A-Hikin' and A-Fishin' We Go!

Nathan in his natural habitat

Hunting for frogs

We found one! There were many other smaller frogs hopping into the water as we walked along the bank of the stream.

We have spent a lot of this week outdoors, enjoying the glorious, unseasonably warm weather! On Tuesday we spent the afternoon hiking in the woods (the dog enjoyed himself at least as much as anyone else!) We did one of our typical hikes in Cootes Paradise, along the Ravine Road and Caleb's Walk trails. Along with the frogs, we spotted two garter snakes.

Time for a dip in the creek? Maybe not...

Noah about to take a flying leap off a giant log!

Reclining at leisure in the log chairs! Marley's waiting for Noah to throw that stick :)

Noah does his tightrope act

Wednesday afternoon we went fishing off the Waterfront Trail with our unschooling friends. We didn't catch anything, but I did take a dramatic tumble off an unstable log into the shallow water! Since we were already nearby, we took the opportunity to watch them lift fish out of the Fishway. The staff there are pretty cool about letting us get a good look at the various species of fish they release back into the marsh (Cootes Paradise). I tried really hard to remember all the different fish; we saw channel catfish, white suckers, carp, largemouth bass, a brown bullhead, shad, and a brown trout. There were probably a couple of others that I forgot as well.

We are so blessed to have so many fun things to do outdoors, right in our own neighbourhood!

Spring Has Sprung!

Signs of spring have officially arrived! The sun was out today melting away what's left of the snow, and the air finally had a delicious springlike quality to it. The boys were out until after the sun set, playing with friends on the street. It was light out until well past 7:30 p.m. And when I went out for my hour-long exercise walk, I didn't have to bundle up in mitts, hat and parka - hurray! While I was out walking I saw about a dozen robins, and I also spotted a large number of an unfamiliar-to-me waterfowl while on the Waterfront Trail. Turns out they're Common Goldeneye. Considering as how I don't recall seeing any before, there sure were a lot of them around!

Welcome Spring!!!

It Must *Really* Be Fall!

Although it's almost Halloween, it hasn't really felt like fall around here until the last couple of weeks, due to the unseasonably warm weather.

Now, the signs of fall are unmistakable. There are leaves on the ground at last! The frost is coming (probably tonight), and we went apple picking at a local farm this afternoon (the same one we went to last year).

One of my most favourite things to do at this time of year is watch Noah and Nathan romp around in the leaves for hours with their friends. Yesterday afternoon, most of the neighbourhood boys were in my backyard, building a HUGE leaf pile. They were very industrious, carting in leaves from all over the street in recycling bins and milk crates.

Ahh, FALL!

An Urban Wildlife Adventure

Earlier this week, our local paper ran a story about a beaver (possibly *2* beavers) having set up house in the Hamilton harbour. This is very exciting for our community as it signifies a major improvement in the water quality (the last 15 years has seen a lot of work done on restoring our once extremely industrially-polluted harbourfront area).It's also pretty darn cool to have a beaver build a lodge in such an urban location (right on the edge of one of our biggest city parks). As soon as we read about it, we were all super excited to go check it out, but our family schedule didn't give us a chance to do it during daylight hours up until today. So, we all bundled up early this afternoon, and off we went to the Harbourfront to track down the beaver lodge. We didn't have any trouble finding it, and were able to walk up very close to it to take a good look. We didn't actually have a beaver sighting (they usually only come out at night) but we pointed out to the boys where the beaver(s) had chewed down small trees to build the dam (as well as one that had been partially, but not totally, gnawed through). This resourceful urban beaver also scrounged up several used planks of wood to use in building his lodge! The city is considering planting some willow trees in the spring to help keep the beaver(s) from taking all the shade trees. Apparently, willow is a favourite of the beavers (something I didn't know before!) We've seen beaver lodges in zoos before, but this is the first time we've seen one "in the wild" (if the middle of a city of nearly 500,000 people can be classified as "wild"!)

[Here is where I had planned to insert a photo of the beaver lodge; apparently blogger has other ideas right now as I can't get it to upload-arrgh!]

While we were down by the harbour, we also had some fun observing the winter waterfowl. We actually "discovered" a new species that we'd never observed before. When we got back, we got out our bird books (while enjoying a round of hot chocolate to warm us back up!) and identified it as the American Coot. We found out that we'd never seen them before because they overwinter on the harbour, but leave in early spring, and we're usually not spending much time down there until late spring/early summer. Up until we hunted down that piece of the puzzle, I had been wondering how there could have been such a large number of them on the water when I'd never seen even *one* before!!