this anymore. They're over 50 years old and still in good use. Yeah, now, what about those mini binoculars that you get to? You know, the very small ones, the compact size ones that you know, basically the size of a, I guess, a shaver sort of thing?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean those are sort of billed as great for hiking and things like that. I put those in the same league as opera glasses. They're fine in bright light, although they're not the best, but as soon as it gets at all dim lighting they're not very good. Right, and I've had a lot of people you know they'll try my binoculars and they'll go.
Speaker 4:Well, they're heavy and I mean, yeah, they're maybe less than a kilogram, but just under a kilogram, so I guess that's heavy, but they're great lenses. They're well built. The binoculars I have are quite good ones because I use them all the time. I could drop those in a creek underwater, I could wash them in a lake and they won't let water in. They're sealed. They're durable. They can take a hard hit, because if you're doing field work like I do, you trip over logs, you fall, you know, you bang them against trees as you turn or pivot, and they stand up to that. So that's what you're paying for with big money is great lenses and really sturdy, sealed housings.
Speaker 4:Okay, what brand is yours, doug? I have Leica binoculars, oh yeah, so the top binocular brands are things like Swarovski. Leica, zeiss and Vortex have come up with some really good binoculars in recent years as well, and most of those companies have guarantees, so if they're damaged, you can get them repaired or replaced free. I mean they're really good quality binoculars and, as I say, I mean if you're doing this professionally, it's absolutely essential to have good equipment, and if you're doing it seriously for recreation, it's good. Now, if you're just looking at feeders, and I don't mean just, I don't mean that as a derogatory thing. If your interest lies just sort of having a pair of binoculars on the windowsill by your feeder, you can get away with ones that aren't sealed, or, you know, sealed by your feeder you can get away with ones that aren't sealed. Or, you know, you can get a less expensive pair because you aren't taking them out in the elements where they're going to get exposed.
Speaker 5:Right. Yeah, I know I bought my sons a couple of pair of Burris that were, I think they're eight, by 35s maybe. Yeah, I think that's the size that they were uh great uh, compact size, easy to carry, nice and light uh good size. They were a young guy, they were uh, so they would have been probably around 14 at the time, which was a good size for them. Yeah, but there's other other ones, like steiners and things like that as well, that are out there, which is uh another high-end, quality lens-producing company, I believe.
Speaker 4:The other thing I would say, just as a what I always recommend, is, first of all, like I find it very hard to use Zeiss binoculars. I know they're good, but when I look through them I sort of see, you know cross-eyed, and then I'll put a couple of Leica and I have no problem. I know people who have the other way around. So it depends on your individual eye. Like everyone is different, and so it's fine to take people's advice, but look through them and if they don't look right, don't buy them. Like you know, everyone's eyes are different and some binocular brands aren't great for everybody, and it's not a problem with the brand, it's just that it doesn't match your eye.
Speaker 4:So, and the other thing I'd like to suggest when, if you're going into a store and looking at binoculars, don't look outside in the bright light. Use them to look underneath the counter and look for dust bunnies. So go into a dark place and look at the darkness, and that's where you're going to see how bright they are now I probably got something you may have not have heard of, but I had a friend.
Speaker 5:I haven't talked to him in quite a few years. I recently heard al. His name's al hobbs, and al used to send his things like binoculars and things like that down to the states where they would take them apart and put his his glass lens into it and the reek seal them and refill them with all the the gases in there and they would come back just as good, except he didn't need to wear his glasses because he could look through these and they were set to his lens that he required as opposed to wearing glasses. Ever heard of that? No, I never have.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that sounds brilliant. Yeah, yeah, al used to do it all the time and he tried At one point. He gave me the numbers and things like that. But, to be honest, I wasn't wearing glasses until I was into my mid-40s, so I really didn't need it at that time. But he, I really didn't need it at that time, but he was ranting and raving about it and used to send all his stuff down and I can't remember where it was in the States. But yeah, you put your prescription right into your glasses and that way you didn't need to wear your eyeglasses while you're looking through.
Speaker 4:Wow, yeah, that sounds pretty good.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it was pretty good, and I'm not sure if it's still around and he would send quality stuff down to the States as well. Leupold, I think, was one of the ones that he used to use fairly regular, so they were pretty good. That's a pretty good quality Yep. Now, doug, what kind of books do you recommend for people to look at, to identify birds or to kind of keep track and things like that? Some good books that you suggest?
Speaker 4:Sure, I hate to keep giving the same answer. There's quite a range, but in terms of field guides, which are identification guides, one of the standards that's been around for my God, almost 100 years now, believe it or not is the Peterson Field Guide. It's been updated, but it's an excellent starting guide, and there's a Peterson's to the eastern birds and western birds of North America. So here in Ontario we would go the eastern one, and so that's a great starting guide. It's fairly simplified, which is, I think, why it's good to start with. Another guide that I would highly recommend is the Sibley Guide to Birds by David Sibley. He's both the artist and the writer, and I think his illustrations are, at this stage, unparalleled.
Speaker 4:You know, birds can be as complicated as you want to make them. Most birds don't have just one plumage. They'll have a breeding plumage, a non-breeding plumage, they'll have an immature plumage, and that's one thing the Sibley Guide does very well is show all the different plumages a bird might be in. That makes it a little more confusing for a beginner, but the information is there, whereas the Peterson Guide tends to just show male, female, maybe immature, and it's a little more simplified that way, but no one guide does it in my mind Like it's good to have more than one.
Speaker 4:Now, one thing that's become really popular in the last 30, 40 years are photographic field guides. Oh yeah, and they look nice. Last 30, 40 years are photographic field guides and they look nice. But with a photographic guide the photo is one bird, frozen in time, as opposed to an artist's illustration which kind of averages something's appearance to make it best. So if, say, for example, the photo has a heavy shadow on it, if you don't know the breed you might think oh, it's dark there, but it's not, it's a shadow.
Speaker 4:Now they're getting better. A lot of the photo guides are using multiple photos now rather than one. But the very first photo guides were awful. They were frequently using pictures of birds sitting on a nest, taken with a flash, and so the colors are washed out, the posture's unnatural and I would defy anyone to learn a bird from those guides. Now they have gotten better, but I still I'm a bit old school in so many ways, but I still kind of prefer illustrated guides over photo guides. But I have them all because every guide has something that another guide doesn't have.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I still have. Well, I have a number of them, but the one that I still like is actually about 1974. I was a member of the Oshawa Naturalist Club and won a contest for bringing out the most new members to the Oshawa Naturalist Club and the prize was a Peterson's Eastern Bird Guide, and I still have that. Oh yeah, that I very prize was a Peterson's Eastern Bird Guide and I still have that. Oh yeah, that I very much enjoy. That's a great book.
Speaker 4:Yep, yeah, it's a great. They also one of the things Peterson did, which I thought was it really helped me. In the inside cover there's a picture of birds in silhouette, you know so, like a meadowlark putting on a fence post, swallows on the wire, this sort of thing. But learning shape is really, really critical in becoming. You know, if you want to gain your skills or increase your skills as a birder, shape and posture is everything, and those were excellent training to help you understand the difference in the way things look as they sit, because almost every bird can be identified by silhouette.
Speaker 5:Yep, you know, if you know it well enough yeah, oh yeah, I saw a morning dove this morning which, uh, I was just got a quick glimpse and I knew exactly what it was. Just simply, you know just a a blink of the amount of time that I had it. Oh, it's a morning dove, just by its, its gliding posture at that time, yeah, but yeah, that that peterson's book is. It's small enough that you can put in a small pack and carry it with you very easily along with your binoculars and all your other stuff that you would take when you go out for a birding venture. Yeah, I know one of the things that I did with the Oshawa Naturals Club.
Speaker 5:We were involved in a census, a bird census, yeah, were involved in a census, a bird census, yeah, and we're up near Owen Sound, I think it was doing in basically what you do, at least as I recall. Mind you, this is in the early mid 70s that we were doing that, that you, and it was a winter census to find out the winter birds, and so you basically do kind of grids or do areas. So these vehicles will go down these roads and next vehicles do the next road. Right, and it was great, but one of the interesting ones so we had, I think there was. They paired us up with some older birders and we were just young teens, like probably around 13, 14 sort of thing, and they put us in the vehicle and I used to have a pretty good eye, and so there was three in the front, three adults in the front and three of us teenagers basically young teenagers in the back, and they saw a bird fly across at a distance and it was very hard to see so and it looked like a raptor of some type. So I looked and they said, oh, so, two of us. Well, you guys, wait here, we'll go, we'll walk down so we don't scare it or drive the car down, we'll take a look.
Speaker 5:And I said, oh, and the two got out and looked and started walking down. Um, and I said I think that was a goshawk and the guy in the front says that's was a goshawk. And the guy in the front says that's not a goshawk, it's the wrong time of the year and this is not known for goshawks, and it wasn't this and it wasn't that. And the two guys came back and they said you won't believe this, but it was a goshawk, yeah, and the guy just turned around and looked at me and went how did you know?
Speaker 5:Anyways, yeah, because when I I'm a little obsessive, compulsive, when I get involved in things, I try to get completely into it, and that time birding was something I very much enjoyed, yeah, yeah. So, doug, how now, some of these books are they able to? Because a lot of people, a lot of birders, like to check off the birds they see, right, so, maintain the list. Is there some of the books they have, those lists you can check off in your book, or do you write them in, or how does that?
Speaker 4:A lot of books will have a checklist in it. You can also, for example, one of the provincial birding organization is the Ontario Field Ornithologists and if you go to their website you can, you can search through it and you'll find a checklist for the birds of Ontario, so all the birds that have ever been seen in Ontario, and there's different ways. There's also a continental birding group, the American Birding Association, which covers the US and Canada, and they they have a list function as well. So, and in terms of keeping a list, I mean most birders keep a list of some sort.
Speaker 4:Some people are driven by their lists, like there are what are called world listers and these are people who are trying to see as many birds in the world as possible. They usually have financial means and they're traveling all over the world trying to build the biggest life list. You know that's what it's called. When you're, you're the birds you've seen during your lifetime is your life list and uh, and and it's. It's quite. You know they're quite serious and competitive. Other people don't really care how many they've seen. They just like looking at birds. So it kind of depends how driven or list-oriented you are. But most birders I know keep a list at some level.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and that was one of the people that I tried to have on before was a former deputy minister who's an avid birder and flies around the world to build his list, I guess, or just to see birds all around the world, and that's what their focus, their trips on, is going. You know, well, we're going to go somewhere. Okay, where can we go see some special birds, I guess. But it's like a lot of things, right?
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, for about 20 years I worked as a guide leading birding tours for a company in Texas called Field Guides, and we run trips all over the world, and so for about 20 years I traveled half of the year all over the place and I'd have many of these world listers on my tours and it was a lot of fun. I mean, it was a great way I got to see a whole lot of the world that I couldn't have seen any other way, because, uh, contrary to what you might think, birders aren't paid a lot usually and uh, yeah and so you know I can't afford to travel the world on my own, so this was a wonderful opportunity to travel around and and see.
Speaker 4:you know just different birds all over the world and they're and it's fascinating how many you know just different birds all over the world and it's fascinating how many you know. There's something like just over 10,000 species of birds in the world, and the variation and the adaptations of them are just mind-blowing.
Speaker 5:So what would be probably the rarest bird that you've seen in all your trips?
Speaker 4:Oh dear. Well, okay, if you define rarity as total number of a population, I saw the pink pigeon in Mauritius, which I think at that time was down to about a dozen or 15 birds, and then probably the rarest thing. The other way you could define a rarity is something that's far from where it should be. And uh, many years ago, but 40 years ago at preskiel, I found a thing that was called was then called mongolian plover, it's now called siberian sand plover, but it's a russian shorebird that winters in australia and found one at Press Keel on May 4th 1984, and that was the first record for Canada and it was on the second record in Eastern North America.
Speaker 5:So when you see these ones and you report them, is there some verification process?
Speaker 4:Yeah, once your heart starts again. Which took about 30 seconds I think, because I just kind of went apoplectic when I saw it Because I knew what it was but I didn't know the name of the bird, but I knew the image, I knew the thing it was. I just wasn't sure what the name was and I was just dumbfounded because it's also a beautiful bird, it's a really strikingly patterned bird and so. But this was before cell phones. I went back to the park office and I called some people and they called people. It was sort of like a phone hotline and the rarer the bird, the faster it worked. And and then I went, got my camera, went back out on the beach, took some photos of it, more people got to see it and in the end about 30 or 40 people saw it and it left that night, was never seen again.
Speaker 4:But there is a verification process, if you like. It's called the Ontario Bird Records Committee. It is a committee of the Ontario Field Ornithologists and birders. It's a volunteer thing. Knowledgeable birders will sit on it. So if you see a rare bird, we ask that you document it.
Speaker 4:Nowadays almost all the documentation is photographs, which is very easy to deal with Back when it started it was mostly written descriptions and it is on the honor system.
Speaker 4:You're going to assume people aren't trying to commit a birding fraud although that has happened and so you know you would write a description and really the goal of it is to just describe the bird sufficiently that you eliminate the other possibilities.
Speaker 4:And it just adds a little credibility to site records, because in the old days the only way a record got accepted was if the bird was shot and put in a museum. And so up until about the early 1960s out-of-range birds were just routinely shot, and often by private collectors, and those collections were absorbed by big museums. So if you go to the royal ontario museum or the national museum of canada, their, their collections are built on a series of private collections, many of them yeah and and uh. So nowadays, with much better you know, cameras and and and better knowledge of bird identification, you know, collecting birds for science is rarely done now. It's usually done now for something like toxicology studies or something like that, and it's done very sparingly. But you know the documentation of rarities is no longer done with a shotgun, it's done with a camera.
Speaker 5:Yeah well, autobahn most of when all his stuff was basically shot. Birds, were they not Sure?
Speaker 4:They had garbage for optics and if he wanted to see something. You know what's that bird Bang? Oh look, it's this. You know, and it was sort of just a standard practice. But this is sort of you know, as technologies have evolved and I think also our ethics have evolved. Yes, you know where. We're not just killing stuff to document it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, to document and look at it Exactly.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:You know, but you're talking about birding frauds. It sounds like a good episode, say, for a Father Brown TV show.
Speaker 4:Believe me, I had a guy when I used to work as the head naturalist at Presqu'ile in the 80s and we had a guy here who was quite a character. He's an avid birder. He'd go out all the time, so he did see a lot, but every time he went out he'd see something amazing and no one else would ever get to see it. And he eventually saw a bird called a Sabin's gull in the spring. This is a bird that's very rare in the fall, never recorded in the spring in the Great Lakes and he said he had a photo of it and eventually I hounded him for it.
Speaker 4:I finally got the photo. And not only was the photo, it was of a Sabin's gull but based on its plumage, it was a fall bird, not a spring bird, and there was a rock in the foreground with barnacles on it. So you know, not only was it the first spring record of sabin's for the great lakes, it was the first record of barnacles for the great lakes. You know, it's just, and it's just like I'm looking at this going. What are you thinking? You know?
Speaker 5:it was kind of funny yeah, well, what about things like a california California condor? Did you have the privilege to record any California condors?
Speaker 4:I have not seen that bird. I have actually never birded California. I've spent a lot of time in LAX airport on the way to trips and things, but I never have birded California. So that's one that still eludes me.
Speaker 5:California. So that's one that still eludes me. Yeah, I recall I think it was during COVID that I was doing a dump run and going to the dump in Oshawa taking some things there and I look and I can't believe that it's like oh, but it's wounded. How did it get wounded? So I pull up and I said you see that bird, you got back there. And he says yeah, he says well, we've called it into the city of Oshawa to the animal resources. I said it's an arctic tern that has a wounded wing. Really, yeah, I was quite surprised and it's quite a lot. You could get probably within a car length of it, because it was right beside the roadway leading into the dump and everybody had a good look at it and I'm sure people had no idea what it was, but I was quite surprised to find it.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah. Well, that's a pretty rare bird in southern Ontario period and it's really really odd that it'd be in a dump.
Speaker 5:Well, yeah, it was leading on the way into the dump and it was just kind of surprising into the dump and it was just kind of surprised.
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Speaker 5:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, here we are in Lindsay with Bill, who's actually? This gentleman has given blood over 230 times 233, yeah, 233, and that's amazing, and you've had some success with Chaga. Tell us what you're dealing with and what you did and what you used.
Speaker 3:Well, I had mild high blood pressure. It wasn't very really high, but I was on medication for a few years and then I quit drinking coffee and started drinking this tea, the combination tea, the green and the shaga Right, and my medication is gone.
Speaker 5:Your medication is gone, gone, and you couldn't give blood during the other times.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I could. Oh, you could, I could. Yeah, but a few times the machine kicked me out. Oh yeah, but now it doesn't anymore.
Speaker 5:So you think the green tea and the chaga helped normalize your blood pressures?
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, oh very good, because it wouldn't be just stopping coffee, it would have to be something else.
Speaker 5:And that's the only thing. You did different Yep.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you very much for that. My blood pressure is probably that of a 40-year-old man, and I'm 71. Oh, very good.
Speaker 5:Well, that's good to hear. Thank you very much for that, no problem. Okay, we interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-o-p-y.
Speaker 5:If you're new to chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening back to the episode. Now, what about things like? Because we've heard, or at least I've heard. It's probably been a few years now since I've heard anything but supposedly down in the Caribbean somewhere they found an ivory-billed woodpecker somewhere. Have you heard about things like that? Or it was just? And of course, it takes a lot to verify something like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so ivory bill woodpecker is kind of like the Elvis of birds. Yes, there hasn't been. So there were two populations. There's a subspecies that was in the southeastern United States and there's a subspecies that's in Cuba. Yes, and the Cuban bird.
Speaker 4:Don't quote me on this, but I think the last definitive sighting of a Cuban bird was in the mid 80s. Ok, and you know, it's in a remote area, it's. It's not a bird that's necessarily tame and confiding and there aren't a whole lot of people looking. I mean, there have been some people looking, but it's not like there's a massive effort to find this bird, so it may or may not be extinct. And the US population the last proven record, as in proven with a photo recording something like that, is from the early 40s in Louisiana, right, but that said, there are a number of competent people who claim to have seen them. There's a group working right now that claim they have a small population in Louisiana that they're. They're trying to verify but nobody has been able to nail a definitive photograph to prove it right. And if that happens, it'll be. You be a cause for great celebration.
Speaker 5:Yeah, but for those that don't know birds, an ivory bill, it's what. The closest one would be a pileated woodpecker. It'd be basically the same sort of size and same kind of configuration.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's actually even bigger than a pileated. Oh, it is. So a pileated is about the size of a crow. Yes, it's mostly black with a big red crest and when it flies it shows extensive white under the wing. Yep, an ivory bill is probably 15% bigger, like a raven, yeah, and when sitting, like when perched on a tree, it shows these big white triangles on the lower back and when it flies that's a part of the wing and it has a huge area of white in the wing and it has, like the name suggests, a pale bone colored bill as opposed to a dark bill of appellated.
Speaker 4:Um, and it was a specialist of old growth river bottom forests and pine forests in the southeast, and it was. You know, there were still a fair number of them around in the 1880s, 1890s, right into 1910, 1915, but at that point all of the river bottom forests were being logged and it basically was lost to habitat destruction. And you know we go back to the collecting thing. A lot of. There were a lot of people at that time who would, who were professional collectors, who would go out and shoot these things and sell them to collectors.
Speaker 4:The laws permitted it back then and so a lot of the collectors found out, oh, they're going to log this river valley, so they go in and shoot all the ivory bills ahead of the logging. So we have lots of specimens of them. The whole thing's tragic, yeah, it is, yeah. And the last population was in a place called the Singer Tract in Louisiana and it was logged in the late 30s, early 40s, even though they knew there were like three or four pairs in that forest and there were all sorts of efforts trying to save that forest, make it a reserve, a park, and they just couldn't get it together. Right, reserve a park, and they just couldn't get it together.
Speaker 5:Right, yeah, I know in Ontario that a lot of. I recall it was a great forester. His name was Bob Penwell. He was the chief forester for a district, peterborough, lindsay area with the Ministry of Natural Resources, and a lot of the stuff that took place in one of the forests large forest, I think, it was 12,500 acres in that one one that they used to manage, and bob told me later on he said you know something, we never, ever, considered migrating birds in our forestry practices until, well, that would have been probably until the 90s or later than that, so it didn't come into place till that, yeah, you know.
Speaker 5:And some of the other things, though, is places like and now there's some stipulations out there for rare birds as well, which, um, because the royal ontario museum, iran and other museums that keep these sort of things, they actually give tax receipts, as far as I know, for donations of things like that. So, and to make sure that they're not harvested illegally, that they have to have all the proper identification with everything that they have, to make sure that it's just like you said, that it was allowed to be shot at these times for collecting and those sorts of things, but not anymore.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think there's a permitting process for possession of things. So the federal government is responsible for what are classed as migratory birds. The provincial government are responsible for things like grouse, turkeys, pheasants, owls, hawks, cormorants. So they sort of divide up. It doesn't entirely make biological sense how they got divided, but they are divided. But you do have to. If you have in your possession any of these things, you have to have permits for them. Generally you can't get permits for songbirds and things like that but you can, you know, get a permit if you say you're a hunter and you shoot a duck or a grouse and you want to get it stuffed, you can Like my grandfather's case of stuffed birds. That's literally grandfathered. You know it's sort of like a family heirloom. I could never sell it Right. That's literally grandfathered. You know it's sort of like a family heirloom. I could never sell it Right but I will. You know it's in my will to go to carry on in the family. So you know, carry on in the family as a family treasure.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think the Migratory Bird Act that was signed with Canada, united States and, I believe, mexico as well, yeah, governs a lot of the migratory birds such as ducks and geese and timber, doodle, woodcock and those sort of things. Yeah, and when I was in his minister, there was one thing that kind of it did drive me a little crazy, and I remember this one specifically that they were looking at putting the bald eagle on a I can't remember which list it was supposed to be listed as. And I said what do you mean the bald eagle? I said we have a significant number. What kind of numbers do we have? Oh well, minister, we have a stable Northern Ontario population, but we don't have a stable Southern Ontario bald eagle strain. And I said what are you talking about, a Southern Ontario bald eagle strain? I said I don't think there is such a thing and I think that you're doing something that's not quite in the best interest of the populace at large out there. Have you ever heard of anything along those sort of lines?
Speaker 4:Well, I think so. There's a Provincial at risk act.
Speaker 4:Uh, you know, often referred to as an endangered species act, but that's not the actual title and then there's a federal listing as well and the federal listing applies to national parks, uh uh, military places like federal lands basically, whereas the provincial list is much more impactful because it covers most of the land.
Speaker 4:But anyway, bald eagle was one of the few species where they actually split its status in the province because there was a large, fairly healthy population, especially in northwestern Ontario up around Lake of the Woods, kenora, that neck of the woods. But southern Ontario historically had bald eagles but they were almost entirely wiped out through DDT poisoning in the 60s and 70s. And I remember as a kid going down to Point Pelee every spring and we would stop at the Iona Station side road near Chatham and drive north a couple kilometers to this woodlot where there was a bald eagle nesting and it was the only bald eagle known to be nesting in Southern Ontario. And during the 80s, late 70s and 80s there were big efforts made both in Ontario and New York and adjacent states to try to reintroduce bald eagles, like they did with peregrine falcons and now not like with ddt has been banned for over 50 years. Uh, now bald eagles are more common in southern ontario than they probably were historically. They're nesting all over the place now, which is amazing.
Speaker 5:Oh, my god, I gotta tell you doug, one of the interesting times that I would see bald eagles on a regular basis in Oshawa was when they put lampreyside in the Oshawa Creek and the lamprey eels would be killed and they would feed on the dead lamprey eels. And I would see that all the time.
Speaker 4:They also will readily go to garbage dumps. Yes, and it's not uncommon. I used to do a trip in the Yukon and you go into the white horse dump and there'd be 60 bald eagles sitting on the smoldering garbage piles, and so wherever they are mainly scavengers they can hunt their own food, but they are primarily carrion feeders, so they'll eat dead carp, dead salmon, whatever.
Speaker 5:Well, that's what Teddy Roosevelt I believe it was. Teddy Roosevelt said right that why would they have the bald eagle as their national bird when it's essentially a scavenger feeding on dead carrion, when they should have, in his belief, was the wild turkey would be a far more better choice for a national bird because of its intelligence and how active the wild turkeys were. I'm pretty sure it was Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no comment.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. So, doug, what's the best time to see birds?
Speaker 4:Well, one beautiful thing about birds is you can see them anywhere, anytime of year. But in terms of maximum diversity here in, say, southern Ontario, the best time is the month of May, and that's when all the migrants, the resident birds, are returning. The birds that breed further north are passing through. So you know, at a really good site in southern Ontario with a bit of luck, you could potentially see 180 species in a day in a really rich biodiverse area.
Speaker 4:I've done a couple of big days here in Northumberland County and if I remember right, my record is 171. But for that to happen, you know the gods have to be kind to you, you have to have you know good weather, you have to have a good movement of migrant birds, you have to have, you know, good weather, you have to have a good movement of migrant birds, you have to have all the resident birds lined up singing for you so you can find them. But yeah, maximum biodiversity is probably in May and then September, august, late August, september, early October is also very good because that's when all the birds are returning south, or the bulk of them, and there's more of them because you have the young in the population. So you actually have. Numerically, you have three or four times the number of birds going south as you do going north.
Speaker 5:So I've got an interesting question for you that I've asked some who I thought were good birders, but they couldn't answer me. When birds migrate south, do they nest south, down south as well, or do they only nest here in the north when they migrate north?
Speaker 4:Generally speaking, they're only nesting at one site. So some of these birds, will you know, migrate north, breed, say, in the boreal forest or in the Arctic tundra, and then they'll move south. Now I have heard that there may be a couple of species that do a breeding in the south and then move north and breed again. I'm not really up on that, but I've heard that there's some speculation about orchard orioles nesting in Mexico and then moving north. But I don't want to be quoted on that because I haven't seen the actual research papers myself, but I've heard of that. I don't know if it's true, but anyway, by and large, if that does happen, it's extremely rare because most things are they have a site they breed at. They often have a very specific site they winter at.
Speaker 4:That's one of the amazing things about migration is that you could take something like, is that you know you could take something like a I don't know a magnolia warbler, which is an abundant bird in the boreal forest. You know they'll winter in Belize or Guatemala or northern Costa Rica and then they fly all the way to Gogama or Timmins and they nest in the same spruce tree or balsam fir tree, year after year after year, and then they'll go back to Belize and winter in the very same spot they wintered in before. And it's just amazing to me that you know we go on about how clever we are with GPS. These things have it in the brain the size of a pea, yeah, and they have it from birth, like they know where they're going. It kind of blows my mind.
Speaker 5:Well, here I'll give you one that you may not have heard as well. One of the things I did when I was minister was I tried to bring in a provincial insect, and my preference was the dragonfly Right. So we started doing research into dragonflies. Are you familiar with how many strains of dragonfly there are in Ontario?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, Isn't there like 120, 130 species or something? No, I think it's 56.
Speaker 5:And the one there, the dragon slayer dragonfly, is the largest and will migrate from the Hudson's James Bay lowlands all the way to Florida, and I had no idea about that until we started doing that research.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I know one of the common ones here is green darner and they're migratory. Like most dragonflies don't migrate, some do, most don't, but the green darner you'll see hundreds in the air in September out over Lake Ontario and the little falcon, the merlin. They catch them on the wing and eat them on the wing and you'll see them up there grabbing these things and then eating them like corn on the cob in the air and they'll grab another and eat another and it's really neat to watch.
Speaker 5:Oh, it would be. Yeah, well, I know this morning and normally I start off the podcast talking about my morning walk, which I held off with talking about this morning walk, which I held off with talking about this morning Of course, I was out with my chocolate lab, gunner and Willie, which is one of the ones that shows up at the same time. He's a German short hair. They were out running and the reishi was growing. It was the second flush of reishi. Everything seems to be going along. The stinging nettle's not doing as well as I thought it would, but I got to tell you this morning we had chirping sparrow, American goldfinch, of course, robin, common grackle, cedar, waxwing, red-breasted nuthatch, house finch, blue jay, song sparrow. What else do we have? Red-eyed vario, black-capped chickadee, a robin as well, a crow and what else? Cardinals. Those were the main ones that were out this morning while I was walking, which is kind of nice to see. So what's a good app that people can use for birding? Do you know to identify birds?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so an app that's hugely popular is called Merlin Yep, that's what I use. It's produced by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University and it is very good. So, merlin, you can put it on your phone. You can go outside and you hear a bird calling and you turn it on and it will tell you what it is. Yep, yep, I now I'm a bit old school.
Speaker 4:It might be a product of age, or it might just be my curmudgeonly nature, but I, I, you, I, I actually don't have Merlin on my phone and I teach ornithology at Fleming College in Lindsay and I always tell them, I said, like Merlin is a tool, but it is not a god. It can be wrong, it sometimes is wrong, and I'm not sure it helps the learning process because I think you know, quite often you say, oh, what's that? I hear that, and Merlin says, oh, it's a Baltimore Oriole, okay, that's what it is. You haven't done the work. And without doing the work it doesn't commit to memory. That's my experience. I have to when I learn a bird song, a new one, it's because I, you know, walk through a thistle patch or get scraped up in hawthorns, you know, draw a little blood. You remember it if you work for it and I think. But it is a useful tool, it really is. It's kind of amazing. I mean it's almost out of Star Trek, right, like Spock with his tricorder going Captain, it's a magnolia warbler or something. It kind of blows the mind. At the same time, though, there's a bird that's in Carolinian parts of Ontario, like the Niagara region, windsor the tufted titmouse. It's a chickadee. For some reason Merlin keeps calling Baltimore Orioles titmice, really, yeah, and there's an Oriole at Presqu'Eel here at the lighthouse.
Speaker 4:The Oriole songs are a little variable but the quality is always the same. They have a rich, flute-like, like very powerful, strong song, right, and this aureole presqu'ile goes like deetle, deetle, deetle at the start, and the thing keeps calling it a titmouse. Oh yeah, so you know, and I've had this with students, though I have an assignment where they go out with Merlin and find stuff and they'll come back. So I had a titmouse and it's like well, actually I really don't think you did, you know, you had something else. But so I think it's a useful tool, but nothing replaces finding it, singing, like hear the song, find it, see what Merlin says. Then go verify it. Yeah, like cause. It also teaches you the skill of how to spot birds where they are when they're singing. Um, but yeah, anyway, that that's. There are lots of different apps out there, but that's the one that just you know. It's far and away the leading one that's being used by everybody.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's a free app and you can, of course, upgrade, but and they ask for donations because that's how they run it. But I a friend of mine, ron, who's a listener to the podcast told me about this and I tried it and I was quite surprised. It was rather nice to see and it's getting better.
Speaker 4:I mean they're refining it. When it first came out a few years ago, it came up with ridiculous Right. Well, it's an example. It also does visual stuff, and I had someone send me a photo of a bird and they said, hey, doug Merlin says this is a first year bald eagle, what do you think? And it was a female rose-breasted grosbeak. Oh yeah, being shot from below looking straight up, and I mean it's like not even close Right Now. As I say, it's constantly being refined and, as that's happening, it's getting better and better, right.
Speaker 5:So, doug now, when I was minister I was told by the ministry you may be a counter to that, but what is the official first bird of spring in Ontario?
Speaker 4:Ah, okay, that's a good question, I think, what would typically be the first migrant back? What would typically be the first migrant back? It's getting a little muddied with climate changes. You know we're not getting the cold, solid winters like we used to. So, for example, here at Presque Isle we can get a warm spell in mid-January and all of a sudden there's like 500 redheads swimming around Presque Isle Bay. Where did they come from? You know, like, is that a migration or did they just move from some other spot on the Great Lakes?
Speaker 4:But what is often referred to as the first bird is horned lark, which is a songbird that's out in fields, arctic tundra, and they usually come back by the third week of January. The first ones. But the water bird situation, like with ducks and even gulls, like ring-billed gulls, they start moving around very early now and it's really hard to tell if they're like here at Presque Isle, we have a big colony of ring-billed gulls that breed on the islands off Presque Isle and we don't have them wintering here because we don't have hot water outflows or industrial plants or chip stands on the waterfront, whereas they do winter at places like Coburg Harbor, whitby, oshawa, pickering, toronto. So when you go out on a nice bright day in late January and it's sunny and there's like 500 ring-billed gulls flying around the islands. They've come back, but from where it's kind of muddy now.
Speaker 5:So what I was told when I was minister and now, mind you, that's like 20 years ago was that a lot of people obviously always thought it's the robin. Well, no, because it's the robins that actually nest in the Hudson's, james Bay, lowland winter in southern Ontario, because it's quite the distance is what the ministry very specifically stated. What they said at that time was the red-winged blackbird, because Ontario is the northernmost range of the red-winged blackbird and when it shows up as the first true sign of first bird of spring according to the ministry at least it used to be, but, like you said, it's muddying very much so, and I mean things like robins and redwings are traditionally some of the first visible migrants, you see, because horned larks aren't all that visible.
Speaker 4:They're out there but they're hard to find. You need a sort of dedicated search. But you know, when you and I were kids, it was early March would be the first robins, the first red wings, and we didn't have big wintering populations, whereas now we do, like there's hundreds of robins wintering. I live in Brighton, by Presque Isle. We have some winters, we have hundreds wintering here, and I think that's a double-barreled thing. One is the climate is warmer, we don't have as harsh a winter. But I think the bigger factor in this case is there's now abundant winter food sources where there wasn't before, and the change is mostly in the invasive European buckthorn. Oh yeah, it's just taken off. It's a small tree which produces those dark blue or purple berries, and robins love that stuff and that's why it's spreading, because they eat it, their droppings, have the seeds and they plant new ones everywhere. But you know, now there are hundreds of robins wintering here, but a lot of it depends on the buckthorn crop rather than the snow depth or temperature.
Speaker 5:And I have a lot. I have a crabapple tree that has large blooms. Basically every other year they feed on those small crab apples every year, Like it's kind of surprising to see. But, Doug, okay, tell us one thing if you can. Yep, how do you identify a male robin from a female?
Speaker 4:Okay, a general rule of thumb is if you look at a robin and you look at its, the crown, the top of the head, if it's really black, the head, it is probably a male. Females' heads are browner. They're more closer to the color of the back. So if there's a very strong contrast between the color of the back and the head it's probably a male. And I hate to be the guy who says says, but there's a caveat, because there's a caveat to everything. Um, the older a bird is, the darker it gets. So a really old female robin can get fairly black on the crown. But right, general rule of thumb, if the head especially you see the two together, like in the spring hopping around on, the one of them is going to have a much darker head than the other and that'll be the male.
Speaker 5:And so the white tip on the tail feathers is not an indicator either, though eh.
Speaker 4:No, they both have that, okay, yeah.
Speaker 5:Okay, all right, so tell us about your trip coming up with Ministry of Natural Resources. What are you doing there?
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I'm really excited about this. I love the Hudson Bay lowland. I've done a lot of work in Hudson and James Bay for over 45 years. It's one of my favorite places on earth.
Speaker 4:And so, as a volunteer, I'm going to be assisting M&R in a Canada goose banding operation. We're going to be based out of Piwanak, which is about midway along the Ontario Hudson Bay coast, and we're going to be flying around in a helicopter finding geese that are are, uh, flightless, and we will ban them, uh, you know, as part of sort of long-term ongoing studies of population movements and dynamics. Uh, the ministry does this in conjunction with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. It's a big, it's an internationally cooperative thing and that's good because these populations are international right. They're breeding here, wintering in the States, so at least at this point, we're still working together on that, and so I'm going to be a volunteer on that crew. And it's kind of neat because, a I love flying in helicopters and, b I love the Hudson Bay Lowlands, so any excuse to get in a helicopter in the Hudson Bay.
Speaker 5:Lowlands. I jump at it. Have you been to Pewannock before?
Speaker 4:Doug, I have yeah, okay, and Pewannock is an indigenous community. I don't know if anyone remembers the old community of Winnisk, which is a C, a Cree word meaning woodchuck, and and it's at the mouth of the Winnisk river. And Winnisk flooded traditionally, so the community was moved inland to higher ground at a place called Piwanak, and uh, uh, so the old town site's gone, uh, destroyed, and floods. There's still a few remnants of buildings left, but that's it. Been destroyed in floods. There's still a few remnants of buildings left, but that's it.
Speaker 4:But anyway, the neat thing about this is most birds there's a thing called molt, where they change their feathers because feathers don't last forever and the vast majority of birds molt over time.
Speaker 4:So they'll be dropping a few feathers at a time in their wings, so they never lose the power of flight and they usually do it right after breeding. So breeding is a very energetic, expensive activity and then they'll molt and then they'll migrate. There's all sorts of variation, but that's the general rule of thumb. But geese and ducks do it differently. They have what they call catastrophic molt, where they drop all their wing feathers at once and become flightless, and they do it at the same time. The young are flightless, so the whole bunch of them are unable to fly, and that's when we catch them, to ban them. And when you fly over them with a helicopter you'll have multiple family groups hanging around together grazing and they'll sort of, when the helicopter goes over, they bunch up into a tight group and then we just land and put people around the flock, sort of corral them into a, a net, uh corral, and one by one, band the birds and let them go and then, leave right and and it's, it's.
Speaker 4:It's sort of literally dirty work. It's hard work, but it's really fun.
Speaker 5:Yeah, rewarding, yeah. So if you've been to Pewannock Pewannock is basically in Polar Bear Provincial Park and you're probably staying in the ranger's house. There is where they house a lot of the M&R stuff like that. Yeah that's my understanding, and the other thing about it is lots of polar bears in Pewannock area. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean we will almost certainly see some polar bears in Piwanak area. Yeah, I mean we, we will almost certainly see some polar bears and we are, you know, being being a government operation safety is paramount. So you know we, we are all we will have shotguns, you know, for protection, although it's almost never needed. And but you know you do have to be ready for that. Polar bears most of the polar bears, stay out on the ice of Hudson Bay as long as they can because they're primarily seal hunters and there's no seals on land or or they can't catch them in the open water. So but once the ice deteriorates they all come to shore and they generally stay quite close to the bay because it's cooler and you know they heat up. But you know it's possible we could get one right in Pawanik. More likely September, october. There'll be a lot more chance of seeing one right in the town walking around. When we're up there it's probably early days and a relatively small number of bears will be in on the coast.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, it was interesting as well. A lot of people don't realize but there's a stable population of walruses and seals and caribou in that area as well. Yeah, that a lot of people don't realize that we have. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Right here in Ontario, the walrus one really surprises people. But there is a little isolated population near Cape Henrietta and the next nearest population is in the north part of Hudson Bay, which is quite a distance away.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but yeah, there are. I've seen the I've worked up in that area before and there are some fairly sizable caribou herds. There's wolverines up there, there's I mean, it's a wilderness. The Hudson Bay lowland is, you know it occupies about what a quarter of the province's landmass.
Speaker 5:People have no idea. When they say northern Ontario they think Sudbury or Thunder Bay, not even close. Exactly you get to Thunder Bay. You're not even halfway up to the top of Ontario and it's kind of surprising and it's an incredible landscape.
Speaker 4:When you like the Hudson Bay lowland, it's just one of the most breathtaking landscapes I can think of. It's flat but it's it's like a giant bog with these millions of little lakes and islands of trees and and willow, swales and gravel, beach ridges and stuff and it. It's just an incredibly for a naturalist like myself. I just find it awe-inspiring.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, I have to tell you, my father was a chief of police for a period of time in Thunder Bay and he was in a canoeing trip and he saw something that he was absolutely amazed, which was golden eagles. They were in the lake and the young ones were actually swimming with their wings. Really, yeah, he couldn't believe it. He was totally amazed with that. He'd never seen anything like that. They were in the water and they were using their wings like they were swimming Wow.
Speaker 4:Which was something. Yeah, there is a little population of golden eagles breeding in northern Ontario Places like the Sutton Ridges, which are a granite outcrop. In this otherwise flat landscape, and even on some of the uh sort of earth and river banks. Um, there's some nests and and uh as, as your listeners might know, the goose populations have increased tenfold over the last 30, 40 years and there's been a corresponding increase in both golden and bald eagles up in that region hunting them. So you know, these eagles take four or five years before their breeding age. So you have all these sub-adult eagles cruising the shoreline hunting geese, and that's something we're going to be seeing from the helicopters. You know, we'll be probably displacing some eagles off their preferred goose pack as we come in.
Speaker 5:So, and I have to tell you, so we were out with we had rented a cabin, my wife wanted to go, and so we were up on Ivanhoe Lake and right by and Ivanhoe Provincial Park was there, and we were out on my son's boat and we could hear all this screaming and I thought what is that Like? What's going on here? And anyway, so, and you could hear it on the lake, and I looked over and I could see they were from a distance. I could identify the bald eagle, mature bald eagles, and I thought, oh, those are young ones there. There's a nest there. But wow, are those young ones ever large? Anyways, so I said, well, come on, let's go over there and find out why they're screaming so much and everything else.
Speaker 5:Well, it wasn't young ones that were large, it was actually golden eagles. Bald eagles were screaming and diving at the golden eagles that were sitting on trees there and the golden eagles took off and it was one of those classic ones where their talons clutched and they were a golden eagle and a bald eagle were doing a spin, falling into the lake. They didn't hit the lake, they let go before and took off, but the bald eagles were chasing after these two golden eagles, whether they were just flying through or what's taking place, but you could tell there was a bald eagle nest on Ivanhoe Provincial Park, which was right on Ivanhoe Lake, and it was amazing to see. That's probably the most interesting golden eagle, because I've seen a couple before up Nipigon Way as well. But yeah, but this was interesting to see these bald eagles and I had to go over and find out what all the screaming was about. And here they were, going after these golden eagles.
Speaker 4:Wow, that's pretty lucky to see that.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it was amazing. I was quite impressed. So tell us, doug, where can people find out about birding trips or clubs or organizations, or get more involved in it?
Speaker 4:Okay. So there's a couple of things. First off, as I mentioned before, in Ontario we have the Ontario Field Ornithologists and if you just Google that you'll get their website and they offer field trips for members. I'm not sure of the number, but they're probably running 50, 60 trips a year members, or most of them. There's a few that have a fee because there's costs involved, but they're led by usually local volunteer birders. They're often quite good birders. There tends to be a cap on the number of people because large groups birding is awkward, but you can sign up for these trips and they're a great way to not only learn birds from people who know them but also to learn areas to go birding in.
Speaker 4:And then, on a more local scale, most regions have a local naturalist club, which also do the same function. They'll have local field trips with local leaders. Some of the clubs you know are sort of not that active. Others are amazing, like clubs like the Hamilton Naturalist Club or the Kingston Field Naturalist or the Ottawa Field Naturalist. Peterborough's got a really dynamic group right now. Here in Northumberland we have the Willow Beach Field Naturalist. So local naturalist clubs are a good source and the umbrella group for a lot of those? Is the? Is the how can I forget this? The these be called the Federation of Ontario naturalists? They're now what? Ontario nature? Yeah, and you know so I'm. But there there are a good group to to check in with as well. But yeah, between the Ontario field ornithologists and local naturalist clubs. There's a wealth of information there about destinations, about learning how to identify birds. They also do field trips and a whole bunch of other things like butterflies, moths, dragonflies. You know, you name it.
Speaker 5:Very good. Well, doug, I want to thank you. I found it very interesting. I hope a lot of our listeners do, and where can they find out more information? How to get in touch with you? If you want to mention the Northumberland Land Trust again would be great.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so Northumberland Land Trust if you just Google Northumberland Land Trust or our website is nltrustca and they can reach me through that if they like, and we certainly. You know we're very keen to have the public on board on this. As an organization, we're really on a roll right now and we're building our capacity greatly and we've got a tremendous core of volunteers who help us on work days where we go out and clear non-native vegetation or rebuild fences or put signs up that sort of thing. The work parties are a lot of fun, actually, they're kind of a social event, and we also have field trips like nature clubs. We have field trips on some of our properties, particularly the ones that aren't broadly open to the public. We'll take people in on a sort of controlled basis, so we would love to have you know. If anyone is interested, please reach out.
Speaker 5:Very good. Well, thanks very much, doug. We really appreciate you being on the podcast and have a great trip up to Piwanak with the M&R and Ministry of Natural Resources and enjoy your banding up there. I'm sure it's going to be a memorable experience. And this is just a little bit something different that people can learn a lot more about out there what's happening out there under the canopy.
Speaker 4:Well, thanks very much, Jerry. It's great to talk with you again.
Speaker 5:Thanks a lot Okay.
Speaker 2:Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's favorite fishing show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right. Every Thursday, Ang and I will be right here in ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Hmm, Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week? Well, you know, there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 6:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
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Speaker 1:To scientists.
Speaker 6:But now that we're reforesting and laying things free. It's the perfect transmission environment for the line to be.
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