Wildlife around Mud Lake - lifers!

This morning I brought my mother to Mud Lake, which she thought was the nicest place in Ottawa I showed her so far.

The first bird that welcomed us was this American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis).

Birds around Sawmill Wetland (Ottawa)

I returned back to Canada on Wednesday night, and since then I had been searching for my own place (and not sharing with any roommates or landlords) for the remainder of my degree (another 1.5 years left).  I submitted a rental application on Friday and now I am just waiting to hear back from the apartment manager.  This afternoon, I walked around Sawmill Wetland (maybe for the final time) and looked at the birds around the wetland.

Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus)

June update - Everything

Since arriving in Colorado, my life has been incredibly busy and interesting, which is why I have not updated my blog until now.  This post is a quite poor in terms of topic organization, I apologize.

Researches

One of my many research projects is to examine if Mertensia plants with different floral orientation are influenced by rain differently, and one measure of this effect is the number of nutlets (seeds) each plant produce.  To test this, I constructed and placed a rain shelter over a plot with several Mertensia plants, manipulated floral orientation (upward or pendant) of haphazardly chosen plants, supplemented pollen to these plants, and waited until the end of the flowering season to collect the nutlets.

Road trip to Colorado

After three long days of driving, I am finally back in Colorado!  My labmate and I left Canada on Monday (May 30th), which may be a miscalculation because it was Memorial Day in US and we sat and waited in the car for almost two hours to cross the border.  Because of the delay, we spent the first night in Ann Arbor, Michigan (instead of the usual first night destination: Kalamazoo).

We saw two White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) outside our hotel the following morning.

Mud Lake and Petrie Islands (Post #1,000)

Knowing that I will be very busy this coming school semester - teaching, taking one class, and working on my own research project, I doubt I will be spending a lot of time outside and enjoying nature.  So for the past few days, I have been going out and taking advantage of the last free days before school begins next Tuesday.  The places I went to were Mud Lake and Petrie Island, and I went to each place twice because there are so many things to see.

Mud Lake

A lot of Water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) floating on the lake.

Birds of Gunnison National Forest, Colorado

After posts of flowers and insects, here are finally the birds that I photographed last summer.

 Gray Jay (Perisoreus canadensis)

Bridgenorth Trail & Miller Creek Cons. Area revisited

Last year, I biked to a nearby conservation area called Miller Creek.  However, the biking was not as safe I preferred since I was basically biking on a busy country road.  However, near where I live now, there is a close trail that takes me there and through the countryside.  I biked through it today and like the trail quite a lot - quiet, safe, easy, etc.

Saw a dead frog on the hot gravel road.

Walking along Otonabee River and checking out Head of the Trent

One month has gone by and now we are into autumn now! How quickly time flies. I mentioned a few posts ago that October 1 is Trent's Head of the Trent regatta.

In the morning though, it was windy, cloudy, and cool outside. But the sky cleared in the afternoon and it was beautiful then. Since I am not a fan of large crowds anyways, I decided to take my time and slowly walk along the Otonabee River and towards Trent.

Clear sky

Bees, Tulips, Eagles, Flycatcher(!) and Blossom

It is such a nice day today. Perfect day to go bike-riding.

Look at the view! Only a few clouds in the horizon.

More photos from Carden

Here are more photos that I wanted/needed to share:

Mama robin feeding her nestlings. At this moment, the nestlings had already fledged and the nest is now empty.


I think this is one of the fledglings. Who knows, there are many robin nests around our cabin and in the field site.

Removing Nest Logs

Last time this year, I learned about the banded woolly bear. This time I am learning about barbets in Taiwan. How interesting is that!?

I saw a Brown Shrike again while visiting my friends doing their noise research in the morning.

Today my supervisor presented the preliminary results of our data to the fellow researchers in our division and we received several interesting comments and suggestions.

Afterwards, my co-workers and I headed to the botanical garden to remove some of the nest logs that we attached to the trees in TBG. They attached these nest logs before the breeding season hoping to attract some barbets able to excavate nest cavities in these nest logs (as it was proven successful elsewhere in Taiwan by a man interested in conserving the barbets). However, after one breeding season, there was not a single nest cavity excavated (except for a very small attempt at the start of the season). I believe there are enough live trees in TBG to be used as nest trees so the barbets do not bother on nesting in these nest logs. It feels wonderful to be outside again doing hard work.

Tree number 1.

Removing the wires and nails.

Me on the ladder photographing the conditions of the logs, as well as the attaching wires and nails.

Very little rust on the attachments after six months.

However, fungi did well on these dead logs.

Tree number two.

Scaling the height and planning.

Up we go.

Nest logs removed.

Remember the Grey-streaked Flycatcher mentioned in the earlier posts? Well, after removing the logs, I saw a group of photographer nearby and guess what they were photographing? The flycatchers!

Hooray!

Well, aren't you glad to see me.

After work today, my friends and I went to a special screening of "Julie & Julia", which I thought was a good movie, especially for food enthusiasts.

What a fulfilling day. Sadly, I am leaving in 12 days.

365 days ago (2008-10-12) ...
.