News

September already!

Well, summer is officially at an end.  It hit me when I arrived to an empty Visitor Centre and was cleaning turtle tanks all by myself.  All of our summer staff have left us again and are back at their respective universities – we wish them all a very successful year.

 That leaves Brady and I to prepare for a few large events that are coming up later this month.  The first is our annual Monarch Migration Festival on September 16^th.  If you’ve been to this event in the past, you know that it is a beautiful way to spend a late summer day.  We will have events for the whole family including guided butterfly hikes, monarch tagging demonstrations, a children’s craft, face painting, a BBQ lunch, art show and a native plant sale.  This year we are excited to have guest speaker Dr. Scott Taylor at the festival to provide a special program focusing on the fall migration and how these tiny insects make such an incredible journey.  This presentation begins at 2:30pm in the Visitor Centre and will be followed by a guided hike, so bring your walking shoes! 

 On September 22^nd,RondeauPark will be hosting its first annual Shoreline Cleanup!  This program calls for volunteers to head to their local shorelines with one main goal—to rid shorelines and waterways of harmful litter.  This program has humble beginnings, starting with a few dedicated staff from the Vancouver Aquarium and has since grown to span the entire country and now engages tens of thousands of volunteers…and you could be one of them!  If you are interested in the program contact Brady at the Visitor Centre at 519-674-1768.  You can learn more about the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup at ShorelineCleanup.ca.

 Those are some exciting programs, but we also have some great guided hikes and another Owl Prowl coming to you this month.  So check out the activity sheet and keep your weekends clear so you can come out and join us in beautiful Rondeau!

 Hope to see you all soon

Monarchs and the Wacky Weather

Dry, dry, dry! It has been a rainless summer so far. This has caused some unusual goings on in the animal kingdom here at Rondeau. Our sloughs, or forest wetlands, have been dry since late spring. While there have been some upsides to the lack of rain such as much fewer Mosquitoes than normal, there are other, more sinister changes that are only now becoming apparent. 

Monarchs are a highly specialized species. This means, simplified, that they are very picky eaters. Monarch caterpillars feed only on one type of plant – the milkweeds. While milkweed enjoys the record hot and dry weather that both Canada and the United States have been getting, there is perhaps too much of a good thing. The milkweed plants seem to have peaked early, which is troublesome for the monarch generation that is getting ready to migrate to Mexico (their winter retreat).  What will happen if the milkweed is all dying for newly emerged caterpillars, which must eat several times their body weight every day? 

 Monarchs are walking a fine line this year (or flying it, as it were). There have been varying degrees of rainfall throughout the Monarch’s range. Here in Ontario, things are not as bleak as they might appear. It is still possible to see the usual numbers of our brightest butterflies, perhaps just a bit later in the season. It is in the central and lower United States that things are starting to appear dire. The drought that has wreaked havoc on hundreds of acres of crop land down there has caused not only a sad lack of our favourite veggies, but many of the flowering plants are well past their prime. As our Monarchs move southward on their magnificent mass movement, scientists are scratching their heads as to whether there will be enough nectar to go around.

 All of this is pure speculation. Nothing will be known for sure until all the Monarchs have arrived in their Mexican roosting grounds, and the size of these gatherings can be measured. Until then, a little rain wouldn’t go amiss, so anyone with the knowledge of successful rain-dance techniques… This would be your moment!

Summertime Stingers

As August winds down, everyone is preparing for back to school shenanigans. Making beds, getting up early, packing lunches… but as all school children know, one should pack extra, because there are lunch-time thieves lurking out there! While the weather is perfect for enjoying our meals al-fresco, a persistent insect commonly called the Yellow Jacket is out to steal your snacks and drinks.

Yellow jackets are part of the Order Hymenoptera of insects, which includes wasps, bees and ants. This is the third largest order with well over 100,000 species in the world. Scientistsknow the Hymenoptera to be the “social butterflies” of the insect world; their social life has reached the highest stage development of all other insects. Yellow jackets are part of the family called Social Vespids, who arenotorious for their potent and painful sting. In the fall, they seem to be at their most vicious, charging innocent bystanders seemingly out of nowhere, but this is no random state of affairs.

In the Spring, a queen yellow jacket will begin a new colony by building a new nest or re-using a vacant one. The nests are constructed of hexagonal,waterproof paper cells. These nests are attached to surfaces, such as the eaves of roofs or branches on trees. This single queen will head a colony of up to 25,000 individuals in one season- no mean feat!

Wasp larva will live in thesecells, hungrily taking the food offered to them by the male workers. With each gift of food, the larva will excrete a drop of saliva which is devoured by the worker, forming a ‘mutual exchange’ relationship which holds the colony together

Male workers have no purpose in life but to serve the colony. The colony functions perfectly, with the queen giving directions which are followed by her loyal subjects. However, this apparent harmony is not exactly the ‘bees knees’, as it were. The queen hibernates in solitude, and leaves her nest early to find a secluded spot where she can enjoy a long rest with peace and quiet. Once she goes, all hornets break loose! Without direction or a sense of purpose, the worker males essentially revolt.  Having gone rogue, its every wasp for himself in the search for food and survival… your lunch happens to be an easy meal!

But wait! While they may seem malicious, this order of insect is one of the most beneficial to man. The honey-bee is all important for honey, wax and pollination, and many wasps check the populations of many harmful insects, regardless of the tiny sting they may deliver now and then. Make sure to cover your lunch and keep your pop out of sight while keeping in mind that this bad behaviour is nothing more than the absence of a little discipline at home.

Just flying by!

Hi Everyone!

Wow! Already August 14th. Our programs are in full swing, with lots of people out at the Park trying to make the most of these last few weeks. The days are just flying by!

And speaking of flying… a couple of our staff members had the amazing opportunity of soaring into the sky and getting a birds-eye view of Rondeau. From their vantage point in the plane, they were able to take in the state of the Park. The sloughs were very visible, thanks to our unique formation, and they were able to appreciate just how vast our forest is. Sometimes it takes such an amazing view to comprehend just what it means to be the largest tract of Carolinian forest in all of Canada.

Things weren’t all perfectly peachy, unfortunately. Being up so high, they could see quite clearly the effect of one of our most wicked plants: Phragmities. This invader has marched across most of North America from Europe, leaving a swath of destruction in its wake. Also know as Common Reed, we call it by its Latin name, Phragmities australis. It grows up to 4 meters tall, and spreads by underground root systems and seedheads, maximizing its potential to reproduce. ‘Phrag’ affects nutrient cycling within a wetland, is not a major food source, chokes out native vegetation, and can completely alter a shoreline, as we have been seeing in Rondeau’s marsh. Even the dead plants can take up to four years to decompose. We as humans have a role in this too, though! Human activities have helped to facilitate the plants’ sordid plot against total take over. And believe it or not but you can purchase this plant in greenhouses for your gardens at home! But please don’t!!

Rondeau fights back! In our vegetation management plan, we attempt to control the spread of this notorious plant and to minimize its impact. We have a strategy that includes a minimal amount of herbicide spraying, crushing it down, and burning it out. Sounds foolproof! But Phragmities is resilient, and the battle is ongoing.

To keep up with the progress, or to learn more about other botanical atrocities occurring around the Park, check out the Visitor Centre for more information on more plants bent on taking over!

Check out this picture of the park from high above:

This past weekend…

Hello Everyone!

I hope that you all took advantage of the beautiful weekend to celebrate Parks Day! Here at Rondeau, we celebrated our Park with the debut performance of “Erie Spirits”, a ghostly hike along the beach. Lead by a naturalist, guests got to encounter some of our “livelier” spirits that walked Rondeau before us. With over 140 people, what a success! If you missed this memorable performance, check out the encore at 8:30pm on August the 4^th, starting from the Visitor Centre.

The August long weekend will be jam-packed with fun! Along with our Spirit Hike, the Friends of Rondeau are proud to present The Ontario Falconry Centre. This amazing group will be bringing live raptors of all shapes and sizes to the high-flying adventure of the summer! On August 4^th and 5^th, come on down to Beach Access #9 (by the Children’s Hut) at 1:30pm to witness these birds swoop and soar… an excellent photo opportunity!

In other reptilian news, some of our incubated turtle eggs have hatched successfully here at the Visitor Centre! While these little guys are quite early, we are now the proud “parents” of 20 tiny Spiny Softshell turtles. If you haven’t seen us around the park collecting eggs yet this summer, you should know that we and some devoted turtle researchers have dug up hundreds of eggs, in the hopes of saving them from their numerous predators. Thanks to human interference, raccoons, skunks and possums are in a population boom, fed by our garbage. Being so outnumbered, our little turtle eggs don’t stand a chance, and so we dig up as many as we can find and incubate them ourselves. An adorable toonie size, the baby Spiny Softshells are all being carefully marked by our researchers, and will soon be at home in their natural habitat.