Author Archives: Gary Hunt

TRU International Students at Tranquille

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For the third summer, the Kamloops Naturalist Club has organized trips for TRU World with international students. Students this year are from Indonesia and they all attend school in Jakarta. We spend about two hours with each group and take them up Tranquille Creek. We show them plants and animals and discuss various features of the landscape  and climate. The highlight of the trip for the students is learning how to pan for gold. These pictures illustrate some of what we saw and did on the four trips we have … Continue reading →

BC Nature Fall General Meeting Is In Pitt Meadows

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Note: There are significant discounts with early registration before August 1.  For full details, see the website here. Presentations and meetings will be at the Pitt Meadows Golf Club. The Burke Mountain Naturalists (BMN) invite you to the BC Nature Fall 2019 General Meeting and Conference to be held October 3rd through 5th in the Pitt Meadows /Tri-Cities area of Metro Vancouver. This conference coincides with celebrations of the 30th anniversary of BMN and 50th anniversary of BC Nature, which provides our theme, “Celebrating the Joys of Nature”. Our region offers … Continue reading →

Guide To Properly Constructed Mason Bee Houses

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A recent article by Colin Purrington explains 11 flaws encountered in commercially made houses intended for mason bees. 1. Nesting blocks, tubes, reeds are not removable Glued nesting materials is the number one reason why most commercial bee hotesl can become death traps. Because the nesting material cannot be removed and cleaned (or just thrown out), over time there will be an increase in the population of parasitic wasps, parasitic bees, parasitic flies, kleptoparasitic mites, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. And you typically won’t see these dangers because the solitary bees will … Continue reading →

Greenstone Mountain Bird List

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Here is the complete list of 64 bird species seen or heard on the Greenstone trip July 7, 2019. Big thank you to Isaac Nelson for compiling this.   Canada Goose, Blue-winged Teal, Cinnamon Teal, Northern Shoveler, Mallard, Ring-necked Duck, Lesser Scaup, Bufflehead, Ruddy Duck, Pied-billed Grebe, Common Nighthawk, Vaux’s Swift, Calliope Hummingbird, American Coot, Killdeer, Spotted Sandpiper, Bald Eagle, Red-tailed Hawk, Red-naped Sapsucker, Lewis’s Woodpecker, Hairy Woodpecker, Northern Flicker (Red-shafted), American Kestrel, Olive-sided Flycatcher, Western Wood-Pewee, Willow Flycatcher, Pacific-slope Flycatcher, Eastern Kingbird, Warbling Vireo, Canada Jay, Common Raven, Northern … Continue reading →

Finding the Next Generation of Naturalists

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By Jesse Ritcey, ‘Next Generation Naturalists’ Program Manager. This article appeared in BC Nature Magazine, Summer 2019 BC Nature is starting to go gray. That’s been the observation locally and what we’ve been hearing from other clubs. Yet it is not as if young people are disinterested in the environment. Witness the climate protests Greta Thunberg has inspired and the high volume of social media activity around issues like plastic in the ocean and the disappearance of pollinators. There’s a disconnect between all that energy and participation in our organization.

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Request For Help To Document Osprey Nests On The South Thompson

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Request submitted by Rachel Canham who is a MSc. candidate at Simon Fraser University Rachel Canham MSc. Candidate rcanham@sfu.ca. Centre for Wildlife Ecology Department of Biological Sciences Simon Fraser University I work for Environment and Climate Change Canada with the Canadian Wildlife Service. I was hoping you and the members of the Kamloops Naturalist club might be able to help out with one of our projects. Every 5 years we survey Osprey nests upstream and downstream of Kamloops. In May we look for nests that are active and incubating adults, and … Continue reading →