Yellow bellied Sapsucker @ Black Oak Heritage Park

Today was just a fantastic day to be outside. 18C and sunny. I went for a bike ride this morning from my house in the South Cameron Woodlot area to Malden Park, then through Spring garden, then through the Tallgrass prairie on the Titcombe pathway, then to the Black Oak Heritage Park. I might have biked 15-20km today!

Lots of great birds were seen today. Some birds included:
Yellow bellied Sapsucker
Eastern Phoebe
Eastern Bluebird
Carolina Wren
Song Sparrow
Field Sparrow

Several Eastern Commas were fluttering around as well.

At one point along the pathway through Spring Garden - there was deafening song of Chorus Frog.  I stopped to look and was amazed that even though I was surrounded by loud frog song - I couldn't see any!  Sure enough I slowly started to see a few. I was caught off-guard as to how small they are. It seems like they are so small - that they could fit on a quarter.

Seeing Yellow bellied Sapsuckers for the first time each year is always exciting. In Windsor - they are only present during the month of April ... until their southbound migration in the fall.


Good birding!

EPA Website Censorship & Innovating with a Blog Library? (v.2)

A few weeks ago, I was at a natural area in NW Ohio and picked up a wonderful booklet that was so beautiful and informative. I just had to share a PDF file with my readers. I think nature geeks should have access to lots of great resources to learn about the ecosystem and environment that surrounds them.

Living in the Oak Openings [PDF link] [PDF Backup]
Oak Openings Official Website: https://www.oakopenings.org/landowner-guide/

But - the web is so dynamic ... if you make a link to a resource today, in a month from now or in three years ... that link might no longer work. This happens quite a lot!

I recently went to refer back to a wonderful document that I had shared a while back about the natural history of the lake St Clair region. It was produced and published by the EPA. I was amazed with its depth and thorough writing. It featured many photos and references to both sides of the border, and had several references to Windsor, Essex County. For example - they even mentioned the canard creek watershed and had a few photos and references to Ojibway Park.

So I went  back to a former blog posting that had a link and I noticed the link was "broken". With some research on the EPA site, you can find an "Archived" version of the file, but that file has been watermarked and is basically illegible.

This file used to exist at this URL: http://www.epa.gov/ecopage/stclairbiodiv/stclairbiodiv.pdf   .... but that link is dead - only three years after I linked to it. Luckily, I saved the PDF locally to my computer and only today was able to upload it to an online file sharing resource.

Lake St Clair Biodiversity Report from EPA (archived, backup copy of the file) [Dropbox Backup LINK] .


The EPA moved that file to this location: https://archive.epa.gov/ecopage/web/html/index-14.html  ... it is now "archived" - and they watermarked that beautiful report with an opaque 1.5" left margin watermark that obscures the text. Its basically unreadable! How could they just ruin a 145 page document like that? So again - I am sharing the un-archived version here: [Dropbox Backup LINK].

Time magazine wrote up an alarming article [here] about how one of the first things the Trump administration [and scott pruit] did was to discard hundreds of pages from the EPA's website. Any reference to climate change or global warming was removed. There was also a page about climate change aimed at a young audience and ... you guessed it...All 50 pages of its content was removed.

Image Source: http://time.com/5075265/epa-website-climate-change-censorship/

So... if you find a great source of information ... share it! But don't forget to try to keep a backup copy of that resource. Services like Dropbox, Evernote and Google Drive make it easy to upload and share to the world with a simple link.

This has sparked an idea that I have been thinking about for a while which is to create a page dedicated to great natural history resources. Look for it soon!

Some recent happenings include:

• Seeing a (juvenile?) Red bellied Woodpecker with a "golden nape" ( see the "lower" woodpecker in the the image below)
• Finding a Western Chorus Frog jump onto my backyard concrete patio slab while jumping out of the path of my electric lawn mower. I trapped it in a plastic tote bin and released it back into the natural hedgerow behind my house.
• Saw several Common Checkered Skippers at Assumption Church near the Ambassador Bridge in west Windsor. Two were obliging enough to be captured with my cell phone!

Good birding!

The Birder Movie

This past Friday April 4th 2014 was the opening night for the newly released "The Birder" movie that was filmed right here in Windsor Ontario. It was neat to watch this movie and see scenes from around Windsor such as Ojibway Park & Nature Center, Malden Park, and the Old St Annes High School.

The movie was pretty good. It had a pretty simple 'revenge comedy' theme and a happy ending. It had its ornithological inaccuracies that would make some birders cringe. At one point, a Prairie Falcon was seen in an Eastern Deciduous Forest Habitat (ornithological cringe) but just like other birding movies, you have to look past these small inaccuracies and just enjoy the movie.

The movie might have several other Canadian City releases, perhaps Toronto and maybe some Western Canadian Cities. It should be playing in Leamington in May, so if you want to see this but can't be in Windsor this week, follow the links below for alternative viewing locations/times:

http://www.thebirdermovie.com/
https://www.facebook.com/thebirdermovie

If you are from Windsor and you enjoy birding, I recommend that you support these guys. I've posted the showings for the remainder of this week below, as well as a map to the movie theater that is hosting the film.

Lakeshore Cinemas Birder Showings -  WWW.IMAGINECINEMAS.COM 
Fri, Apr 04: 4:15pm 7:05pm 9:15pm
Sat, Apr 05: 1:20pm 4:15pm 7:05pm 9:15pm
Sun, Apr 06: 1:20pm 4:15pm 7:05pm 9:15pm
Mon, Apr 07: 4:15pm 7:05pm 9:15pm
Tue, Apr 08: 1:20pm 4:15pm 7:05pm 9:15pm
Wed, Apr 09: 4:15pm 7:05pm 9:15pm
Thu, Apr 10: 4:15pm 7:05pm 9:15pm


View Larger Map

After the movie, the producers (and one or two actors) answered questions about the movie. Movie swag was offered out in the main lobby after the movie, and several birding-themed t-shirts were available, movie posters etc were available for purchase. I picked up this "Pelee Region Provincial Park" T-shirt. I think its a pretty cool T-shirt and I don't mind paying $20 for it to help the producers out. These producers from Windsor followed their heart, wanting to become movie makers so I'm happy to help support their efforts. They went out on a limb to make a movie about birding. Note that there is no such thing as Pelee Region Provincial Park - The movie makers made a modified name for the Point Pelee National Park for legal reasons.

Recent Birding, Leps and Herps
I've only done some local birding this past week or so, and have seen some seasonal birds. Today at the Ojibway Prairie Reserve and Forest, I saw: Fox Sparrows, Lots of Downy Woodpeckers (some were drumming), Eastern Phoebe (FOS), Eastern Bluebirds, Song and Field Sparrows as well. No YBSS yet!

Fox Sparrow

First of season butterflies today were: Eastern Comma, Mourning Cloak (two of each). I was looking back at last year's first of season for these two butterflies [link], and it was April 15th!

Western Chorus Frog [link] have been calling for a week or so, and over the last few days, I've made an attempt to see them and photograph them. I was able to take a few photos the other day and some video today, so I figured I would share. They can be difficult to spot because they submerge under water when people come near. I was able to not spook them this afternoon and got some footage of them singing. I usually would not feature frogs on this blog, but I am getting more interested in herps after reading great blogs like Josh's, Blakes or Allen Woodliffe's blog. I want to see a Spring Peeper now!

Western Chorus Frogs (AKA Striped Chorus Frogs)

I feel lucky to have seen these frogs so easily over this last week. I think they are generally hard to see or photograph, and this is my first time really identifying this species. OntarioNature.org has a nice writeup on these frogs here:
http://www.ontarionature.org/protect/species/reptiles_and_amphibians/western_chorus_frog.php .

Good birding!
Dwaynejava