RESTORE COOTES

It's not like they have a chance, being short, slow and focused on laying their eggs in sandy soil. Not when there's a 4 lane, 80 km/h divided highway cutting through the place where they live. At 80 or 90km/h will you have time to notice the turtle, then take evasive action? Will the person in the car behind you have time?  We need to do more to protect turtles and other at risk species from getting totally wiped out in our corner of the world. More on this subject to come.

Playing Mother Nature with the Blanding’s turtle Hamilton Spectator By Mark McNeil  They don't move too fast, but they go pretty far. And that's a big part of the reason why Blanding's turtles are in such peril in Cootes Paradise and other wetland areas of Royal Botanical Gardens property. Females like to ramble long distances before laying eggs and that can get them run over by automobiles, scooped by kids looking for a pet, or facing other dangers. Consequently, numbers of the reptile listed as threatened by the province have severely declined to a point that RBG biologists estimate there are only four or five in all of Cootes Paradise and maybe another 20 in the Grindstone Creek (Hendrie Valley) area. Faced with the real prospect of losing the species from the area altogether, RBG workers have decided to play Mother Nature using radio telemetry and incubation. This spring, they outfitted three reproductive Blanding's turtle females with radio transmi...

Urquhart Butterfly Garden, Centennial Park, Dundas Ontario. Urquhart Butterfly Garden Photo Contest 2015 Are you able to spot the  stunning  Milbert's Tortoiseshell Butterfly? Chickadee in bush at Butterfly Garden, Dundas Ontario Or see a common bird like the Chickadee in an entirely new light?  Can you detect the smallest spider or insect hiding in the petals of a flower? If so test your photographic skills at the Urquhart Butterfly Garden during our annual Photo Contest. Photographers ages 10 and up are eligible for both cash and certificate awards in the following four adult and youth categories: Butterflies and Moths; Insects, Spiders & Bugs; Birds and other Wildlife; Plants & Flowers. The Photo Contest runs from Saturday July 11th until Sunday August 30th. The Urquhart Butterfly Garden is located in Centennial Park at the corner of Cootes Drive and Street. Parking is available on King Street East. The Photo Contest is funded by generous don...

Sarah hiked to Maplewood in Dundas Valley along the Monarch Trail to view the rehabilitated site now that the buildings are removed  Resource Management Centre (bell, above) and inscription (below), only artifacts that remain at site in Dundas Valley Maplewood is gone, and nature is returning.  Restore Cootes is pleased with the outcome, but we wanted to see for ourselves. A visit to the site now that the demolition is complete was in order. We took a hike from Dundas University Plaza along the lovely Monarch Trail to the former site of Maplewood, deep in the heart of Dundas Valley.  The photos above are worth 1000 words, clearly the structures are removed, and a small open meadow is currently evident. Not sure if there is a native planting going on, or planned. I will look into the details for a future post.  The Hamilton Spectator reported that "The driveway leading to the hall from Artaban Road will be converted into a pathway the...

Hamilton Spectator By Randy Kay Tucked into the gravel sandbar known as Burlington Heights, in a small family plot, the bones of T.B. McQuesten are laid. It's a fitting resting place for a man who could claim the distinctive geography of the Heights as one of his life's canvases. McQuesten family plot, Hamilton Cemetery Photo by RK. When the earth opened to receive him in 1948, the Hamilton Cemetery overlooked the peaceful Chedoke River Valley with Princess Point an easy landmark. Further along York Boulevard stand monuments to his time on earth: the signature high level bridge over the canal, the Royal Botanical Gardens' Rock Garden, or across York Boulevard from the cemetery a restored Dundurn Castle. The marrow of McQuesten's contributions to the city are in each of these places. His days on the influential city parks board spanned almost three decades until his death, the lasting results found in natural spaces and parks like Gage Park, Kings Forest, the ...

Arrive early? improve our sign! At the base of Maria's Walk, historical trail Reyna explaining the science of outfalls Randy talking about the future of the area Coldwater seeping from the hills Photos courtesy Kamran Bakhtiari 

Beneath the shaded graveyard of the Binkley family cemetery is the McMaster Campus Services building. Prior to its construction in the late 1960s, this elevated island of land was the location of the Rim Circuit trail (or AKA Prospect Circuit), part of the Coldspring Valley Nature Sanctuary trails.  Even today the adjacent hillside offers a beautiful canopy, now in fresh spring green. As promised in a previous post , I went back to look for any sign of the former path that once connected the Rim Circuit to the lower Coldspring Path, which is, for all intents and purposes, buried beneath asphalt parking in McMaster's Lot M lot.  Using the hand drawn map that once served to guide nature lovers through the Royal Botanical Garden (RBG) sanctuary, I looked for a relative location to any path down off the steep slopes to the floodplain below. Based on the contours of the RBG trail maps, and the angle of the hillside, it looks like the best candidate is the one pictu...