What is Project 366? Read more here! The flowers of the Prickly Wilde Roses are long gone and have been replaced by green hips. As they ripen they will turn orange and then red. The hips are edible, something the First Nations and Swedes have known since the dawn of time. I’ll be keeping my…
What is Project 366? Read more here! Most mushrooms I have encountered are difficult to identify to say the least. When I came across this fungi growing out of a rotting log on the moist forest floor I figure that something this distinct looking should be easier to identify. I did nevertheless take me quite…
What is Project 366? Read more here! The Cooking-Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreational Are is a large nature reserve east of Edmonton. This reserve is characterized by rolling hills and a “knob and kettle” terrain, containing glacial moraines and depressions filled with small lakes. In one of those kettle lakes we came across a solitary American Beaver…
What is Project 366? Read more here! This Wood Frog liked to live dangerously. It was basking at the surface of a shallow vernal pool of water in the middle of the trail as we came barraging along on our mountain bikes. The only reasons we managed to spot it was because we decided to…
What is Project 366? Read more here! Dragonflies are a bit of an oxymoron. While everyone is able to instantly recognize a dragonfly, very few people know the names of the various dragonfly species, never mind being able to tell them apart and identify them. I am no different. We had just finished a trail…
What is Project 366? Read more here! Going birding mid-day is not ideal. Most birds are out of sight, but if you put your mind to it you might be able to hear them skulking in the shrubbery. For a birding noob like me the only thing more frustrating than no birds is hearing birds…
What is Project 366? Read more here! Black-capped Chickadees may be one of our smallest birds but they are definitely one of the most resourceful and intelligent birds in these neck of the woods. There have learned to take full advantage of our weakness for cuteness and manipulated our feeble human minds to provide them…
What is Project 366? Read more here! Different species of spiders create different types of spider webs. The spider web type that probably come to your mind first is the classical spiral orb web design. This type of web is created by spiders in the Araneidae family, aka as orb-weaving spiders. With 3122 species these…
What is Project 366? Read more here! Along the trail at the Whitemud Creek one can find Low-bush (Viburnum opulus) and High-bush Cranberries (Viburnum edule). Calling these shrubs cranberries is misleading as they are more closely related to elderberries than to the true cranberry. They produce a stone fruit called a drupe (a drupe is…
What is Project 366? Read more here! All of a sudden last week foam started to appear in the Whitemud Creek. Large floating rafters of yellowish foam floating down the creek and getting stuck in the vegetation along the shorelines. Most people’s first reaction is probably that the foam is due to pollution. While pollution…