a place where nature, photography and writing meet
Earlier this week, I posted several photos of female spiders guarding egg cases. Yesterday, I found yet another to add to my records. This spider is a Misumena vatia, a member of the Thomisidae Family (crab spiders). She’s a little special for a couple of reasons. It happens that she’s the first of this species […]
I guess the best way to describe this weekend was that it was a blockbuster as far as spider and insect activity is concerned. All of a sudden, there is motion everywhere in the fields and woods here at the farm. Yesterday, I photographed several species of spiders — a couple of them new to […]
Part of the fascination of studying nature is that things are often not as simple and uncomplicated as they appear. This is one of those stories that starts off seeming to be one thing, but ends up being something quite else. Let me take you back to the beginning. There’s an old plastic lawnchair sitting […]
As promised, here’s a brief report on the nature field day that my friend, Eric Snyder, and I led at the Richmond Conservation Area on May 28, 2007. We spent much of the day exploring the nature trails with twenty of Lisa Hetherington’s science students from Bell High School. I believe this was our fourth […]
This was meant to be a more substantial post, but I have to beetle off in a few minutes. We’ve had a busy weekend, and this morning I’m off to meet up with a Grade 10 science class from one of the schools in the city. A friend, Eric Snyder, and I have been doing […]
The first casualty of the beaver was spotted yesterday when Sabrina and I went out for our morning walk. There was no sign of the beaver — just a poplar tree felled next to the water. I won’t grieve much over the tree as poplar grow like weeds around our place. In fact, it’s too […]
This isn’t quite the post I’d intended to write this morning. I was planning to begin wrapping up our week of bioblitzing. However, the “litterbug” topic seemed to want to be addressed, so that’s how it goes. As mentioned in yesterday’s post, Don and I volunteered to do some trail maintenance and clean-up at the […]