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By Ian Naisbitt

After a 20-month Covid delay, the Little River Enhancement Group managed to celebrate our 30^th Anniversary on Tuesday, 25 October, 2022 at Weston Park in the Town of Tecumseh. Mother Nature served up the perfect day for planting trees. The weather included: a mix of sun and cloud with a bright blue background. There was a moderate zephyr wafting from the south at 20 km/ h and a high of 21 Celsius. The UV index was 4 or moderate.

First off, we need to give a “Tip of the Cap” to Casey Colthurst, Parks Manager/ Town of Tecumseh and Tania Jobin, Ward 5 Tecumseh Councillor for their support in making this project move forward after such a long delay. As well, a big thank you to the Tecumseh Parks Crew for auguring the holes, delivering the large stock trees to the holes, shovelling and raking the soil/ clay mix back into the hole and around the base of the 21 trees. When added to the 9 trees already planted by the Town, it equals 30 trees for 30 years! Mulch will be applied at a later date and a water scheduling program will be started. Watering is very important at this time since the ground was dreadfully dry. The clay soil was crumbly and powdery, which made for easier planting but presents a challenge for the tree roots to establish themselves.

Our small group of volunteers planted a Kentucky Coffee Tree beside the Weston Park fence along North Talbot Road. That way whenever we visit the park we will know exactly which tree we planted.

Kentucky Coffee Trees are a Species at Risk in the Province of Ontario. Their status: “The Kentucky coffee-tree was already assessed as threatened when the Endangered Species Act took effect in 2008.“Threatened” means the species lives in the wild in Ontario, is not endangered, but is likely to become endangered if steps are not taken to address factors threatening it.

Interesting Quick facts about Kentucky Coffee Trees

• Part of the Latin name for the Kentucky Coffee-tree (Gymnocladus dioica) means “naked branch”, because this tree spends up to nine months of the year without any leaves
• The only other species in the genus of Kentucky Coffee-tree is a tree that grows only in China
• Because no native herbivores consume the toxic Kentucky Coffee-tree seeds – and since elephants devour similar seed pods in great quantities – it has been hypothesized that the now-extinct Mastodon may have consumed Kentucky Coffee-tree pods – in fact, Kentucky Coffee-tree may have evolved its unique seeds, which seem unpalatable to native animals, specifically for Mastodon-assisted dispersal.”

~Source: Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) website

Weston Park has a special place in the hearts of the Lil’ Reg members. In the past we participated in Little River Watershed Tours once a year. Our group would visit the sites where volunteers cleaned up the river or planted trees. We checked how much garbage accumulated over the past year at the cleanup sites and estimated the success rate of the trees we planted at other sites. We also looked for potential sites that could use our help. While at Weston Park we hiked around the drain that flowed through the park and we were pleasantly zoomed by a swarm of dragonflies. It was quite a timely and impressive moment for us. Later when our members were brainstorming names for our group and logos, this special moment came to mind. This was our result.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

~Renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead

By Howard Williams

An all-too-common refrain from both children and adults is: “do we have to there again, we’ve been there twice already…” after a suggestion for where to go for a walk or nature study. When it comes to being even a dilettante naturalist, I consider it important that repeat visits to a place, like voting, should be undertaken both early and often. Why? Because nature evolves throughout the year, a snapshot in Spring is very different from one taken in Summer or Fall, or even a few days after your last visit. As a practising geologist I soon learnt that repeat visits to exposures of complex rocks, under different lighting conditions, often allowed repeated observers to spot new mineral growths, structures or fossils, and that’s for things that don’t move or hide.

I have been dipping into an interesting and stimulating book these last few weeks that illustrates this point. The book title is: Light rains sometimes fall: A British year through Japan’s 72 seasons; written by Lev Parikian. In this book, Lev uses a traditional Japanese technique whereby the natural year is divided into 72 equal portions of about 5 days each (see: https://www.fieldandnest.com/journal/japans-72-poetic-micro-seasons). In fact, back in 1789, Gilbert White, England’s first ecologist did a similar thing in his book: “The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne”, wherein he recounts a mass of phenological data in the form of collected letters to friends. The process of providing a description of the environment for each short time segment encourages an observer to be more aware of small changes in the environment, just like Feederwatch.

I like Feederwatch because it encourages the discipline of making observations on one or two days a week – keeping a lookout for birds, counting the number of each species, watching them interact, noting when in the day they arrive and depart. One of the advantages of being gracefully retired is that bird observation time is more available. The key is to have feeders that are easy to see from the house.

Here are some local examples of observations taken during a year or so in Jackson Park where I walk every morning with Douglas the greyhound. I can watch maples and oaks colouring; sudden influxes of gangs of white throated sparrows and yellow rumped warblers; the massing of robins and starlings; hearing and then seeing the Cooper’s Hawk return to an existing nest.

We can start to hear chickadees say their “Hi sweetie”, listening to White-throated Sparrows warming up their “Oh Canada Canada” song, or watch American Goldfinch gradually become a stronger yellow, or the arrival of migrants from the north, such as Redpolls.

Each day it seems as if something different is happening in the park: homeless people leaving their tents and hammocks because the weather is now cold; or the arrival of Red-winged Blackbirds. This Fall there were very few of them and they have long gone. Last Fall (2021), there were dozens of them that perched on the wires and fence posts. Why the difference? Fall of 2021 followed a very wet September, this year it was very dry, so perhaps food was not so available.

One of the joys of watching birds is the anticipation of the arrival of Northern Mockingbirds, or warblers.
It is through repeated walks through a specific place that one can begin to understand how variable the flora and fauna are, both in space and time, and hypothesize about the reasons for these differences.

The website in the following link is a pathway to discovering the migration patters of birds across North America: https://explorer.audubon.org/home?threatOverlay=expand&zoom=3&x=1306099.1620122588&y=2810864.562197212. This website is useful to predict when birds might arrive or depart in your area. An alternative way of doing it is to look, through eBird, at what is being noticed. For example, there is an expectation that Evening Grosbeaks may be making a journey south into Essex this year, driven by food shortages further north.

Another example of repeat visits. When we lived in Stratford, Ontario, an average of 10 members of the Stratford Field Naturalists used to walk for two hours each Sunday morning at 9 a.m. in The Dolan Conservation area, a riparian, woodland and grassland area located beside the Avon River. In winter, rain, snow or shine, birds would be identified, while for the rest of the year, birds, wildflowers and insects would also be identified. Each visit would be concluded by restorative coffee and pastries.

In conclusion, I fully support making multiple pop-up trips to local birding and wildflower watching spots – Essex has so many, and they can teach us a great deal about biodiversity. The ECFNC does not seem to do this as a recognised group – I wonder why not?