Julia Ruhl will be presenting “Preventing the Introduction of Invasive Pests into Canada“. Think Emerald Ash Borer … for which she was the outreach and media spokesperson when the invasive Emerald Ash Borer was introduced into northern Ontario. What else are we aware of? Hemlock Adelgid? Lantern Fly? Lyme Disease and the other associated illnesses? Julia will talk about: the role of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in respect to preventing the introduction of invasive plant pests into Canada rules and regulations of importing plants and plant material into Canada what are invasive pests and their significance to the environment, economy and trade examples of regulated pest introductions what can we do to prevent such potential introductions Julia Ruhl has an Honours B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from the University of Guelph. She worked for the federal government for 30 years in a variety of scientific positions including inspection, auditing and… Read more »
The Christmas Bird Count was on Dec 28, a calm day after a week of bitter cold, snow and howling winds. The temperature was from -2ºC to +3ºC. Unfortunately waterways were frozen from the prior cold spell. The area that Headwaters Nature and friends cover for the annual Christmas Bird Count is officially labelled ‘ONCD’. It covers much of Caledon as well as parts of Orangeville and Erin. This is the 31st count, beginning in 1987 with a few missing years. We had a total of 11 teams, each with part of or the whole of the various Areas outlined in the above map. There were also 4 Project FeederWatch reports submitted to Headwaters Nature. We had 48 species which is the best since 2005 (average 39.4 the last five years), but a number of these species are only represented by one or two birds. Our total count of 3135 is… Read more »
The 120th annual Christmas Bird Count is run by the Audubon Society and Bird Studies Canada. Counts can be done on any single day between Dec 14 and Jan 5 and are conducted within a circle of diameter 24 km (15 miles). This year we counted on 2020 January 04, marking our 28th count as several years were missed. Since 1987, the UCFN/HN have been responsible for the Caledon circle, which includes Orangeville.