I have to keep you informed on the flying squirrel activity
in the house. After the cupboard
chewing, I was allowed to start feeding the flyers in the garage again to
reduce their incentive to raid inside the house. This has worked very well. However, there have some interesting
repercussions. Instead of coming into
the house to steal peanuts, they are now coming inside the house to hide the peanuts found in the
garage. I was doing the laundry this
morning, and voila! a peanut fell out from the laundry basket. Brian needed to wear his dress shoes last
week, and found one uncomfortable. The
reason became apparent quickly. I think
we are now on an Easter peanut hunt.
This last weekend I had the marvelous opportunity to attend
a weekend workshop on animal tracking in Algonquin Park. A group of us were at a remote research
station on 30,000 acres of truly wild park with no public access. We had three instructors with the most
immense knowledge of bush/nature lore I have ever seen.
We first started out learning about tracks and how to
determine the direction of travel. This
area of land had a large marten population, and we quickly learned what their
tracks looked like. The tracks were
everywhere, but to the disappointment of the guides, we never did see one.
On the other hand, we did see a moose and an otter playing
on the ice. The otters were active in the
area, and although I did not get a picture of one, I did get a picture of one
of their access holes in the ice.
We also got a good look at some beaver lodges, and learned how
to tell if the lodge was active by the ice crystals formed around the breathing
hole on top.
We were extremely fortunate in having warm weather although
it meant more water around than we might expect, and some crossings of water
were a bit more challenging than others.
We are getting warnings of some very active weather in two
days, so the next pictures may be those of snow. I know, I promised you that last time, but it is mostly melted. Perhaps soon!
