The Carden Plain is part of the “Land Between,” an area bordered by the Canadian Shield and Great Lakes Lowlands. An alvar is characterized by a limestone base with a small or no amount of soil. The birding in this area is world renowned and it is recognized as an Important Birding Area. Also, it supports unique plants that adapt to the harsh conditions of wet springs and very dry summer conditions. An open alvar vista in bloom will take your breath away with its delicate, harsh beauty.
A brush with the bluebird of happiness
The bluebird is doing well in Carden, thanks to two things: first, a local man named Herb Furniss has spent the last few decades building and distributing white bluebird boxes throughout the region, quietly making a huge difference for these little birds; second, Wylie Road rolls through an area where more than 6,000 acres of grassland, forest and wetland has been conserved as natural habitat.
Making a new home for Barn Swallows
Ask any farmer, and they’ll tell you there are not nearly so many Barn Swallows as there used to be. The science backs them up – over the past 20 years, there has been a steep drop in swallow populations across eastern North America. In Ontario, Barn Swallows are now listed as a threatened species.
Swallow Houses…If you build it, they will come!
It is a rite of spring for me to build swallow houses– each March getting the urge to build a few from left over’s from wood working projects and from scraps from local contractors who know I would never refuse a scrap of usable wood or asphalt shingles.
Water Quality: Testing Our Assumptions
For a decade now the Conservancy has been building fences on the properties we manage to keep cattle out of streams, and then creating alternative watering sources for cattle to access. We’ve also been helping other ranchers in the area to do the same.
Scarlet Sumac Comes in Two Forms
On the Carden Alvar, a different form of sumac takes over where the thin soils over limestone bedrock create more difficult growing conditions. Fragrant sumac, as its name suggests, releases a pleasant citrus-like aroma when its young leaves are crushed. This species turns red in the autumn as well, but a somewhat softer, rosier shade than its staghorn cousin.
The Black-capped chickadee
The Black-capped chickadee, the species found in our area, has been described variously as sociable, industrious, agile, inquisitive, gregarious, trusting and acrobatic, and while they are all true, none of these adjectives fully describe this little bundle of cheerfulness.
Stewardship now includes battling thieves
Ranchers, private land owners and the Couchiching Conservancy have had a dozen steel gates, and most of a solar well system; stolen from the properties on the Carden Plain. Police are investigating the late August thefts, but more than $5,000 in equipment is probably gone for good.
The Kris Starr Sanctuary; richly diverse
At its south end, the Sanctuary takes in a small piece of the Carden Alvar, and the steep limestone slope created by the rough caress of the glaciers. At the foot of this slope, the Head River meanders across the reserve, its spring floods nourishing a rich floodplain forest. Beyond that is a band of mixed forest of oak, pine and birch on pockets of drier soils. But the northern half of the Sanctuary, north of Monck Road, is classic granite barrens with scattered trees and a mosaic of beaver ponds and wetlands. All on this one property, the ecological transition known as The Land Between is fully on display.
Red-breasted nuthatch surprise visit
Although the occasional Red-breasted is identified during our local Christmas Bird count, we seldom see them in our vicinity as their preferred habitat is a coniferous forest and we live in an area forested with a mix of deciduous and conifer trees. Most of my encounters and all my photographs of these diminutive little hustlers have been taken in Algonquin Park, where they abound in the conifers and the abundant food supply they offer.
Smaller than the common white- breasted nuthatch, and bearing a rufous coloured breast and a black stripe along the eye line, they along with black- capped chickadees and gray jays, are very much candidates for those much sought after photographic images of birds feeding out of an open hand, filled with various seeds.