I’ve only just noticed a change since our move 100 kilometres south-west from Guelph to London: there’s a different Cicada that makes up the summer-time chorus. I’m very used to the song of the Dog-Day Cicada (Tibicen canicularis): it’s song has made up the entirety of my summer aural landscape in Southern Ontario. Now that male […]
No bull, cow escapes slaughterhouse and hoofs it through Queens: The gallivanting hay-eater’s Houdini attempt apparently paid off. City officials said the animal – who they named Molly – will be headed for greener pastures. “We will find it a home,” said Richard Gentles of the city Animal Care and Control. “We’re starting to reach […]
photo credit: vasta So there is talk in shutting down Riverdale Farm in Toronto as a cost-savings measure (insert reference to gravy here). 2500 of the concerned have taken to Facebook to “Save the Riverdale Farm“. I’m feeling a bit ambivalent about this. On one hand, we have less and less contact with the animals […]
OK, I should be editing my dissertation at this very moment, but I came across videos of an event on July 4th, 2010 at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, Japan, that I need to share. I found it to be disturbing, as a warning. There is no doubt in my mind, especially seeing an event like this, […]
Inspired by Gregg McLachlan’s recent twitter conversation with Caroline Schultz ((As aside, here’s why Twitter is awesome—before Twitter, how or where else do you get to have an informal chat with the executive director of Ontario Nature and the founder of environmentally-focused career site?)), allow me some reasoned conjecture answering what might happen to animals […]
This striking image, taken by José Luis Rodriguez, won the 2009 Veolia Environnement Wildlife photographer of the year competition. The subject is an Iberian Wolf (Canis lupus signatus), leaping over a farm gate somewhere in the Spanish countryside. At the time that the prize was announced in October 2009, Rodriguez has this to say about […]
photo credit: liz.novack We don’t have a problem with them in our apartment (thankfully), but because of an interest (I guess somewhat similar to gawking when an emergency vehicle goes by) in where they’re found in Toronto, I discovered the bedbug registry and a map of reported Toronto sightings. Now the usual caveats apply to […]
Haines Ferry Terminal, Haines, Alaska I had just pulled the van into the ferry queue and stepped outside when they arrived: from the tree-tops of the nearby Pacific Northwest temperate rain forest, two Northwestern Crows (Corvus caurinus) glided and landed on the asphalt beside me. Hopping to a stop and quickly re-arranging their wings, they […]
photo credit: Jim Frazier Research published in Vol. 126, Iss. 3, pg. 579 of The Auk has some interesting implications for habitat conservation for migrating bird species here in eastern North America. In short, during Spring and Fall migration, migrants showed no preference for stopover locations based on distance from a continuous, connected (river corridor) […]
photo credit: snowboard4bradley On July 22nd, 2009, The Toronto Star reported that two Northern Black Widow spiders (Latrodectus variolus) have been found in the GTA within the last year. This shouldn’t be news, as the article itself outlines that these spiders have been found throughout Ontario over the “past decades” but the reporting in the […]