Wild About the City &raquo; Exploring nature in the urban environment

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Cormorant in the Keating Channel

Posted in Don Valley, Lake Ontario, Waterfowl

Well. Here is the bird that everyone loves to hate, minding its own business in the Keating Channel last week. Not bothering anyone, just drying its wings mid-morning in the intense heat of a blazing late summer sun. (I took this photo before the current chilly rainy period set in.)

Of course, there are few folks around the Big Smoke that don’t recognize the much reviled double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) when they see one. They’re so big. So black. So uncute. So destructive.

The haters might say, “How appropriate! The ugliest bird around, photographed in one of the city’s most derelict, ugliest locations — the Keating Channel.” (That’s the concrete sluice that replaced the natural mouth of the Don River, the channel that now connects the Lower Don River to our lake.)

But plenty of other folks, including me, enjoy watching these big birds that look prehistoric somehow. Like they’re the long lost relatives of Archeopteryx. Like they should have been extras in the film Jurassic Park. But there’s plenty to like about these birds. I love, for example, how they fly in formation so low over the lake it looks as if they might crash into it. I love how they dry their wings.

But I’m all too aware that these birds are hugely controversial. People rightly accuse the cormorant colonies on the Leslie Street Spit of destroying trees and thus the habitat of other animals in the park. (Think guano.) And they each eat about a pound of fish per day, disrupting the food source of other animals. Many thoughtful people feel they should be humanely culled.

Leslie Scrivener, one of this city’s finest feature writers, clearly explained both sides of the cormorant debate in an article in the Toronto Star dated May 20, 2009. You can read her well-balanced article by clicking here.

I’ll let others who know more about the cormorant debate decide how to control their exploding population. Meanwhile, I’ll keep watching these big black birds as they do what comes naturally — fishing, preening, drying, socializing. Oh yeah —and excreting vast quantities of guano.

© BCP 2010

Posted in Don Valley, Lake Ontario, Waterfowl

1 comment

Friday, September 3, 2010

Sunset stroll in the Brick Works

Posted in Don Valley, Flowers, Plants, Reptiles, Trees

The old Brick Works property located in the Lower Don Valley (accessible from the Bayview Ave. extension) has been one of my favourite spots for years. It was a wild and derelict 11.5- hectare site. Now, with the input of dreamers, doers, donors — and millions of dollars — it is becoming a showcase of green living that is drawing international raves.

I took a walk through the property Saturday evening as the sun was already slipping behind the valley walls, leaving only scattered streams of light touching the tops of the trees and the far hills, leaving them looking as if they had been decorated with gold icing.

Upon arriving, it was clear that work on the site is proceeding at a frenzied pace, as contractors hurry to finish the initial built parts of the project by its official grand opening date, Sept. 25/26.

But slipping behind the industrial buildings of the old Brick Works plant itself, the astonishing beauty and peace of the enormous site begins with the first glimpse of the Weston Quarry Garden, where an elegant marble stone marks the foresight and generosity of the Weston Foundation’s contribution to the enterprise. (Toronto Life Magazine recently published a fascinating comprehensive history of the Brick Works project, which you can read by clicking here.)

I only had about an hour in the valley before I knew I would lose the last of the light, so I quickly made my way around the ponds (after stopping to admire a Midland painted turtle coming up for air in the first pond). I was hoping to get a close-up photo of a goldfinch, which are abundant in the open meadows of the valley floor. But I was too late to get the light I needed for the shot, so I decided to just wander around and see what was new.

One thing I noticed got me wondering. In other visits to the Brick Works, I had seen a great blue heron hiding in the tall reeds in the ponds towards the back of the site. The heron would stay perfectly still while it hunted, watching and waiting for a fish to spear. (If you don’t mind a bit of blood, you can click here to see a photo I took at Col. Sam Smith Park in the west end of a great blue heron with its successful catch in its long beak.)

But on this visit to the Brick Works, these same ponds where I had seen the herons were completely covered over by a carpet of thick green algae. Not too surprising, then, that I didn’t see any herons on this visit — how on earth would they be able to fish? I guess they move on to better — or at least easier — fishing grounds when the ponds are coated with algae and they can’t see the fish. I wonder — does anyone know about the comings and goings of the herons here?

It was getting dark as I toured around the last pond and headed back towards the parking lot and the hum of the city. The goldfinches were still chirruping and flitting through the trees, but they were getting hard to see. Time to go.

Just as I was leaving, I noticed that one of the main industrial buildings was reflected in the first pond, so I stopped long enough to try to capture that.

Evergreen’s Brick Works is a stellar accomplishment. It’s a project that everyone involved can be proud of, a project that lights the way forward for green living in our big smoggy city on the lake.

Posted in Don Valley, Flowers, Plants, Reptiles, Trees

1 comment

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The prettiest pink flowers in the Lower Don

Posted in Don Valley, Flowers

I found these lovely, delicate flowers growing in deep shade not far from the riverbank in the Lower Don Valley on my stroll there last week. There was a very small patch of them, growing only a few feet away from a dense thicket of orange jewelweed (Impatiens capensis). I had never seen anything like them before. Excellent — a new mystery for me to solve!

When I went searching in my wildflower identification book, I could find nothing that looked like these plants. But I thought their flowers looked suspiciously like the jewelweed, so I continued my investigation by seeing if I could find any near relatives to Impatiens capensis (also known as spotted touch-me-not) that could be contenders.

(For comparison, I have included a photo of the jewelweed patch (at left) that was growing alongside the unknown flowers.

I began roaming through online photos of other Impatiens species, until I found one that looks remarkably like my mystery specimen. I now think that the photo above is of Impatiens balfourii, commonly known as Balfour’s touch-me-not, poor man’s orchid and Kashmir balsam.

The latter common name reflects this plant’s origins. Here’s wiki on the subject: “It is native to the Himalayas, particularlyKashmir and surrounding areas, where it grows in mountains of 5,000 to 6,000 feet.^[1] It was brought back to England as a garden plant, and then it became popular in the San Francisco Bay Areaand other parts of the United States.^[1] It can now be found there growing wild as a garden escapee along the Pacific coast and in Wisconsin,^[2] where it is well adapted to cool, wet sites.”

It seems to me that my mystery plant is a bit of Balfour’s touch-me-not that escaped from cultivation in someone’s garden.

I’d love to hear if anyone else has seen these pink flowers growing in the wild around Toronto. And any ideas regarding identification most appreciated.

Posted in Don Valley, Flowers

3 comments