The Christmas Bird Counts are scheduled by Saskatoon Nature Society for Saskatoon, in conjunction with Audubon’s 119th Christmas Bird Count which takes place between the dates of Friday, December 14, 2018 through Saturday, January 5, 2019.
Poecile atricapillus Black Capped Chickadee
Bohemian Wwaxwing Bbombycilla Ggarrulus
Downy Wwoodpecker Ddryobates pubescens
Canada Goose Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and West Swale Wetlands, Saskatoon, Sk, CA
Pop out to the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area, and George Genereux Urban Regional Park before Saturday, January 5, 2019, and take note of any sightings for a Christmas Bird Count locally, and record your sightings on e-bird!
Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area is located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada north of Cedar Villa Road, within city limits, in the furthest south west area of the city. 52° 06′ 106° 45′
Addresses:
Part SE 23-36-6 – Afforestation Area – 241 Township Road 362-A
Part SE 23-36-6 – SW Off-Leash Recreation Area (Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area ) – 355 Township Road 362-A
S ½ 22-36-6 Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area (West of SW OLRA) – 467 Township Road 362-A
NE 21-36-6 “George Genereux” Afforestation Area – 133 Range Road 3063 Wikimapia Map: type in Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Google Maps South West Off Leash area location pin at parking lot Web page: https://stbarbebaker.wordpress.com Where is the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area? with map Where is the George Genereux Urban Regional Park (Afforestation Area)? with map
Please help protect / enhance your afforestation areas, please contact the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. (e-mail)
Support the afforestation areas with your donation or membership ($20.00/year). Please donate by paypal using the e-mail friendsafforestation AT gmail.com, or by using e-transfers Please and thank you! Your donation and membership is greatly appreciated. Members e-mail your contact information to be kept up to date!
“The science of forestry arose from the recognition of a universal need. It embodies the spirit of service to mankind in attempting to provide a means of supplying forever a necessity of life and, in addition, ministering to man’s aesthetic tastes and recreational interests. Besides, the spiritual side of human nature needs the refreshing inspiration which comes from trees and woodlands. If a nations saves its trees, the trees will save the nation. And nations as well as tribes may be brought together in this great movement, based on the ideal of beautifying the world by the cultivation of one of God’s loveliest creatures – the tree.” ~ Richard St. Barbe Baker.
“Two things never mix: one is enchantments and the other is meddling with them.”
― Lloyd Alexander
10:24 PM on Tuesday, June 20, 2017.
Summer solstice 10:24 PM on Tuesday, June 20, 2017 come out and savour the first moment of summer.
“Bluebells are coming,” sing the Imp and the Elf, and so they are, and with the blue-bells comes Summer.” Arthur Ransome
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Spring with its yellow Buffalo Bean, the pale aspen wearing their new bright green dresses. For now it is summer and the whole forest will be green. For in summer, the prairie clover reaches high above the flowering grasses. Summer is prime to sight the Sharp-tailed Grouse, and Ruddy Duck, Pied-billed Grebe, and American White Pelican. ill you, this summer spy a Kildeer, Black Tern or Mourning Dove? Downy Woodpecker, and Northern Flicker visit all year long, yet the Least Flycatcher, Warbling Vireo, Western and Eastern Kingbird will only appear for the summer months.
“You may say you won’t interfere with another person’s soul, but you do—merely by existing. The snag about it is the practical difficulty, so to speak, of not existing.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers
July brings the bright rays of the Gaillardia, a striking contrast to the delicate flowers of the Northern Bedstraw. Harebell alongside Slender Beard-Tongue adds a hint of blue and lavender to the prairie biome. The Silver-leaf Psorlea tall and elegant, leaves a dash of blue like a hint of spice, The Purple Prairie Clover begins its dance with whorls of colour starting at the base of its dress, blooming ever higher. The Western snowberry shows off with its amazing pinkish white bells. Keep your eyes peeled for the Skeleton Weed, Hairy Golden-aster and White Cinquefoil painting the grasslands with delicate bursts of colour for those sauntering through the open prairie.
“Two things never mix: one is enchantments and the other is meddling with them.”
― Lloyd Alexander
Tell us what Summer is like for you.
What are the things we know summer by? Perchance summer dresses, and tailored shorts, toques give way to summer hats. Finding a cool, comfortable place, and do tell of those things which make the forest prairie so delightful.
The holes are full of rabbits, and the summer grass grows high. You know thistles and dandelions, of course, but I wonder if you know the wild orchid when you see one? What will you do these long summer evenings? The scenery is peaceful, foliage of the groves and forests verdant, and rich beyond compare. Have you tasted summer? Warm, mellow summer with glowing sunbeams to make every nerve tingle. Have you made acquaintance with the little bird which flits around the branches of the shrubbery? This little brown job flits in and around the branches of the buffaloberry and snowberry bushes. Playing and dancing on the wind in a frisky way, sure to attract attention, then behind a leaf and it is gone.
” Every morning, arising from the death of sleep, the happy plants and all our fellow animal creatures great and small, and even the rocks, seemed to be shouting, “Awake, awake, rejoice, rejoice, come love us and join in our song. Come! Come!” John Muir.
Summer solstice 10:24 PM on Tuesday, June 20, 2017 come out and savour the first moment of summer.
“Never stand in the way of letting God use people’s actions, in order to solve a greater issue in the world.”
― Shannon L. Alder
Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area is located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada north of Cedar Villa Road, within city limits, in the furthest south west area of the city. 52° 06′ 106° 45′
Addresses:
Part SE 23-36-6 – Afforestation Area – 241 Township Road 362-A
Part SW 23-36-6 – SW Off-Leash Recreation Area (Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area ) – 355 Township Road 362-A
S ½ 22-36-6 Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area (West of SW OLRA) – 467 Township Road 362-A
NE 21-36-6 “George Genereux” Afforestation Area – 133 Range Road 3063 Wikimapia Map: type in Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Google Maps South West Off Leash area location pin at parking lot Web page: https://stbarbebaker.wordpress.com Where is the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area? with map Where is the George Genereux Urban Regional Park (Afforestation Area)? with map
Please help protect / enhance /commemorate your afforestation areas, please contact the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. (e-mail)
Support the afforestation areas with your donation or membership ($20.00/year). Please donate by paypal using the e-mail friendsafforestation AT gmail.com, or by using e-transfers Please and thank you! Your donation and membership is greatly appreciated. Members e-mail your contact information to be kept up to date!
The Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area is home to woodpeckers, they can be sighted and heard pecking on the trees. Among foresters, a unique specialty taken up by Richard St. Barbe Baker is silviculturists or “tree doctor.” Joining the ranks of silviculturists, is Dr. Woodpecker, tree surgeon, extraodinaire who destroys destructive forest insects. Long ago Nature selected the woodpecker to be the chief caretaker—the physician and surgeon—of the tree world.
The study of forest insects has not progressed far enough to enable one to make more than a rough approximation of the number of the important species that attack our common trees. The birches supply food to about three hundred of these predacious bugs, while poplars feed and shelter almost as many. The pines and spruces are compelled permanently to pension or provide for about three hundred families of sucking, chewing parasites.
The recent ravages of Dutch elm disease (DED) fungi (Ophiostoma) is caused by a member of the sac fungi (Ascomycota) affecting elm trees, and is spread by the American elm bark beetle Hylurgopinus rufipes, who transmit the fungi. Together with other evils, suggest at once the bigness of these problems and the importance of their study and solution. The insect army is as innumerable as the leaves in the forest. This army occupies points of vantage in every part of the tree zone, has an insatiable appetite, is eternally vigilant for invasion, and is eager to multiply. It maintains incessant warfare against the forest, and every tree that matures must run a gauntlet of enemies in series, each species of which is armed with weapons long specialized for the tree’s destruction. Some trees escape unscarred, though countless numbers are killed and multitudes maimed, which for a time live almost useless lives, ever ready to spread insects and disease among the healthy trees.
Every part of the tree suffers; even its roots are cut to pieces and consumed. Caterpillars, grubs, and beetles specialize on defoliation and feed upon the leaves, the lungs of the trees. The partial defoliation of the tree is devitalizing, and the loss of all its leaves commonly kills it. Not only is the tree itself attacked but also its efforts toward reproduction. The dainty bloom is food for a number of insect beasts, while the seed is fed upon and made an egg-depository by other enemies. Weevils, blight, gall, ants, aphids, and lice prey upon it. The seed drops upon the earth into another army that is hungry and waiting to devour it. The moment it sprouts it is gnawed, stung, bitten, and bored by ever-active fiends.
Many forest trees are scarred in the base by ground fires. These trees are entered by insects through the scars and become sources of rot and insect infection. Although these trees may for a time live on, it is with a rotten heart or as a mere hollow shell. A forest fire that sweeps raging through the tree-tops has a very different effect: the twigs and bark are burned off and the pitches are boiled through the exterior of the trunk and the wood fortified against all sources of decay.
In forest protection and improvement the insect factor is one that will not easily down. Controlling the depredations of beetles, borers, weevils, and fungi calls for work of magnitude, but work that insures success. This work consists of the constant removal of both the infected trees and the dwarfed or injured ones that are susceptible to infection without hesitation. Most forest insects multiply with amazing rapidity; some mother bark-beetles may have half a million descendants in less than two years. Thus efforts for the control of insect outbreaks should begin at once,—in the early stages of their activity. A single infested tree may in a year or two spread destruction through thousands of acres of forest.
Most insects have enemies to bite them. Efforts to control forest-enemies will embrace the giving of aid and comfort to those insects that prey upon them. Bugs will be hunted with bugs. Already the gypsy moth in the East is being fought in this way. Many species of birds feed freely upon weevils, borers, and beetles. Of these birds, the woodpeckers are the most important. They must be protected and encouraged. Forest influences and forest scenes add much to existence and bestow blessings upon life that cannot be measured by gold.
The Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area is home to woodpeckers, they can be sighted and heard pecking on the trees. Among the various species which may be found are the Northern Flicker Colaptes auratus, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker Sphyrapicus varius, Hairy Woodpecker Picoides villosus, Downy Woodpecker Picoides pubescens, Black-backed Three-toed Woodpecker or Arctic three-toed woodpecker Picoides arcticus, American three-toed woodpecker Picoides dorsalis, and Pileated Woodpecker~uncommon~ Dryocopus pileatus. Of these, only the Northern Flicker, Hairy and Downy Woodpecker are common, the remaining are uncommon, and are a sight to behold!
Among foresters, a unique specialty is silviculturists or “tree doctor.” Joining the ranks of silviculturists, is Dr. Woodpecker, tree surgeon, extraodinaire who destroys destructive forest insects. Long ago Nature selected the woodpecker to be the chief caretaker—the physician and surgeon—of the tree world. This is a stupendous task. Forests are extensive and are formed of hundreds of species of trees. The woodpeckers have the supervision of uncounted acres that are forested with more than six hundred kinds of trees.
In this incessant struggle with insects the woodpecker has helpful assistance from many other bird families. Though the woodpecker gives general attention to hundreds of kinds of insects, he specializes on those which injure the tree internally,—which require a surgical operation to obtain. He is a distinguished specialist; the instruments for tree-surgery are entrusted to his keeping, and with these he each year performs innumerable successful surgical operations upon our friends the trees.
Borers, beetles, and weevils are among the worst enemies of trees. They multiply with astounding rapidity, and do not hesitate at all annually killing millions of scattered trees. Annually, too, there are numerous outbreaks of beetles, whose depredations extend over hundreds and occasionally over thousands of acres. Caterpillars, moths, and saw-flies are exceedingly injurious tree-pests, but they damage the outer parts of the tree. Both they and their eggs are easily accessible to many kinds of birds, including the woodpeckers; but borers, beetles, and weevils live and deposit their eggs in the very vitals of the tree. In the tree’s vitals, protected by a heavy barrier of wood or bark, they are secure from the beaks and claws of all birds except Dr. Woodpecker, the chief surgeon of the forest. About the only opportunity that other birds have to feed upon borers and beetles is during the brief time they occupy in emerging from the tree that they have killed, in their flight to some live tree, and during their brief exposure while boring into it.
Left in undisturbed possession of a tree, many mother beetles may have half a million descendants in a single season. Fortunately for the forest, Dr. Woodpecker, during his ceaseless round of inspection and service, generally discovers infested trees. If one woodpecker is not equal to the situation, many are concentrated at this insect-breeding place; and here they remain until the last dweller in darkness is reached and devoured. Thus most beetle outbreaks are prevented.
Woodpecker holes commonly are shallow, except in dead trees. Most of the burrowing or boring insects which infest living trees work in the outermost sapwood, just beneath the bark, or in the inner bark. Hence the doctor does not need to cut deeply. In most cases his peckings in the wood are so shallow that no scar or record is found. Hence a tree might be operated on by him a dozen times in a season, and still not show a scar when split or sawed into pieces. Most of his peckings simply penetrate the bark, and on living trees this epidermis scales off; thus in a short time all traces of his feast-getting are obliterated.
Woodpeckers commonly nest in a dead limb or trunk, a number of feet from the ground. Here, in the heart of things, they excavate a moderately roomy nest. It is common for many woodpeckers to peck out a deep hole in a dead tree for individual shelter during the winter. Generally neither nest nor winter lodging is used longer than a season. The abandoned holes are welcomed as shelters and nesting-places by many birds that prefer wooden-walled houses but cannot themselves construct them. Chickadees and bluebirds often nest in them. Owls frequently philosophize within these retreats. On bitter cold nights these holes shelter and save birds of many species. Nuthatches as well may be seen issuing from a woodpecker’s hole in a dead limb.
Woodpeckers are as widely distributed as forests,—just how many to the square mile no one knows. Some localities are blessed with a goodly number, made up of representatives from three or four of our twenty-four woodpecker species. Forest, shade, and orchard trees receive their impartial attention. The annual saving from their service is enormous. Although this cannot be estimated, it can hardly be overstated.
On speaking to young foresters. “‘Forest’ is an old word. It was derived from a word which meant the forest reserved for the royal games. The work of the forest department was to preserve and look after them. The context has totally changed. The importance of the forest is now for the whole society. The first product of the forest is its life-giving oxygen, followed by water and food. The fifth place is that of balancing the climates and arresting erosion. Raw material of industrial importance and wood are provided by the forest which, though they rank sixth in the list, are unfortunately being accorded the highest priority at present. Therefore the management of the forest should receive priorities according to the actual importance of the commodity. You have been given the dignified name of the Conservators of Forests. You are not timber merchants. ” ~Richard St. Barbe Baker, silviculturist
Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area is located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada north of Cedar Villa Road, within city limits, in the furthest south west area of the city. 52° 06′ 106° 45′
Addresses:
Part SE 23-36-6 – Afforestation Area – 241 Township Road 362-A
Part SW 23-36-6 – SW Off-Leash Recreation Area (Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area ) – 355 Township Road 362-A
S ½ 22-36-6 Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area (West of SW OLRA) – 467 Township Road 362-A
NE 21-36-6 “George Genereux” Afforestation Area – 133 Range Road 3063 Wikimapia Map: type in Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Google Maps South West Off Leash area location pin at parking lot Web page: https://stbarbebaker.wordpress.com Where is the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area? with map Where is the George Genereux Urban Regional Park (Afforestation Area)? with map
Please help protect / enhance your afforestation areas, please contact the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. (e-mail / e-transfers )
Support the afforestation areas with your donation or membership ($20.00/year). Please donate by paypal using the e-mail friendsafforestation AT gmail.com, or by using e-transfers Please and thank you! Your donation and membership is greatly appreciated. Members e-mail your contact information to be kept up to date!
“I believe that if children fall in love with wildlife they will grow up wanting to protect it.”
― Imogen Taylor
. We have a motto in the Men of the Trees. TWAHAMWE. It is an African word meaning ‘pull together’ and I pass this on to all those concerned with conservation in this country. I would like to call you to silence for a moment with the words of Mathew Arnold:
“Calm soul of all things, make it mine,
To feel amidst the City ‘s jar
That there abides a peace of thine
Men did not make and cannot mar
~Richard St. Barbe Baker
Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area. George Genereux Urban Regional Park. 