That was March, that was …
... and a little more about that "Ancient Beach"
“I feel as if I had got a new sense, or rather I realise what was incredible to me before, that there is a new life in nature beginning to awake… It is whispered through all the aisles of the forest that another spring is approaching. The wood mouse listens at the mouth of his burrow, and the chickadee passes the news along.”
- Henry David Thoreau
Eastern Parson Spiders
Now the days are lengthening we are starting to see a few of these small, fast moving fellows around the house. The spider gets its name from the pale markings on its dorsal surface which are reminiscent of an old time parson’s cravat. He isn’t as big and scary as this sketch might indicate - about the size of a finger nail really. They hunt at night and then retreat to nests they have spun under leaves, boards and stones to hide during the day.
Spring … poking over the horizon
When we emigrated to Canada and settled in Baie-D’Urfé, 26 years and five days ago, I already knew in theory about Canadian winters but only realized their cultural significance when shortly after Air Canada’s London to Montreal flight had taken off from Heathrow Airport, the pilot’s voice came over the intercom. He had just heard that that morning the first cracks were appearing in the ice on the river and the temperature in Montreal had gone up more than ten degrees overnight. The Canadian passengers erupted into shouts and whistles and screams of delight and smiles broke out all around me. The day after my arrival shorts were already being worn by a couple of hardy chaps in the streets … though for me it was still rather “cool”. This winter has been considerably warmer than normal and the ice on the river had disappeared by the middle of March but it snowed last weekend and the winds still are icy cold. I determinedly still never wear shorts - even in summer.
April is when things start moving in the natural world. We are now a couple of weeks past the vernal equinox and the hours of daylight are becoming longer than the hours of dark.
So, a few things to look forward to … April is the month of the “Ephemerals”. Although vast areas of Canadian forests were cleared in the last couple of hundred years for agriculture and housing and roads, the natural environment here is forest and that’s what would return if we all vanished. What this means is that the area’s native plants evolved to thrive in an environment which plunges the ground into deep shadow once the leaves fill out on the trees. The ephemerals are those forest floor plant species that cope with this by emerging soon after the snows have gone and rush to get growth, flowering, pollination and fruiting all out of the way in just a few short weeks before the leaves unfurl and cast them into shadow - they try to benefit from the increasingly strengthening sun for as long as it can reach them.
The ephemeral that we are always waiting for (soon, soon) and which thrives under trees in our garden and in the arboretum, is Bloodroot (Sanguinaria). When there is little else growing, their appearance really says, “spring is here”. You almost certainly know this flower. It emerges from the leaf litter once the sun starts to warm the ground like a fat green thumb and grows rapidly to about six or eight inches high. It’s rather like a hand-rolled cigar with tightly furled green leaves surrounding a stalk at the tip of which is the flower bud. Soon after, the multi-petalled white flower opens to reveal the bright yellow reproductive organs, which almost immediately act as a draw to early appearing pollinator insects such as small solitary bees and early hover flies. The leaves begin to unfurl, the fertilised flowers fade and a seed pod swells at their base, until the shadow of the opening leaves shades them as April turns towards May. The white of the petals is that bright white that practically glows at sunset. Lovely things - Can’t wait. I will be sharing photos before too long.
Most butterflies need time to pass through the stages of eggs to caterpillars and then pupae before emerging in their adult splendour. With the snows only recent departed and not many green food plants to nourish the larvae, this reduces the chances of seeing flashes of colourful butterflies this early in the spring. However, at least a couple of species deal with this by overwintering as adults. The first and most colourful of these that you might observe being the orange and dark brown Eastern Comma butterfly (Polygonia comma) which I shared a photo of in my last article.
The ephemerals will need pollinating, and that is mostly achieved by visits from early emerging small solitary bees and hoverflies (also known as flower flies) which move rapidly from flower to flower. Also, and hard to miss as they are large, will be overwintering and just emerging Dark or Northern Paper Wasps. These will be females, known as foundresses rather than queens, looking to find a suitable place to start a nest and raise the next generation. These wasps are relatively slim and almost black, with narrow yellow bands separating the segments. They are only likely to be aggressive if they are defending their nest, so you can let them go about their business in peace. Should you be unlucky enough to be stung by one, however, I can tell you from personal experience that their sting is a lot more painful than that of the wasps/yellow jackets we usually worry about.
Indoors and in sheds, some spiders are already emerging. Look out for the small, fast moving Eastern Parson Spider, so named for the pale mark on its back that is supposedly in the form of an ancient preachers' cravat. I typically see these scampering across a floor indoors and ours are already scuttling into the shadows in the house and in my greenhouse too.
Then we come to April Birds. Of course, the majority of April birds will still be those resident species who have stayed faithfully around our homes and streets all winter, supported in this by the garden feeders many of us make available to them. Montreal is right under the so-called eastern flyway and with luck and preparation many birds can be seen right in our gardens.
I very well remember the first Canadian bird that I “saw” after moving into our house shortly after immigrating from England. Although there are exceptions, many European birds are, shall we say, more subtly coloured than the ones we live alongside in Baie-D’Urfé. The previous owners of the house had left a more than somewhat dilapidated bird feeder on a pole not far from the kitchen window. I think one of us must have put some food out – probably dried crusts of bread or the like. I was making an early morning cup of tea and while waiting for the kettle to boil was looking out of the window when a startlingly bright red bird descended onto the feeder and started gobbling down whatever it found. It was, of course, a male Northern Cardinal, and it left me speechless. Such a gorgeously coloured and unexpected visitor. From that moment on I was hooked. We just had no alternative but to buy some local field guides and start to learn all we could about Quebec birds.
Interestingly, ubiquitous as Cardinals are these days in this region, it’s only a few decades since they crossed the border and extended their range from the more southerly parts of the USA. We might assume this was triggered by climate change, and that may be contributory, but it seems equally probable that their arrival was simply to take advantage of the food and shelter opportunities, and the regularly filled garden feeders, of a booming human population.
If you want to make a start on your birding life lists, then don’t sit back and let April pass you by. Get outside with your binoculars and enjoy some fine birds, all easy to see before there are leaves on the trees to hide behind.
EASTER
‘The Easter bunny was a hare long before he was a rabbit; the hare was sacred to Eostre, the Saxon goddess of spring – no rabidly cute bundle of fluff.’
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n13/katherine-rundell/consider-the-hare
What have we seen in the past last week of March?
Apart from the snowdrops and some early crocuses there are still no plants worth getting excited about, though very soon you are going to hear all about those ephemerals I wrote about above. There has been some movement on the bird front though - starting with the arrival in our garden of a flock of over 50 Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds. I had been walking to the local store to pick up a forgotten, but essential, food item and I remember it was bitterly cold. Really awful. There is a short path through a small wooded area at the top of our road that I cut through on these trips and as I got close I was entertained by a noisy wheeling of assorted black birds in the sky above the trees. I didn’t have binoculars with me (why?) but the shape of some of the tails told me there were a lot go early returning Grackles, which was nice. Back home J was excitedly telling me the tale of what I had missed, when the birds decided to return. Very noisy, lots of squabbling around the feeders and on the ground underneath. Like a gang of irresponsible teenagers strutting their stuff. We could almost see the level of seeds in the feeders going down. They stayed for about a half hour until heading off to eat some other gardener out of food and house and home.
Nature Writing
If you are reading this then you already enjoy nature writing … Rebecca Wisent has assembled a directory of some fifty nature writers to be found on Substack. Have a look, there is some good writing to trawl through in the following link. (Note: do not read anything into the fact that this newsletter is at the top go the list - they are in alphabetical order and the title of mine starts with a number rather than a letter. Gaming the system 😉)
Closing our winter-work at the MBO
J and I have to change our weekly routine now for the warm months ahead. Just down the road from us immediately east of the arboretum is the McGill Bird Observatory (restricted access - please don’t think of visiting) which is now in its twentieth year of operation. We have watched some terrific students working there over the years, and later growing into their careers. Rather than go into a lengthy description of what happens at this banding station with its in-depth studies of bird migration and the like, here is a link to their website:
Every winter, along with another couple of friends who visit separately, we visit every few days to replenish bird feeders and to walk, sometimes struggle, through the cold and snow around the site to take a snapshot census of the birds that happen to be there. It is very much our happy place in winter, very peaceful and all ours for a couple of hours. Oh, and extremely cold too. We really look forward to the plummeting temperatures and snow to tell us it’s time to go back each winter.
Our personal “winter duty” (late November to late March) species list amounts to some 39 species … which is not to be sniffed at considering how cold and hostile things can be at times.
The “Sport” of Mega-Birding
Very interesting article in The Guardian a few days ago … these guys are far, far ahead of any list I will end up with … though I plan to get at least one new lifer on 12 September 2048 when I achieve 100 years of age. I accept that I may need some assistance with that 😉
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/24/birding-online-community-10000-species
Bird observation has come a long way since ornithologist John James Audubon announced his goal to painstakingly document all the birds in North America through physical drawings, starting around 1820. With digital cameras, birds can now be captured in high-quality photos, and artificial intelligence technology can identify birds by their calls. … “Some birders don’t understand that birding is a team sport,” he said. “Getting information from others, sharing information, developing relationships with people – you can’t be a complete lone wolf. It’s always been a team sport.”
The Champlain Sea
In last week’s newsletter I wrote about the ancient seashores and sandy beaches of Montreal before it became what we know today. I referred to the city arising from an inland sea after the ice age cover had retreated. Here is a map that I found of the area that was not that long ago under the water or ice:
Statistically speaking, those who monitor these matters have determined, only a minority of readers ever get this far down any article posted to the internet. I offer my thanks and congratulations to you … because who have arrived here. You have staying power, and so I wonder if I might interest you in my other Substack venture? Under the title of “Whilst Out Walking” I publish a single daily photograph of something that caught my attention. Mostly something in nature, a bird or a plant, but every now and again I might wander down a side alley. Occasionally the photo will have a sentence or two of explanation but most days it just speaks for itself. If you subscribe, then it will appear in your email inbox at 10am each day, just in time to distract you while you enjoy a mid-morning tea or coffee. Here is a link …
We'll both hit our 100ths a few weeks apart!
That bright red of the male Northern Cardinals is certainly striking. On the cusp of April now and we're getting a wider variety of bird sightings via ebird daily here in Ottawa. Spotted my first Great Blue Heron yesterday flying north over the Ottawa River towards Gatineau, Quebec. I'm waiting eagerly for White-throated Sparrows - that signature call of theirs truly heralds Spring for me.