Long weekend at Windy Pine

This past long weekend, I returned to Peterborough and went back to Windy Pine to visit friends and tried mothing once again (just like last year).

Since I returned back to Ontario last week, I found this summer to be cooler and smoggier than I remembered.

Windy Pine BioBlitz - Day 2

On our second day at Windy Pine, we first went canoeing and then hiked in the forest looking at fungi in the morning.

Kushog Lake in the morning.

Recap of the week - new macro technique and critters saw during Enrichment camp

While experimenting with my Nikon P&S lately, I found out that if I hold my small hand lens (for plant identification) in front of the P&S lens, then I can get a pretty decent close-up photo of the critter/flower (but I need to get very close).

I took photos of this spider just outside my office window on Monday.

On Tuesday and Thursday, I assisted with two of the mini-course programs held here at Trent.  One was getting elementary students "Wild About Nature!", and the second was teaching students about "Habitat and Organisms".  It has been a while since I worked with children, but it's quite rewarding especially now that I am teaching them about nature.

For "Wild About Nature!", we first made a field kit, consisting of a clinometer, a plant press, and an insect-collecting container.  We then took the children outside to measure tree heights using the clinometer.  We also played games with the children - one called "Predator & Prey" (three trophic levels - grasshoppers, orioles, and hawks) and one with three different feeding apparatuses (modified plastic knifes, spoons, and forks) to collect different prey types.  We also took the children outside to collect plants and insects.

Seeing an out-of-season White's Ground Thrush and Barbet catching lizard!?

Second day of internship started with a beautiful morning.

Before heading to the office, I walked around the Lotus Pond and took pictures of the blossoming water lilies.

Soon after, I saw a Malay Night Heron flying up on to a rooftop.

Gorsachius melanolophus

For the most part of the day, I spent time in the office looking over research papers on what to include in a fundamental biological paper regarding a specific species. Another task of the day was heading out to the botanical garden and try to capture and leg-band the adults of some nest sites.

Our method was to set up a mist net before the nest entrance of the barbets. This particular nest site has one fledgling in it, so the parents had to fly regularly to feed it. We allow the parent bird to enter the nest without harm. Once it had entered, we rushed to the bottom of the tree and hold up the poles (with the mist net). We caught an adult once, but the net was too loose and the bird bounced off after. So we made another net, but no success catch afterwards. Sigh. We will have to wait for tomorrow again.

Waiting for the adult barbets to arrive requires a lot of patience. Thankfully, a lot of interesting critters were found around us so we weren't bored at all.

A moth caterpillar belonging in the Family Psychidae with parasitic eggs laid on it. We suspect it's the work of a parasitic wasp. I brought the caterpillar back to the office and will observe it everyday from now on.

Another task was to follow through with yesterday's work and see if the third egg has been laid or not (only two eggs had been positively identfied yesterday). While moving things around to assist our work, we found a larvae of some kind of a beetle.

What a juicy looking thing. If I am a bird, I would definitely eat it!

One of the most interesting things of the day was seeing this White's Ground Thrush (Zoothera dauma). It is an interesting sighting since the species migrates and winters in Taiwan during winter only. To see this bird in the summer is definitely a surprise!

It was found underneath the canopy and the boarded pathways, so it was extremely difficult to photograph and get a good image. These were the best ones I have.

When returning back to see if the adult barbet had arrived for us to catch it, we received a major surprise and saw a Swinhoe's Japalura in the bill of the parent barbet!!! It was the first time that I (and my experienced co-worker) had witness Muller's Barbet feeding its offspring a lizard!


After feeding the fledgling inside with a large lizard, (another?) parent barbet came back and brought back a smaller japalura again this time!


What a day!
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