Wildlife Wednesday Feature
From time to time, we may feature a video from Wildsafe B.C. Wild Wednesday – Season 2 – Episode 29 – Bear communication from WildSafeBC on Vimeo.
Continue reading →Category Archives: Naturalist Posts
River Otter Attacks Molting Goose!
A few days ago club member Lyn MacDonald was at the McArthur Island butterfly garden when she heard a commotion in the slough. She witnessed a river otter attacking an adult Canada goose. It killed the goose and carried it away to eat! Right now the geese are molting. It’s an annual occurrence where they drop all their feathers at once and will be flightless for 4-5 weeks. By September they’ll be flying again and have sturdy new feathers for fall migration. Unfortunately (for them) they are vulnerable to predation … Continue reading →
Featured Gallery # 2
We feature a second photo gallery of shots taken by member Glenn Dreger. Hover your cursor for a caption or click for a full-sized image:
Continue reading →Alaska Rein Orchid
It is always enjoyable to share a new discovery even if it is a common thing that one should have seen before now. I was doing some recent field work south of Merritt in Douglas Fir forests. I was with botanist Kristi Iverson as I was nosing around in the understory of pinegrass (Calamagrostis rubescens.) I noticed several individual stalks of a tall, slender orchid that was unfamiliar to me, but Kristi quickly identified it as the Alaska rein-orchid (Piperia unalascensis) and introduced me to its delightful scent. You have … Continue reading →
Club Members Pulled Burdock At McArthur Island
Submitted by Margaret Graham. Photos by Adele Stapleton and Richard Doucette A group of 10 club members answered the call to pull the common burdock (Arctium minus) around the Nature Walk at McArthur Island. A variety of tools were used to remove the deep-rooted plants and we filled a number of large garbage bags in a couple of hours, finishing just before the rain started. In the holes left by the burdock, Jesse Ritcey planted some little tarragon plants (Artemisia dracunculus) which is the host plant for a type of … Continue reading →
Cottonwood Leaf Beetle
I was walking the McArthur Island Golf Course with Jesse Ritcey and Rick Tucker today. In various places, we noticed some well-marked, roundish beetles on deer-browsed shrubs and cottonwood saplings. Some beetles were singles while others were mating. I took some photos which allowed me to identify them as Cottonwood Leaf Beetles (Chrysomela confluens.) A Google search found a few brief notes about them. The colour pattern in my photo is one of two forms, the other being dark, iridescent purple-brown. As you can see, the pronotum is black with … Continue reading →