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.

Frog-eating Mallard at Brewer Park

I took care of some business at the bank this morning at Billings Bridge Shopping Centre, and then I went to Brewer Park nearby (across from Carleton University) because the weather was nice.

Ice forming on the Rideau River.

Beautiful Fall Colours in Algonquin

We left for Algonquin Park early this morning hoping to be there before most of the visitors arrive, but due to construction and like-minded people, the park was packed when we arrived.  As we slowly drove north from Peterborough, the fall colours did not change very much (even outside the park), but as we entered the park itself, the changes became evident and there were some leaves falling already.

We started off with hiking along the Peck Lake Trail.

Assortment of vibrant colours (pretty much the theme of today) - green conifer trees, yellow/orange/red deciduous trees, and blue sky/lake.

Field course day 2 - Bancroft & Eels Creek

On the second day of the field course (two weeks ago), we drove to Eagle's Nest Trail in Bancroft and then Eels Creek near Stoney Lake.  The weather was more of less overcast throughout the day.

At the lookout where we had our lunch.

Herping at Oliver Centre

There are many Flatheaded Mayflies (Heptageniidae) flying around lately.  One was seen outside my office window today with its old exoskeleton nearby.

Leucrocuta sp.

In the afternoon, I was helping out with the herpetology class with their salamander surveys at the Oliver Ecological Centre.  The students were comparing different methods of surveying for salamanders (i.e., transects, quadrats, random walks, and cover-boards).

Herping at Trent's Canal Nature Area

The weather this past few days has been quite amazing - warm and humid during the day and then periodic downpours (with thunders) in the late afternoon - the kind where you will be completely soaked if you happen to be outside during the downpours.

View from my office window.

The Herpetology class went out today to Trent's Canal Nature Area to survey the frogs based on their calls, and I volunteered myself to help out.  We went out  yesterday to check out the sites and heard mostly Grey Tree Frogs calling and one lone Spring Peeper.

Maytag the cat & Herps

My landlord got a cat on Monday and his name is Maytag (Tag for short).  This is my first time living with a cat (even though I like animals a lot, being responsible them is a completely different story), so it's going to be an interesting experience for sure.

Maytag on the sofa

Salamandering!

After arriving back at Peterborough yesterday afternoon, I went grocery shopping and headed home for a quick dinner.  Because shortly afterwards, I went to look for salamanders with some friends!  Since we had no luck last time looking for salamanders in Burlington, we decided to stay close to Peterborough and checked out a couple of hotspots.  The weather condition was quite perfect - warm and rainy!  Miserable for most people, but seeing the salamanders definitely made it worthwhile.

We did not see anything in the first two locations that we checked, but our third location was a success!  Many Yellow-spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) and Blue-spotted salamanders (Ambystoma laterale) were found crossing the road, along with Spring peppers (Pseudacris crucifer), Leopard Frogs, and many worms!

As we drove down the road, we did our best to move all of the salamanders and frogs across the road to the direction they were headed to.  Sadly, we also saw a lot of dead salamanders and frogs and worms on the road from being ran over by cars.

Both Yellow-spotted and Blue-spotted Salamanders belong in the family Ambystomitidae (Mole salamanders) and members of this family are stout-bodied with short and rounded heads.

Yellow-spotted Salamanders is a relatively large Ambystoma (15 to 25 cm long) and is found in southern Canada and eastern US.  There is quite a variation in its breeding timing depending on the populations' location.  Populations in southern regions may breed as early as December, while northern regions may not breed until April.  Breeding in northern populations is highly synchronized and restricted to major breeding bouts following periods of rain.

Hiking around Canal Nature Area at Trent University

The weather here in Peterborough has been quite similar to the typical weather that Vancouver gets at this time of the weather - overcast, rainy, and depressing.  So you can imagine my surprise and excitement when I saw nothing but blue sky when I opened the window in the morning.

As I grabbed my bike and headed to school, I kept debating if I should do work in my office or at least spend a few hours outside and enjoy the beautiful weather.  In the end, I decided to do the latter before I go working in my office.  Last year, around this time of the year, I was hiking on the other side of the road, this time, I visited the Canal Nature Area.

Sign.

UBC Botanical Garden & Greenheart Canopy Walkway

The past few days has been quite rewarding - volunteering at two different sessions, listening to different researches, and not stressing over the presentations like most of the presenters.  I saw presentations discussing from lizard diversity in Chile to genetically identifying shark species all over the world to the threats to Japanese Giant Salamanders.  Today was the last day of the conference (to be followed by the huge bird conference - NAOC), and I was assigned to help out with the registration table.  A few days ago, I saw a special discount for going to the UBC Botanical Garden plus walking the Greenheart Canopy Walkway for only $11.  I bought the ticket right away and thought this afternoon would be a good time to use it.

A Barn Swallow nest right outside the gift store at the botanical garden.  The parent(s) were flying in and out feeding the young chicks.

Wandering around MBG

We learned the different types of floral advertisements that attract pollinators, ranging from vision, olfactory, nectar, texture, chemosensory, thermosensory, and timing.

In the afternoon, we were asked to collect flowers (given permissions) from the botanical garden and learn some techniques back in the lab.

I took some photos as I go along collecting flowers that interest me - mostly small or dioecious flowers, since my project focuses on Shepherdia canadensis.

Green Frog

Biking to West Dyke Trail

Here are some of the things I encountered while out biking at West Dyke Trail.

Red-eared Slider, one of the many in the ditch.

Quick post from Edmonton

Hello from Edmonton. I arrived at Edmonton about a hour ago and now waiting for another graduate student from Trent to arrive. We are planning to go to Elk Island National Park and then we will travel to Inuvik, NWT tomorrow morning.

Now, here are the photos from yesterday where I went to do a Grassland Bird Survey (GBS) with my supervisor's husband in the morning (woke up around 5:20am), then came back to their home and got ready to go to their cottage. Overall, it was a fulfilling but tiring day, considering I woke up early than usual and kayaked and canoed (not activities I do everyday).

In the morning.

Worries away in RNP & Zoom!

Today is the first day of October. Five days from today, I will return back to my temp office job in downtown Vancouver for this fall season.

Lately, I have been in a slump. Work-searching in my field has been unproductive (as usual in the winter season) and grad-school searching has been unsuccessful - not many openings and with my just average grades in my undergrad years, I imagine professors are probably hesitant to take a student without any scholarship support. So my future is unclear as muck and it frustrates me everytime I think about it.

With my new monthly bus pass, I visited Richmond Nature Park today. And when I step on the ground that's not made of cement and surrounded by trees instead of buildings and people, all of the sudden, my worries are gone. I am in the moment of just enjoying birds chirping and watching the leaves changing their colors. And photographing - it just takes time away and makes it all worthwhile.

Watching the frenzies in the bird-feeding area. Many chickadees and squirrels on the feeders. The sparrows and juncos on the ground. These are probably my first decent shots of a Dark-eyed Junco because most of the times, they are too fast or too difficult to photograph.

Dark-eyed Junco

Trip to Algonquin Provincial Park

I am currently sitting in a cafe in Bobcaygeon trying to sort out my photos, upload them, and write a blog (or two). Basically, a very time-consuming process.

There is one more week left here in our field site before we pack everything up and call this a season, and a week-and-half before I fly back to B.C. I'm definitely going to miss this place - the animals, the field site, the people, and more.

Anyways, here're some photos from my trip to Algonquin a couple of weeks ago. I am very glad my co-worker persuaded me to take this trip and allowed me to borrow her camping equipment to make this trip possible! Thanks!

From my campground - Tea Lake

Howdy - more photos to share

On my last off-days, I went to the Mariposa Folk Festival. It was quite an amazing experience - lots of interesting things to check out, great new bands and musicians to discover and the weather was just fantastic.

This was one of my favorite musicians at the festival - Catherine MacLellan.

After my off-days, it was back to work. Here are more photos from the field site.

Exploring the Silver-Dragon Cave at night (2009-10-16)

I was helping my mother cleaning the house today, so I didn't have time to go out and wildlife watch. So here's a continuation of my trip in southern Taiwan after watching the sunset in Guanshan (2009-10-16).

After having mouth-watering dumplings for dinner, we headed back to our dormitory. And after getting some rest, we went to explore a public-accessible cave in the Kenting Botanical Garden. Since the whole area is closed off during the evening, we were the only people able to go into it. The cave is called Silver-Dragon Cave and it is a natural limestone cave.

Below were some of the species we saw. I tried to identify most of them and asked for help on forums and so forth, but not all were identified.

Pancala Snail (Pancala batanica pancala). Taiwan has more than 170 snail species, and the Pancala Snail is an endemic subspecies found only in the Hengchuan Peninsula. This special snail has the special trait of being left handedness. I just Googled an interesting information about "handedness" in snails here - for interest's sake.


Next is a large cave-dwelling cricket called Ceuthophilus maculatus. Or maybe a different species in the same genus, I am not totally sure. But it sure is cool to see such large insects crawling on walls all around you in a narrow cave.


This is a mammal that I was very surprised and happy to see in a cave - Formosan Tube-nosed Bat (Murina puta) - an animal that I researched in in the summer of 2008! You can read about my stories from that summer here - good times! It is surprising because it should be a forest dwelling bat, not cave-dwelling, but I guess since the cave is surrounded by forests, it is much safer in a cave than in the furled plant leaf. This species is easily identified by its pointy nostrils (clearly seen in the picture). Wow!


Then we encountered a female Geothelphusa albogilva. It is a freshwater crab endemic in Taiwan and most common in the Hengchuan Peninsula.


The cave itself is fairly narrow and short, and pretty soon we entered the forest and started shining lights everywhere to see some wildlife. We didn't have much luck and the only animal we saw was this small Stejneger's Narrow-mouthed Toad (Micryletta stejnegeri). They are fairly easy identified with their small body size (2 ~ 3-cm) and their dark metallic gray or brown color.


After a while, we gave up and returned back to the cave and to our mopeds. On the cave wall, we spotted this Hekou's Gecko (Gekko hokouensis) - it has alternating dark and light patterns running from the middoral to the tail, and it's tail is more rounded rather than flattened.


Then we saw a large unidentified Heteropoda spp. hiding in the cracks of the cave. Wow.

After we came out of the cave, our light shone on a Acanthaspis immodesta. Neat insect to see before we conclude our adventure and head back to the dorm for a shower and sleep.

365 days ago (2008-12-28) ...
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Outdoor work, yay!

After not doing any kind of field work in awhile, I am beginning to miss the greenaries, the sun, and the work-out of being in a natural sauna. Our research lab also has a project studying the relationship between noise and bird abundance, so today I woke up extra early to tag along the experiment inside TBG. I am not a part of this project, but I just enjoy being outdoors, especially in the morning when there're fewer people and more urban wildlife to be seen.

My co-workers working hard recording the noise levels and observing birds.

Meanwhile, I was just wondering around photographing anything I saw interesting.

Barringtonia racemosa flowers on the ground.

A juvenile Chinese Bulbul still lacking the white crown.

An interesting-lookinh Trema orientalis (L.) Blume tree. This species is quite useful in that the trunk can be built into oars and canoes, or made into ropes, and the leaves can become food for herbivores.

A beautiful Chilades pandava peripatria

Green Pond Frog - a common but suitable name.

Water Lily

Gray Treepie is a common bird in TBG. But its behaviour of hiding underneath canopies makes them very difficult to photograph (I remember my first time seeing them almost three months ago). Today, a young Treepie caught something and flew right above us to enjoy its meal.

Gray Treepie (Dendrocitta formosae formosae) enjoying an insect larvae or something.

Here's a site with some information on this interesting Corvids.

Colorful Plumeria rubra flower lying on Giant Elephant's Ear (Colocasia gigantea)

As the research came to an end, an all-black feline walked right in front of me. At first I thought it was a panther. Given it a second look, I realized it is a handsome stray black cat.

Black cat or not, I think today was a pretty lucky day for me.
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River tracing adventure to Golden Gorge - Part 1

On July 31, 2009, a group of us hikers met up after work in Taipei to head southeast to Hualien County to get an early start of our weekend trip to Golden Gorge.

In less than four hours (past midnight on August 1st), we arrived at the town next to the Sanjhan South River where we will begin our hike when dawn arrives. We parked our cars in the local elementary school and camped along the hallways of the empty school. It is a pretty common thing-to-do, especially for a small town in the mountains.

Sanjhan Elementary School

Waking up the next morning by barking stray dogs and chanting buddists.

An elementary school surrounded by mountains...

And a river

First light of August 1, 2009

Since this was my first time taking up river tracing, I wasn't quite sure of the safest techniques or routes, so I didn't take my camera out to take the beautiful scenaries along the way. Thankfully, my co-worker Genie (an experienced climber) had her camera and graciously allowed my use some of her photos. Thank you, Genie!!!

The starting point of our incredible journey

Time to start walking and walking and walking...

Along the way, we saw some pretty interesting wildlife.

Especially this mysterious monkey skull placed on a boulder. RIP.

The beautiful views of Sanjhan South River
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