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 InaturalistBird 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.
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Ep. 265 : The Legs of the White-tailed Deer
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 postThe 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 postMammal Tracks and Sign by Mark Elbroch and Casey McFarland. Stackpole Books, 2019.
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Ep. 264 : A Fisher in Edmonton with Sage Raymond
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 RaymondSage Raymond’s Research Gate profileSage Raymond’s instagramFisher 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)
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Ep. 263 : Winter Wildlife Tracking Trip in Algonquin Park, 2025
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 claimMore information on the trip from EarthTracks.ca
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Ep. 262 : Birds at Rest with Roger Pasquier
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.
A show about relationships with the landbase, striving to evoke resilience, resistance, and reverence for the land. Interviews with authors, researchers, activists and students of the land.
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