UpNorthGuides.com

Outpost magazine reviews Up North

Doug Bennet — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 01:21:29 +0000

Pick up an issue of the Canadian adventure travel magazine Outpost to find great feature articles… and a nice review of The Complete Up North. Here’s an excerpt:

“The Complete Up North is not your typical field guide… unlike the majority of nature guidebooks, it’s also a surprisingly entertaining page turner from start to finish. Its prose is so engaging and the author’s curiosity so obviously infectious that you’ll be completely unable to set it aside.

“The book is filled with those bits of folk-lore and little-known trivia that made your grandpa’s almanac fascinating fireplace reading. You might know that the Canada goose mates for life, but did you peg it as a sneaky adulterer? Can you cite the estimated size of Toronto’s raccoon population? Do you know the detection range of the mosquito, and why this cottage plague finds women more appealing than men? Know why a ladybug is called a ladybug? Can you forecast rain by looking at a poplar leaf? You’ll find the answers to all of these questions, and much more.”

Our Algonquin moose

Doug Bennet — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:48:20 +0000

I was fortunate to spend a few days in Ontario’s magnificent Algonquin Park recently and we had some wonderful wildlife sightings. The highlight was a close encounter with a female moose as we canoed up the Amable du Fond river from North Tea Lake back to the put-in. We knew we were in for a treat when, rounding a bend, our companions in the canoe ahead waved at us and mouthed the word “moose!” Sure enough, as we rounded the corner, a beautiful full-size female loomed into view just a few feet away. She was contentedly munching on lily roots. She glanced at us only briefly (not long enough to get a good picture), then continued her meal. The kids laughed when she started peeing in the water. Moose eat up to 66 lb of plants a day, including water lilies, pondweed, ferns, horsetail, asters, jewelweed, grass, sedges and deciduous leaves (in summer). There are about 110,000 moose in Ontario in midwinter. Our specimen looked very healthy, and we passed another one on the drive out of the park.

—Doug

Doug in his favourite conveyance, here on North Tea Lake

Our friendly female moose on the Amable du Fond river in Algonquin

Complete Up North in the news

Doug Bennet — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 01:49:05 +0000

Well, the book is launched and we’ve had a great reception. We hope you heard the interview with Tim on CBC Radio 1’s show “Fresh Air” with Mary Ito on May 22, broadcast across Ontario. Waterloo radio station CKWR also interviewed Tim for the show KW Magazine with John Maciel.

The Haliburton Echo did a piece on the book, as did the Bloor West Villager in Toronto. Click here to see the Villager article.

Thanks to all the local bookstores and gift shops that have ordered the book, and to readers who have already purchased a copy… many as gifts for the cottage-lovers and campers in their lives. For information on ordering the book, visit our publisher’s web site here

Wildflower season in the woods

Doug Bennet — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 02:07:52 +0000

Now’s the time to see nature’s flower garden before the trees fully leaf-out and block the sunlight reaching the forest floor. Blooming trout lilies are a sure sign of spring and we were delighted when the trout lily in our backyard in Toronto (below) bloomed for the first time this year—typical for trout lilies, we had to wait five years.

Trout lilies grow from bulbs called corms; they also spread runners up to 25 centimetres through the soil to create new bulbs. These cloned corms send up their own leaves in spring. The process repeats itself year after year, decade after decade, forming extensive subterranean networks that help hold the soil together. Some trout lily patches are up to 300 years old.

Read more about the amazing life of trout lilies on page 385 of The Complete Up North.

The yellow trout lily flower take five years or more to bloom

Here come the birds

Doug Bennet — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:49:47 +0000

Nancy and I joined the Toronto Ornithological Club today for its annual April jaunt to the Leslie Street Spit (aka Tommy Thompson Park) on the Toronto waterfront. A chilly day, but still lots of good sightings of birds headed up north for the 2010 breeding season.

Among the crowds of cormorants, ring-billed gulls and red-wing blackbirds were:

• several common loons in flight

• hermit thrushes by the bird research station

• a cooper’s hawk. The young woman running the bird banding station found a pile of northern flicker feathers that morning, apparently a victim of the cooper’s.

• a kestrel pair, hunting the sparrows

• a field sparrow and white-throated sparrow (”Oh sweet Canada Canada Canada” its unmistakable call, a favourite of mine and so evocative of the north woods)

• a kingfisher patrolling the shoreline

• tree swallows galore, along with a couple of barn swallows

• our expert guides heard a ruby-crowned kinglet but we didn’t see it

• a couple of yellow-rumped warblers flew by but we didn’t get a good look at them

• on the water: red-breasted mergansers, greater and lesser scaup, buffleheads (I love that name), lovely canvas-backs with their red heads, big herring gulls, American widgeons, long-tails, mute swans

• common and Caspian terns

The big wave of warblers is still a few weeks away.

Thanks to trip leader Hugh Currie and the club for an enjoyable morning. Look forward to seeing many of these birds up north this summer.

At Beamer’s hawk watch today

Doug Bennet — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 01:59:34 +0000

The family visited the Beamer’s Point Hawk Watch in Grimsby today, on the Niagara Escarpment. This is the time of year that raptors start migrating back to Ontario and the north woods, and the Beamer’s Hawk Watch is a great place to see the grand parade repeated again, as it has for hundreds if not thousands of years. The weather was hot and there were birds aplenty.

Turkey vultures, not surprisingly, were the most numerous. We saw one kettle of 52 “TVs” (according to my son) on our way out of the conservation area… one hawk-watcher told us that 400 went through in a matter of about 5 minutes yesterday.

Plenty of smaller sharp-shinned hawks, too, and the occasional red-tail. The tally board also showed northern harriers today, but we didn’t see any. Two bald eagles went through yesterday.

Other feathered attractions included golden-crowned kinglets in the cedars along the escarpment ridge, cardinals, juncos, and one fox sparrow rustling in the leaves that generated a lot of attention.

In The Complete Up North, you’ll read updated entries on turkey vultures, sharp-shinned hawks (”sharpies”), with references to kinglets, red-tail hawks (common along highways), and harriers.

Raptors don’t fly over water, so the Great Lakes region is rimmed with hawk watches where the birds funnel over land to get to their breeding grounds up north. Tim and I visited the Duluth, Minnesota hawk watch a few years ago and were similarly thrilled to see the great birds flying around the end of Lake Superior to get to their summer homes.

Thanks to all the volunteer hawk-watchers and naturalists’ groups who do a great job recording the migrations and also educating the general public. Click here for a link to the Niagara hawk watch group.

—Doug

March mating madness

Doug Bennet — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:08:44 +0000

Disney, in the movie Bambi, had a great word for it: Twitterpated (before the days of social media, of course). With melting snow and warm weather comes natural desires among many species to start the cycle of life over again. Among red squirrels in the trees above, formerly hostile male and female neighbours react to the mid-March glow by suddenly, but briefly, becoming the objects of each other’s desire. Flying squirrels mate around the same time. In remote areas of thick brush, lynx eager to meet and mate beckon with chilling caterwauls in late winter.

In March and April nights, the unmistakable hooting of the barred owl — “Who cooks for you, who cooks for you all?” — is augmented by screams, barks, hisses and cackles, as owls get down to the serious business of courtship.

Listen for downy woodpeckers, among many other species, also calling out for love.

Nature by the 401

Doug Bennet — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 03:22:58 +0000

I know it’s not exactly up north, but a recent drive by Pearson Airport on the 401 reminded me again of nature’s resilience. In addition to the red-tailed hawk posed majestically on the airport sign (the hawks are common along highway corridors), I was surprised to see a couple of white-tailed deer grazing on a field not far from the end of a runway, by the Dixie exit. Jets, tractor-trailers, cars, deer and hawks… nature is everywhere.

-Doug

Life stirring under ice

Doug Bennet — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:14:54 +0000

While it may seem frozen and silent on land, much life goes on below the ice, with many fishes and the larvae of dragonflies, midges, blackflies, deer flies and craneflies swimming or wriggling about, albeit sluggishly in some cases. Later in summer, if you’re lucky, you can watch dragonfly larvae haul themselves out from the mucky deep onto sun-warmed rock faces. There they will dry out, shed their old skins, sprout wings and fly away in a thrilling metamorphosis.

Chickadees marking territory

Doug Bennet — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:10:56 +0000

It’s not quite mating season yet, but even in mid-winter the birds are getting ready… listen for chickadees whistling their high, clear songs — often rendered as “fee-bee” or “fee-bee-ee”. They are establishing their territorial dominance within the winter flock.