to know the land

Grey Treefrogs (Hyla versicolor) are my favorite frog species at the moment. They are cute little colour changing, antifreeze laden, Lichen-Spirits who really belt it out when trying to find a date. I have been hearing them pretty much nightly lately, screaming their short trill all over nearly every wetland I encounter as long as it is fairly adjacent to trees. Because of their powerful calls permeating my late night waking life, I have been wanting to take a deeper dive. Hope you enjoy!

To learn more :

The Dermal Chromatophore Unit by Joseph T. Bagnara, John D. Taylor and Mac E. HadleyMetamorphosis by Peter B. Mills. Self-published, 2016.
Energetics of vocalization by an anuran amphibian (Hyla versicolor) Taigen, T.L., Wells, K.D. J Comp Physiol B 155, 163–170 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00685209
Familiar Amphibians & Reptiles of Ontario by Bob Johnson. Natural Heritage, 1989.Reptiles and Amphibians of Toronto : Biodiversity Series pamphlet (pdf)
Amphibians and Reptiles of the Great Lakes Region by James H. Harding & David A. Mifsud. University of Michigan Press, 2017.
After the Ice Age by E. C. Pielou. University of Chicago Press, 1991.

It started with a little hole at the base of an Eastern White Cedar (Thuja occidentalis) tree, and a couple of seeds. Who had collected and consumed the contents of the seeds? What about the feathers? And the boney remnants of bill?

Join me as I go deep down a Deer Mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) hole.

To learn more :
Mammal Tracks and Sign by Mark Elbroch and Casey McFarland. Stackpole Books, 2019.
Natural History of Canadian Mammals by Donna Naughton. Canadian Museum of Nature and University of Toronto Press, 2012.
Bird Feathers by David Scott and Casey McFarland. Stackpole Books, 2010.
Animal Skulls by Mark Elbroch. Stackpole Books, 2006.

I have been excited about Song Sparrows (Melospiza melodia) for a while. Theirs was one of the first complex songs I learned to identify, and being such a common neighbour on the landscape it’s hard to go a few days without hearing them, even in Winter, but especially in the Spring.
While out today, I came across a couple Song Sparrow tracks in the silt newly laid down by the receding Eramosa River flood waters and it pricked my interest to dig in a little deeper to this common figure in my life.

To learn more :
Song Sparrow tracks on Inaturalist
Bird Tracks and Sign by Mark Elbroch and Eleanor Marks. Stackpole Books, 2001.
Bird Song : Identification Made Easy by Ernie Jardine. Natural Heritage, 1996.
Peterson Field Guide to North American Bird Nests by Casey McFarland, Mathew Monjello & David Moskowitz. HMH, 2021.
Baby Bird Identification : A North American Guide by Linda Tuttle-Adams. Cornell University Press, 2022.Birds of Forest, Yard, & Thicket by John Eastman. Stackpole Books, 1997.

I have found sign of three dead White-tailed Deer in the past three weeks. One, killed by Coyotes. Another, hit by a vehicle, found on the side of the highway. And also, I found a White-tailed Deer leg while trailing a Coyote. All of these encounters have been teaching me a lot about the legs of the deer and I wanted to look a little bit deeper into these moments, and to share the stories.

I go on to detail what I have been learning about the legs, especially in the context of the hind legs, about the glands located there. Of course, you can read the blog post, or you can learn a little bit more from listening to the show.

Enjoy!

To learn more:
Glands on a White-tailed Deer Leg blog post
The Deer of North America by Leonard Lee Rue III. The Lyons Press, 1997.
Deer (The Wildlife Series, Book 3) edited by Duane Gerlach, Sally Atwater & Judith Schnell. Stackpole Books, 1995.
Deer of the Southwest by James R. Heffelfinger. Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
Biology and Management of White-tailed Deer Edited by David G. Hewitt. CRC Press, 2011.
What The Toes Show - A question of deer hooves - another blog post
Mammal Tracks and Sign by Mark Elbroch and Casey McFarland. Stackpole Books, 2019.

Fishers aren’t known as an urban adapted species. They tend to avoid our built up landscapes and prefer landscapes of mature forests comprised of appropriate denning habitat such as old trees with cavities and lots of course woody debris (think of big piles of dead branches and fallen logs), characteristics not usually found in urban forests. Because of this Fishers avoid our cities… or so we thought.

Sage Raymond is a researcher who studies urban adapted Coyotes in Edmonton. While out checking some trail cams intended to catch Coyotes on the landscape, she happened across a Fisher trail in the snow, in a small wooded area along the North Saskatchewan River. Later confirmed with footage from one of the remote cameras, Sage realized that this was a very unusual circumstance. Thankfully she wrote a paper about it and I had to read it, and, again, thankfully, she agreed to talk about her findings on the show. There is a link to the paper below.

To learn more:
Ep. 159 : Tracking Urban Adapted Coyote Ecologies with Sage Raymond
Sage Raymond’s Research Gate profile
Sage Raymond’s instagram
Fisher Use of an Ecological Corridor Near the City Center of Edmonton, Canada, A City of Over One Million People by Sage Raymond and Colleen Cassady St. Clair. Urban Naturalist, No. 77 (2025).

Pictorial Guide of Important Fisher Habitat Structures in British Columbia (pdf)

As I mentioned on the previous show about the Lynx trailing trip, I was planning on heading up to Algonquin Park to trail Moose, Algonquin Wolves, Martens, Snowshoe Hare, Flying Squirrels, and whomever else’s trails we may come across. Well, I went and it was great. So good that I wanted to offer a bit of a report back from the trip and tell some stories of what we saw.

This is the 24th year of this trip, and I am so grateful to get to not only be there, but to be helping lead the week. Kid me would be stoked… hell, adult me is still stoked!

Big thanks to Alexis for being a great colleague and mentor, and to everyone who came. It was a blast.

To learn more :
Algonquins of Ontario overview of land claim
More information on the trip from EarthTracks.ca

I have had a lot of conversations with biologists and ornithologists over the years, trying to learn about how different animals sleep. Are the functions of sleep in humans similar to similar animals? What about different kinds of animals, like insects, or birds?

More recently I have seen the Canada Geese along the Eramosa River where I live, standing or sitting still on the frozen river and wondered what’s up with the one-legged standing? When I got to thinking about birds resting, roosting and sleeping, I realized that I had a bunch of questions. Sometimes a book comes along with some good insight into the subjects I am wondering about, and at this moment, it was Roger Pasquier, and his new book Birds at Rest: The Behavior and Ecology of Avian Sleep, which helped to answer many of my questions. I arranged for an interview was very glad to talk to him.

Do small songbirds have any special adaptations for sleeping through long freezing winter nights? Does photoperiod change the amount of time birds sleep? How does the changing climate affect birds at rest? Do birds dream?

Roger Pasquier has taken the time to collect the information from a ton of various studies into avian rest and sleep and consolidated them into a useful and interesting book, and then taken the time to discuss some of this research on the show.

Again, I am forever grateful to the folks who can help us, me, learn to better know the land.

To learn more :
Birds at Rest : The Behavior and Ecology of Avian Sleep by Roger F. Pasquier. Princeton University Press, 2025.

I just got home from an amazing week away up North in Elk Lake, Ontario, Robinson-Huron treaty territory, trailing Lynx with Earth Tracks. It was an amazing time and I had a ton of fun. We trailed Lynx for days, as well as get on some trails of other animals including Peromyscus mice, Short and Long-tailed Weasels, Marten, Snowshoe Hares, Fisher, Grey Wolves, Moose, and more. There are so many stories to tell and so much to integrate over the next few weeks, but I wanted to share some highlights of these weeklong tracking expeditions.

I am so grateful to mentor, colleague and friend Alexis Burnett for organizing this week, and for the Lynx for laying the trails for us to follow.

To learn more :
Earth Tracks.ca

I was out for a walk along the Eramosa River in Guelph with a pal on New Years Day, when she lifted a log and showed me some strange white patches along it. We both recognized them from our walk a couple of days before. I guessed by the appearance of them, being small, white and silken-like, with many around, that they were likely egg cases of some small invertebrate, but I didn’t know who may have made them. I also wasn’t certain about egg case, but it seemed a likely guess.

White, circular with a thin shallow dome constructed of webbing got me wondering who may have created this? I decided that this find, like a lot of the small wonders of the world would be worth researching a bit and recording a show about.

Happy 2025!

To learn more :
Tracks and Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates by Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney. Stackpole Books, 2010.
Common Spiders of North America by Richard A Bradley. University of California Press, 2013.

It is nearing the Winter Solstice once more. Only days to go, and that means with the dark nights growing longer, I am spending a little more time indoors. I have been baking, reading, writing, listening to a lot of film soundtracks and just relaxing with friends.

This time of year also means the recurring celebrations of the solstice season are upon us again. Story telling, big fires, sharing food and giving gifts are big this time of year. More pertinent to the show though is the rebroadcast of the 1985 radio play by Alison McLeay “Solstice” for the 7th year in a row!! I am so grateful to get to air it again and celebrate the season of darkness with a deep dive into the origins of the my ancestral celebrations this time of year.

Get yourself a nice warm drink, a cozy blanket, dim the lights and enjoy.