A SPECIAL FRIEND, and a SPECIAL TREE

Yesterday I took BFF Sydney to the Windsor airport for the first leg of her flight back to Calgary. It was wonderful to have her here, we’ve known each other for the better part of thirty years, so there’s always a lot to cover, old and new. We did all the girl-type stuff—we talked about everything (and everybody) and shopped ’til we dropped. We sampled wine from the local winery, ate a little too well (!) slept in, birdwatched and beached-combed at Point Pelee. Yesterday she got the early connection in Toronto, and was back home in good season. Thanks, Sydney, for a great visit—and FYI, the first few fishflies arrived this morning, so your timing was impeccable!! And thanks for all my blog friends for the kind well wishes while I was away from the computer, I'll be making my rounds again today!

One place Sydney and I went to is a favorite shop in an old house near the heart of the town that carries interesting interior decorating items. Out in their large back yard they have the outdoor selection, with water gardens, big tanks of plants and fish, and lots of beautiful musical water fountains. It was just magical on a mild summer sun-dappled morning. I was admiring one of the fountains, trying to figure out what flowering plants were floating among the greenery, when the owner began telling us about the very tall tree growing beside the pond, that had dropped some of it's blossoms into the water. It’s what’s called a Tuliptree (Liriodendron tuplifera, or “tulip-bearing lily-tree”) and it's a rare resident in the Pelee area (which is a remnant of the once-vast eastern Carolinian forest). The storeowner said he knew of only three trees in Leamington. I’m not sure if he’s including the young immature (non-flowering) tree at my friends’ house. He also said the trees usually only bloom at the very top, but his is a beautiful exception, in that it was blooming all the way down to the lowest branches (still way above my head). I tried to get some shots of the lovely lime-and-orange-sherbet-colored flowers, that reveal the lotus-like lily part of the trees heritage, but was not very successful. Those of you who live further south in the east will likely be very familiar with this lovely tall tree; it’s the state tree of Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana.

A TOUGH WINTER

A few evenings ago I watched Canadian TV program on the flora and fauna of the Carolinian forest. For those who aren't familiar with this term, the Carolinian forest is the Canadian appellation for the eastern deciduous (broad-leaf) forest that once covered a huge stretch of eastern United States, from the Carolinas up to parts of southwestern Canada. Much of the original forest is gone, and what remains if very fragmented in both countries. In Ontario, the remnants of this once-great ecosystem embrace several preserved areas. Perhaps the most important of these is Point Pelee National Park, just down the road from my place. In Canada, this ecozone occupies less than one percent of Canada's land mass, but has one quarter of the population, so development is always a threat. Some 60 species have been officially designated as "at risk" but a number of others are also in trouble. Some of the rare and endangered species in tiny Point Pelee Park (just 15 square kilometers, or less than 6 miles) include the the southern flying squirrel, the five-lined skink, the common hop tree, the prickly pear cactus, monarch butterflies, red-headed woodpeckers, and the bald eagle. Many naturalists know Point Pelee as a world-class migration spot, both spring and fall for birds, and for the monarch butterflies in the fall, but it's a great place to visit all year.

I live right on the lake (Lake Erie) so there's not a lot of natural habitat in my backyard, but I do get some cottontail bunnies, and the occasional raccoon and once, an opossum. This winter has been particularly tough. The normal mild winter temperatures of the Canadian Carolinian zone have taken a beating from the Jet Stream. It's been colder for longer than usual, and that takes a toll on all the resident species. One critter in particular is especially vulnerable, I learned from the TV show: the opossum. I've only seen an opossum a couple of times; they aren't plentiful, and I'm not often out on the roads at dawn and dusk,when the 'possums are active, but I do see many poor opossums dead by the side of the road, killed by cars that were out early or late. One quiet morning I did see a mother 'possum cross my yard with a sweet pointy-faced little baby clinging to her back. The TV program said that opossums don't hibernate, and must be abroad in any weather to find food. They also don't have fur covering their sensitive noses, tails, ears and paws, so they are especially susceptible to frostbite. I feel badly that this cold spell will probably mean that some of these creatures may not survive. They may not be the cutest critter you could name, but as Canada's (North America's) only marsupial, they'd be entitled to a special place, if it were up to me. Here's hoping spring comes soon!





Photo from Wikimedia Commons

A REAL LIFE THING TO PONDER

I have a gadget on my iGoogle home page; maybe some of you have it, too, called “Things to Ponder.” Every time I go there it shows me another amusing thought to chuckle over. One of my favorites is “What was the greatest thing before sliced bread?” Another one I recall said, “What do you do if you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?” Well, around here, life is starting to imitate gadget art, only it doesn’t make me laugh, but seriously ponder the situation.

Just to recap, I currently live near Point Pelee, Ontario, which I have been calling the southernmost tip of Canada. More accurately, it’s the southernmost contiguous part of Canada. The piece of Canada that’s actually the most southern is Middle Island, one of the Erie Islands, a little archipelago that stretches across the Lake from the Pelee Tip in Ontario to Sandusky, Ohio, with the international border threading in between. And something appears to be out of balance. Canada’s Middle Island has a lot of double-crested cormorants. So many in fact Parks Canada deemed a cull was necessary. In the interests of saving space here, I’ll just sum up the Parks decision as determining that the cormorants were having an extremely detrimental effect of the delicate and much-reduced Carolinian forest system. Their abundant guano is killing rare and endangered flora, and the fauna that depend on it.

The only difference between the situation on Lake Erie and the quip on my gadget is that, as it turns out, Cormorants aren’t endangered. They’re not even native to this area. Well, that probably explains the “out of balance” part, but I still felt a pang of sorrow for them, as I saw them migrating back this spring (flying R to L), knowing that several days of sharp-shooting hunters were in their future. Yet when they migrated back again recently (photo, L to R) it didn’t seem like there was much of a dent in their numbers. That stream of birds stretched 180 degrees of my vision, and lasted for nearly two minutes! I’m told the cull will take place again over the next couple of years. Makes me wonder what’s next – a population explosion in scavenging turkey vultures?




Single Cormorant photo from Shutterstock