One of our hoped-for series of field trips for this year is to participate in the annual Credit Valley Conservation’s Butterfly Blitz. This citizen science program is creating a watershed-wide inventory of butterflies. The data you collect will give insights to protect and restore wildlife habitat in the Credit River Watershed.
Headwaters Nature were hoping for three field trips, along the lines of the three we had several years ago. While these may still be able to happen in some form or other, as individuals we certainly can participate on our own properties or where it is safe to practice physical distancing. We’ll send more details as the potential easing of lockdown restrictions unfold.
Mourning Cloak at Monora, 2020 April 27, MW photo These beauties overwinter as adults, and this one is quite possibly already 10 months old!
In the meantime, CVC is holding three free online training events, on Saturday May 23rd and Sunday May 24th, and on the next Saturday, May 30th. You can register online for these free webinars.
CVC is asking people to make observations from their own property and where it is safe and reasonable to do so during social distancing. This will certainly affect the first part of the planned CVC events, and possibly most of it depending on how long the restrictions last.
Butterfly Blitz is a great way to connect with nature and spend time outdoors. You’ll learn how to identify butterfly species in your backyard. Participants should only make observations from their own property and where it is safe and reasonable to do so during social distancing.
With the explosion of Spring surely about to happen, I’m proposing changing our Spring observation challenge to something more open-ended. I’m wondering about a Spring Scrabble. Some of us have had fun with our Spring Bingo challenges, but the listing of only 25 limited possible observations doesn’t work so well with such a wonderful outburst as the onset of Spring. I did broaden the list of clues, giving each of us more opportunity to include our actual observations, beyond just those prescribed. That has led me to this new version!
So I’m playing around with a formal Scrabble board of 15*15 squares, and the box of tiles, all face-up and available. As I see something new, I put the name onto the board. Then I build up each following observation, using the available remaining tiles, tallying my points as I proceed.
My trial version of Spring Scrabble (from MW)
Turns out to be a lot of strategy required! I started with Mourning Cloak, a great long word when combined, resulting with 72 points because it spanned a triple-word square! (It actually spanned both a double- and a triple-word square — but I didn’t count the double …) Wonderful! But my next observation, Dutchman’s Breeches, had too many letters fo fit onto a scrabble board … So I invented the rule of being able to use the Latin genus and/or species name. Dicentra fit more easily. For Red Trillium, I just used Trillium. Great, because it fit onto the beginning of Mourning Cloak and gave me another double word square. However, as I soon realized, I had buried too many letters off against the edge of the board, and couldn’t easily use them later … I used Latin Equisetum for Horsetail, which seemed wise as it enabled me to use the Q, combined with another double-word square benefit. Mallards became the Latin Anas. Leatherwood worked better as Dirca. I couldn’t find a place to fit in Earthworm or Lumbricus or even worm (as a category), so I invented another rule that allowed me to skip one or two observations. Bufflehead became duck, though because I’m missing one of the letter Cs from this game, I had to substitute in a blank. Salix for Pussy Willow let me use the X which was great. But it meant I had two Ss nearly side by side and not available for anything else … Red Fox was great, as it picked up the X from Salix and gave me another double-word score. But I couldn’t fit in my next observations of Coltsfoot / Tussilago, nor Dandelion / Taraxacum, nor House Finch / Haemorhous because I had run out of available letters and possible attachments … The great long high-scoring first few words left too many letters stranded along the edges, so lessening possible attachment spots. But I loved the challenge of trying to invent something new!
Suggested guidelines:
Use observations in order of time. (Or not …) I put mine into a sequence on paper first. Putting them on the board in any order would require some advanced planning, and would make it a different challenge. Perhaps better!
I laid out all the Scrabble letters face up and sequenced them alphabetically.
Use common names, or Latin, or categories. (Wikipedia is a great place to learn Latin names — and so so so much more! iNaturalist is another fine source.)
Allow skipping one or two observations.
Playing this with a partner, taking turns in sequence, would be a great option!
Instead of using a formal 15*15 grid, use a piece of graph-paper and a pencil and just keep spreading out unbounded. See how big you could make your open-sided pattern! Or challenge yourself to see how tightly you can build your observations together!
I love this time of year— early spring: the snow is gone but nothing much is leafing out yet, so you can see the bones of the landscape. Even without the anticipation of the spring birds arriving almost daily, early spring is an exciting time. We can walk more easily through the woods now that the snow is gone, and we can see far into the trees without giving ourselves away.
The not so secret Bones of the Woods, by Robin Harmer
A couple of weeks ago, I was on my way into the woods for an early morning walk, when I noticed some movement about 200 metres ahead of me. I could clearly see a line of female turkeys scuttling across their usual path through the woods. And when I brought my binoculars up for a closer look? A young doe bringing up the rear! She froze, and we stood “binocular-to-eye” as I waited for her to move on. After a minute or so, she bounded on with a flash of her white tail. In winter, we might see such a sight, but the deep snow often inhibits the turkeys, and at that early hour, it is too dark to see far into the woods. Even now, the cover-up has begun as the ramps and trout lilies have begun to poke up. In summer — everything is hidden inside the mantle of wild raspberry, dogwood leaves, leaf covered trees, grape vine and yes, alas, those nasty invasives. Over on the summer meadow, the head of an occasional turkey will show above the grasses and wild flowers, or a deer will emerge from the forest briefly in the late evening dusk — tall enough to be seen clearly. But for the most part the secrets are well hidden from May until well into November, when the skeleton slowly but surely emerges once again to expose its secrets.
So — maybe those turkeys and that deer travel in convoy in the winter too, hidden by the shadows of dusk or the dark of night, or in summer masked by the green mantle of verdant underbrush. Who knows what happens when the woods are clothed in darkness or cloaked in green? But this is the time of year when we might just get a glimpse of something unexpected …
An old tree that once grew in the middle of a pasture field, by Robin Harmer
