Posts Tagged ‘Canada’

15 Jun

Canada Goose Poop and Other Stuff You Probably Didn’t Know About These Feathered Friends

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Birds, Education, Politics, Wildlife. Tagged: , , , , , .

Canada Goose “Touque”

You got that right. I said “poop”. There is an awful lot we don’t know about the Canada goose including how much poop they can produce in a day.

Here are just a few things you might not know about our feathered friends from the North:

  • It is incorrect to call them Canadian geese. It is a Canada goose or Canada geese.
  • The average lifespan of a wild Canada goose is 24 years.
  • While on the ground, a flock of geese is called a gaggle. In the air, a flock of geese is called a skein.
  • Canada geese have an enlarged bone at the end of each wing, similar to a wrist. Though unlikely, an adult Canada goose is capable of breaking a human limb with this part of its wing.
  • There are 11 subspecies of Canada goose. In general, they get smaller as you move northward and darker as you go westward.
  • Geese can cover 1,500 miles in just 24 hours with a favorable wind, but typically travel at a much more leisurely rate.
  • Geese fly in a V formation because it creates a current of air that makes flight more efficient and allows for better communication (guess they don’t listen to iPods when they travel).
  • Goslings begin communication with their parents while still in the egg and learn up to 13 different calls by adulthood. Females have a deeper voice.
  • Canada geese are one of the most hazardous species associated with aircraft bird strikes. In 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 struck two geese six minutes after takeoff and ditched into New York’s Hudson River. All 155 passengers survived the crash (the geese did not).
  • Canada geese have bills with serrated edges that help them cut tough grass stems.
  • Loosely based on a true story, the film Fly Away Home depicts a father and daughter rescuing 16 orphaned Canada geese by escorting them some 1,000 miles from Ontario to North Carolina in ultralight aircraft decorated like mother birds. The truth? Bill Lishman spent five years training geese to follow him in flight as a biological experiment.
  • Some claim Canada geese poop as much as one pound per day. However, in a study conducted by Dr. Bruce Manny, research fishery biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, the average goose produces 0.3432 pounds (5.49 ounces) of wet droppings per day. At 21.04 percent solids in the average goose dropping, this amount of wet droppings is equivalent to 0.0722 pounds (1.15 ounces) of dry droppings per day.
  • Still others claim that Canada geese are trained in Canadian terrorist camps up in the bush and are sent to the United States by the heavily underfunded Canadian Armed Forces to conduct characteristically passive-aggressive strikes on their southern neighbors. Well. search as I may, I could not find any information to dispute this claim.

    Heads up! Incoming from Canada.

18 Apr

Kevin Callan’s Wilderness Quest: Exploring The Quetico

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Canoeing, Creation Care, Ecology, Paddling. Tagged: , , .

 

Kevin Callan shares his insights on the ever shrinking wilderness opportunities available today.

Kevin Callan’s Wilderness Quest: Exploring The Quetico.

6 Mar

My First Sighting of a Red-Winged Blackbird

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Birds, Botany, Creation Care, Education, Native Plants and Flowers, Recreation, Wetlands, Wildlife. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

On my way to work this morning, I experienced my first sighting of a Red-winged Blackbird. Now some may get excited about a groundhog seeing its shadow, but one of my first clues of spring’s coming is seeing these migratory friends return from their winter vacation in the south.

According to the Audubon Society, the flash of the male Red-winged Blackbird’s red shoulder patches and his exuberant “oak-a-ree!” song, heralds spring for most North Americans. This songbird’s genus name, Agelaius, means “flocker” and aptly describes the enormous masses it forms, often with other blackbirds, outside the breeding season.

Red-winged Blackbirds range across the entire continental United States, southward into the Caribbean and into Middle America as far south as El Salvador, and most of Canada (in the breeding season). Populations are most dense in the farmlands of the Midwest, Northeast, and far West. Generally, Red-winged Blackbirds winter wherever they can find open water and food.
Red-winged Blackbirds are habitat generalists, breeding in a variety of salt and fresh water habitats. They also use farmlands and the edges of woods in summer. Wintering flocks roost in wetlands with dense vegetation, and forage over wetlands, farmlands, and other open areas, including mud flats, residential yards, and parks. That’s why you may spot them perching on bullrushes in wetland areas.
But here’s something I didn’t know. They use many techniques to capture prey, most notably “gaping.” Here, the bird inserts its closed bill into leaves, mud, or a seed, then opens its bill to pry the material apart. During breeding, protein-rich insects make up the majority of the birds’ diet. Outside the breeding season, Red-winged Blackbirds mainly eat seeds.
Reproduction in Red-winged Blackbirds is complex, since both males and females make decisions that affect breeding. Males establish a territory and attract a mate by singing from a prominent perch and flashing their colorful shoulder patches. Females choose a mate, based in part on the quality of the territory. After the female selects a territory, the male chases her at top speeds, displaying in flight. Usually, more than one female breeds on a male’s territory.
The female Red-winged Blackbird selects the nest site, builds a cup of grasses, mud, and decayed vegetation, lined with fine grasses, and incubates 3 to 6 eggs. The pale blue-green or gray eggs are splotched and streaked with brown. After approximately 12 days, the helpless young hatch. Although males sometim es help, females are the primary caretakers of the fledglings, feeding them for up to 5 weeks.
Migrating in flocks of various sizes, Red-winged Blackbird populations are almost always on the move somewhere in their extensive range. Northern populations migrate to the southern United States, but winter as far north as New England. Southern populations are non-migratory.
I say “welcome” to our Red-winged Blackbird friends. More reliable the Punxsutawney Phil, you remind us that spring is not far behind.

4 Feb

Some of My Favorite Friends Are Trees – Part 1

Posted by midwestnaturalist in Ecology, Recreation, Reforestration, Trees. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

Old Tijkko a 9,550 year old Norway Spruce, is the oldest known living individual clonal tree. Although the tree’s stems live no more than 600 years, its root system’s age has been established using carbon dating and genetic matching. Elsewhere in the Fulu mountains of Sweden, 20 spruces have been found that are older than 8,000 years.

Nevertheless, the oldest tree system, is the Quaking Aspens of Fish Lake National Forest in Utah. The organism covers 107 acres and has around 47,000 stems which average 130 years of age each. These continually die and are renewed by its roots. Estimates on the age of this 6,000 ton organism range from 80,000 – 1,000,000 years.

Some of my favorite friends are trees. In fact, when I was in middle school friends nicknamed me “tree” – which was due  in part to the fact that I suddenly grew to six feet while weighing a mere 100 pounds and also due to the fact that I spent a lot of time in or around trees.

My love of trees began when I was a cub scout and participated in the reforestation project in the Depew Valley near my home in the Niagara Region of Canada. Over the years I’ve had the privilege of driving through the valley and watching the progress of the Eastern White Pines, Pin Oaks and Sugar Maples we planted when I was just 8 years old. Today some of these trees stand 60-100 feet high, and add a sense of scale to my life, not in simply years, but also in it’s impact.

Over the years, I’ve continued my tree-planting-fetish and everywhere I’ve lived I’ve left behind some sort of tree-legacy. Over the next few days, I’ll share with you some of my favorite tree friends that do well within the midwest:

White Pine

A.J. Casson's "White Pine"

White Pine (Pinus strobus) makes an excellent privacy screen while supplying food and cover for wildlife. The current champion is 167 feet high and is located in Pennsylvania. It typically takes on a classic flat-topped habit as has the one in my back yard. Just a few years ago the leader decayed and fell to the ground after the tree had grown to a height of some 25 feet. There seems to be some ambiguity about which branch may assume the leader position, but after two years no successor has established itself yet.

White pines have also been the subject of some of my favorite Group of Seven artists from Canada. Around 1912 sketch boxes in tow, they journeyed all over the country to paint the wilderness with bold colours and a broad, decorative style.  Their vision shaped how Canadians saw their own country and left a legacy that continues to provoke debate and discussion. Perhaps one of my favorite artist from among the group, and in addition, my favorite painting, is A.J Casson’s White Pine, from 1957.

However, the most magical aspect of the white pine is it’s ability to lull one to sleep on it’s bed of soft waxy needles as the breeze whispers above through it’s boughs.

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