I Can't Believe It!

I can't believe it but the weather is so mild here in late November that I rode downtown or home from downtown twice this week!  Usually we've had at least a couple of major snowfalls by this time, but not this year.  I'm hoping for a mild winter, even if the skiers want snow!

This was the harbour on Monday, my friends bench at the left under one of the few trees.  Can you spot the swans?  I don't think I've ever seen swans in this harbour before.

They weren't disturbed as I rode down the harbour-edge sidewalk.  I wonder if they'll hang around.

I got a good deal closer on this bright sunny day.  They raised their heads and as you can see by their orange beaks, these are Mute Swans.  They do tend to hang around rather than migrate.  At any rate, it was a remarkable 8°C that day.

Compare this to this week two years ago!

Our snow stick got totally covered this week that year.  I'm thanking my lucky stars for the mild winter so far this year and hoping it will continue!  And I still can't believe it!

Sunrise

Even these cold grey November days sometimes start out with a glorious sunrise!

Photos by Mrs. F.G.

Salmon, Round Two

After quite a few pictures from the bridge, I moved over to the side for a different view.  I could watch as the fish approached that low line of rocks and with a swish of their tail, splashed up over it.  In the wild and at the fish ladder I've seen salmon leap over much higher barriers.

Again I watched as groups of salmon seemed to follow one another.

I was certainly getting the impression that there were a lot of migrating fish this year!

Every now and then I'd get a good look at individual fish with their rainbow of colours.

These fish will continue upstream to spawn, both in smaller spawning channels developed along the edges of the river, and in Weavers Creek, a tributary.  But none of them get past Inglis Falls, a couple of kilometres to the south.

Just for interest, this is a member of the Sydenham Sportsmen Association a few years back, when I found them removing fish at the fish ladder.  These fish will be the source of salmon eggs for the local hatchery.

I said I would explain a bit about the history of salmon of the Great Lakes.  The original native salmon here was the Atlantic Salmon, the St. Lawrence River taking them upstream from the Atlantic to the small streams flowing into Lake Ontario to spawn.  Unfortunately the building of small mill dams on every available stream to power grist and sawmills meant that the Atlantic Salmon couldn't get upstream to spawn and went extinct in the Great Lakes (Lake Ontario) by the late 1800s.

In spite of many efforts to establish salmon in the lakes from then until 1965, no amount of effort was successful.  But in 1966 fisheries scientists in Michigan led the way in negotiating with their counterparts in Oregon and Washington to get salmon eggs for hatchery rearing salmon smolts.  The effort was surprisingly successful, by 1970 there were self-reproducing populations of Coho and Chinook Salmon in the upper Great Lakes.

A key factor was the enormous alewife population in the Great Lakes by the mid-1960s, so high that alewife die-offs left the beaches black with their rotting bodies (I remember this!).  Public attitudes strongly supported the introduction of salmon to control the alewife population, and the salmon were happy to oblige.  The alewife provided a perfect food source for the salmon.  In a couple of decades Great Lakes fisheries went from a value of about ten million from commercial fisheries (mainly for Lake Trout) to a value of ten billion for sport fishing (mainly for salmon).

The shift in government programs from supporting commercial fisheries to supporting sport fishing was wildly successful.  The story is much more complex than this, but hopefully it gives you some perspective circa about 4 decades ago.  Invasive species are the big management issue today.

Migrating Salmon

Every fall we try to get to Owen Sound during the salmon migration in late September or early October.  It's easy to spot the salmon, and lots of fun.  For us it celebrates the success of the Sydenham Sportsmen Association.  They run two fish hatcheries and stock thousands of tiny fish each year.  The fish ladder they built around the mill dam in Owen Sound was the first in Ontario.  We get to see some of those fish when they return to spawn.

Our favourite viewpoint is the bridge over the Sydenham River, right in the middle of Harrison Park.

You can look right down between the supports of the bridge railing and see the fish swimming up against the current.

This year we saw more than we ever have; they were constantly swimming below our feet.

They had to struggle a bit to get over the low barrier 50 feet downstream, but they had little trouble.

They almost seemed to follow each other in small groups.  It made me wonder if there was a similar effect in the water that migrating geese are said to experience in the air, each one benefitting from the air flow in front.  Tomorrow a bit about the history of Great Lakes salmon.

A Busy Week!

We've had a busy week!  Tuesday I had a dental apt. and took advantage of Mrs. F.G. driving me downtown to also go to the library, so I've got a group of books to keep me busy for the week.  The temperatures have dropped down into the single digits so it's rather chilly riding a wheelchair around town!  I was glad to find her waiting for me afterwards as well.

Yesterday I had my regular weekly physio appointment, and after that went out to a meeting of the Accessibility Advisory Committee which I sit on, held in the council chambers.  I'm not sure how much we accomplish, but it's certainly interesting.  We're slowly working towards a program to encourage downtown businesses to at least make their front entrances accessible.  

Today I go down for my regular weekly lunch with the guys - all former dedicated volunteers for our local Bruce Trail Club.  We meet at McGinty's which is a breakfast and lunch cafe, and chat about anything under the sun for and hour or more.  This group has been going about 10 years now, evolving over that time as restaurants closed during the pandemic at different times, and as new members joined our group while others left.

There's a local small transit service I've probably mentioned before, intended for the disabled in town, and intended mainly for medical apts.  I qualify obviously, and used it yesterday to go to physio and from there to my committee meeting.  It certainly saves Mrs. F.G. some driving.

Visiting an Apple Orchard

Before I wander to other topics for my posts, I'd like to take you back to two things we did in early October.  Come with me today to a large modern apple orchard on the Open Fields Farm T     our in the township just to the east of us here.  Four farms put on tours as well as an apple packing facility.

Perhaps first I should say a word about why we grow so many apples here.  Apples around Ontario are generally grown close to the Great Lakes because the temperature of the water changes more slowly than the temperature over land.  This tends to delay blossom opening until the risk of frost is past.  All the major orchards here are located between the Niagara Escarpment and the bay, which provides a boundary for the zone of more moderate temperatures.  Close to the shoreline is also a zone of sandy soils which are the best; apple trees don't like wet feet!

The farm we visited is Ardiel Acres, where the orchards are a mixture of older style large trees, and these narrow rows of high-density plantings.  There were lots of apples ready to be picked when we were there.

This farm has no retail outlet, rather the apples go to a local apple packing facility that will send them on for juice-making or retail sales in stores, depending on quality.

One of the family farmers explained some basics to the small crowd, and thankfully I could get out and ride around on the gravel.  Apples are picked directly into large red apple crates like those in the background, mostly by seasonal farm workers.

Picking the apples requires specialized equipment since the trees are about 15 feet high.  Good old-fashioned ladders are still used for the large trees, but in hi-density orchards more mechanized equipment can be used.

This enormous piece of machinery is what modern apple picking looks like here.  Apple pickers ride both sides of the machine, standing at different heights, so the entire tree gets picked on both sides.  And no-one drives this machine; it's programmed to drive itself down the rows.  We were told it is accurate to with half and inch at the end of each row!

There was also a little fun to be had at this family event, though I didn't see anyone playing tic-tac-toe.

The blow-up balloons were popular though, and when the little kids were finished Mrs. F.G. slipped in to get me a new hat!  What do you think?

The Seasons Are Changing!

Today I want to acknowledge the changing seasons, for they've changed suddenly and significantly for me.  I can't quite believe it but I've made it all the way through October and into November while still going out to ride downtown.  We were still getting days of 20°C right to the end of October!  Most trees are now leafless and it's now cold!  It's November! 

The only trees out back that still have leaves are the Norway Maples, here on the left and right.  I'm not fond of Norway Maples, since they're non-native, but here they're better than the White Ash which were all infected with Emerald Ash borer.  And those are my weights, lest you think I'm doing nothing while sitting in front of our living room window every morning.

Our crane-like snow stick is finally uncovered, after being buried among the hostas all summer long.  Those dark green hellebore leaves were also out-of-sight beneath the spreading hosta leaves, but now they're out collecting sunlight again for the blooms that will appear early next spring. 

The lower temperatures - it's now down to about 8-10°C - mean that I'm putting on my warm jacket and hat, and wearing gloves when I ride downtown, a little over a kilometre away.  Wind direction makes a big difference.  Yesterday I rode downtown and felt almost warm, but when I started homeward I immediately realized there was a strong westerly breeze blowing!

Monday is Remembrance Day here and we remember our own son who died as a forest fire fighter when his water bomber went down in northern Alberta

More Sandhill Cranes

We turned around and headed back home at this point, wondering if we would see any more Sandhill Cranes.  Well, we did!  But they were a very long distance away, like a grey line on the far side of the field.

Can you see all the cranes way over there?

We stopped to get a shot of these three cranes fairly close, though they took off flying.

But look at all the cranes behind them!

These final three photos show a long line of Sandhill Cranes gathered on the far side of the field, not much to look at but a record for us.  We drove home happy after a good day hunting for the remarkable Sandhill Cranes.

The Sandhill Cranes Are Gathering

On Sunday we went for a drive east of Stayner to see if we could find the Sandhill Cranes gathering.  We've seen them there before.  In this part of Ontario the cranes separate into breeding pairs over the summer, but congregate in habitual areas before migrating southwest to the southern U.S.  It's quite the sight to see the large birds gathered in flocks of 500 or more as they feed on fallen grains before migrating.

We got there and could only see 3 cranes, unfortunately directly in the sunlight from us.  They're a huge bird, four feet tall and with a wingspan over six feet.  A bit like a Great Blue Heron but bulkier.

In any case these three didn't like being disturbed, and moved on.

We drove some distance south and west a bit. passing large harvested corn fields.  Eventually we came upon this flock, spread out in a long line on the farthest edge of this field.  The cranes seem to have a knack for staying as far away from vehicles as possible.

In the next field we were a little closer, and the cranes were in a field of winter wheat which made them stand out more clearly.  There was more to come, but you'll have to wait for the next post for that.  So far we had counted about 100.

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A Note on Photography

I've included the photo below which is largely uncropped, to give you an idea of how far away most of these birds were.  The phone camera can certainly zoom in a lot, but at these distances it becomes to hard to even hold the phone steady enough to get a clear picture.  And once you start cropping that picture it get blurry almost immediately.  It's enough to send me back to my big Nikon.

But it records the experience for us, which is what matters.

Can you see the 13 cranes in this shot?

Winter Birds?

We didn't see many birds last winter, and didn't see many in the yard this summer, not even the Song Sparrow that we've always had.  So I was pleased this morning when a little flock of what looked like winter birds flew through, high in the maples.  I grabbed my monocular to look and they were Downy Woodpeckers, not just one or two, but several!  The photos are limited shooting just with a camera.

At least you can see these are Downies.

Another stopped high in a maple.

And then another bird joined it, partly hidden by a branch, but behaving like another woodpecker.

It turned toward me and I saw it was a Junco, though I don't usually spot them high in a tree.  They are normally ground feeders.  There was also a Chickadee or too as well.  In any case I take it a good omen for this year's winter birds; hopefully we'll see lots!