Tag: spring

Categories
Cottage Life

How to tap trees and make maple syrup

By brm/Shutterstock

Got any maple trees at the cottage? Although red and silver maples will yield syrup, sugar maples are preferable for their higher sugar content and superior flavour. They are most easily identified by their leaves, which have five lobes and smooth, rather than serrated, edges. Because it’s easy to get species confused when the branches are bare, it’s best to identify and mark your trees in advance.

8 foods that pair beautifully with maple syrup

A several-day thaw on the heels of freezing weather will trigger the sap flow. Southern and eastern Ontario cottage country usually experience the flow in mid- to late February, while for Parry Sound-Muskoka it’s mid-March. In the Sudbury-Manitoulin region, it’s usually the last week of March. The earliest run yields the lightest-coloured (and generally believed to be the finest) syrup, and the sap will flow best on warm, sunny days that have been preceded by a sub-zero night.

Here’s what you need

  • a carpenter’s brace, or electric drill, and 7/16″ bit
  • spiles
  • a hammer
  • pails
  • a large pan (a sizable baking pan will do the trick)
  • a filter
  • a candy thermometer
  • an outdoor heat source (a simple fireplace can be built on the ground using cement blocks, or you can do it all on a camping stove, but plan on using lots of fuel)

Here’s what you do

1. Choose large, healthy maples, at least 30 cm in diameter.

2. Drill your holes at chest height, on a slight downward angle so that the sap drains out of the tree and into your pail, and make sure to drill no deeper than five centimetres. Tap the spile firmly into place, but not too tight or the bark may split.

3. Hang your sap-collecting pails on the spiles. You can use recycled plastic jugs, or purchase used aluminum sap buckets.

4. Sap should be boiled while it is cool and fresh. If stored for too long, bacterial contamination may occur. Ideally, once you’ve given it a rough filtering with cheesecloth or a sieve, you will boil the sap the day you collect it, or the following day. We store our sap in large plastic garbage cans (sterilized beforehand), heaping snow around them for refrigeration.

5. Don’t fill your pan to the brim with sap–fill it about five centimetres deep, and keep adding sap as the level decreases. To keep a continuous boil, it’s a good idea to pre-heat the sap you are adding. We heat ours in a large pot placed on the coals of our outdoor fire, but this could also be accomplished on a camping stove or woodstove. Skim the froth away as you boil.

6. When the sap darkens and approaches a syrupy consistency, start monitoring the temperature closely with a candy thermometer. When the temperature reaches a point four degrees above the boiling point of water, you’ve got syrup!

7. Pour the syrup through a filter into a holding container (we use a stainless-steel tank at a Manitoulin sugar shack, but a pot will do the trick). Commercially available synthetic felt filters are optimum (to ensure clarity, consider lining these with paper cone filters), but you might get away with cheesecloth and paper towel.

This article was originally published in the March 2004 issue of Cottage Life.

 

A voice from the wilderness

Get The Great Outdoors, our biweekly brief on all things nature

Sign up here

Categories
Cottage Life

How to protect hummingbirds during a spring cold snap

By spencerseesbirds/Shutterstock

However much we want spring to come, it often drags its feet. But no matter our frustration with reluctant above-zero temps, imagine a tiny Anna’s hummingbird, the only species that waits winter out in its territory along the west coast of North America, delighted to return to a favourite feeder only to find that sweet nectar encased in ice and completely inaccessible. Hummingbirds can consume half their body weight in sugar daily and have the highest metabolism of any warm-blooded animals on earth. With most of their food sources unavailable to them in the winter, they need that food.

Cottage Q&A: Feeding hummingbirds

The unpredictable weather this time of year has prompted a few wildlife groups to ask bird lovers to carefully monitor their hummingbird feeders. “These long winters are hard for Anna’s hummingbirds,” says Jackie McQuillan, the support centre manager with the Wildlife Rescue Association of BC on Burnaby Lake. “All of the other hummingbirds take what I would call the easier route and fly south for the winter,” she says, “but these birds, since about the 1940s, have stuck around the Lower Mainland and other areas of southern B.C.” Researchers theorize that various flowering invasive plant species provided food sources into cooler months, which kept the Anna’s hummingbirds from heading south with their avian associates. Whatever the reason, the hardy little birds stay put. And these days, many Anna’s hummingbirds rely on feeders as a winter food source.

How to photograph hummingbirds

McQuillan urges anyone with a feeder to commit to keeping it filled and paying particular attention during cold snaps to ensure that feeders are accessible. The easiest thing, McQuillan says, is to have two feeders and swap them out for each other during below freezing temperatures. You can also purchase a feeder warmer at a bird supply store or online. (It looks something like a lamppost with a feeder incorporated.) Some people attach hand warmers to their feeders. If you’re a truly enterprising DIYer, you can also jury-rig incandescent light bulbs to feeders. Google can guide you to instructions.

How to keep birds safe from Avian bird flu

Cleanliness is crucial too, McQuillan says, as diseases can spread easily at feeders. Once a week, wash your feeder with a 10 per cent bleach solution (nine parts water, one part bleach). Give it a good rinse and then refill it. And McQuillan leaves us with a heartbreaking caveat: avoid feeders with metal parts as the birds’ tiny tongues can get stuck when the metal gets cold.

A voice from the wilderness

Get The Great Outdoors, our biweekly brief on all things nature

Sign up here

Categories
Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the cecropia moth

By Cathy Keifer/Shutterstock

As May heats up, the huge, dramatic-looking cecropia moth—Canada’s largest moth—appears on the scene. It emerges from its massive cocoon in late spring or early summer. Cecropias stick around only long enough to find a mate and breed, leaving behind hundreds of leaf-munching offspring.

How big is the cecropia moth?

This moth is part of the giant silk moth family; they get their name from the huge, elaborate cocoons that they spin. Big cocoons produce big moths: cecropias have a wingspan up to 18 cm—that’s about the size of a plate. (A monarch butterfly’s wingspan, for comparison, is only 9 or 10 cm.) The moths are nocturnal, and have only vestigial mouths. They don’t eat. Their main job is to find a mate and get down to, ahem, business. Males do the pursuing. Newly-emerged cecropia moth females produce a pheromone from their abdomens. Males, using their feathered antennae, can detect one drop of the natural chemical from a kilometre away.

Cecropia moth females vs males 

Female cecropias weigh almost twice as much as males. That’s because they’re laden with up to 300 unfertilized eggs. That’s a lot of babies! Once they’ve made a love connection, male and female moths hook up for almost a full 24 hours. Then, males leave to find more potential partners. The female lays her now-fertilized eggs in batches, often on maple, birch, or cherry trees. Jobs complete, life is short for these bugs. Both parents die within a week or two.

What do the caterpillars look like? 

A female cecropia moth lays more than a hundred eggs, but many caterpillars don’t survive long enough to become adults. When they hatch, they’re tiny and black. They go through several successive molts, changing from yellow to green. Eventually, when a caterpillar is about five inches long, and fattened up from two straight months of eating, it begins to spin its cocoon. It takes a full day, and nearly a mile of silk. Home complete, a cecropia moth caterpillar seals itself into the cocoon for the winter. Nighty, night! See you next year.

Categories
Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the Blanding’s turtle

By Ryan M. Bolton/Shutterstock

If you can spy a Blanding’s turtle, you’ll be able to identify it as such. This guy’s bright yellow, extra-long neck (and chin) distinguishes it from other northern turtles. And check out that shell. It looks like an army helmet. Most Ontario turtles have wider, flatter shells. Blanding’s turtles live a lot of life underwater. They stroll along the bottom of shallow, weedy, marshy areas; thanks to that long neck, they can poke their faces into spots other water-dwellers can’t reach. To get at crayfish and snails, a Blanding’s reaches underneath driftwood and between rocks. Gotcha!

When can you spot a Blanding’s turtle?

The best time to see one of these at-risk reptiles is May. For about a month, when the sun is shining and the air temperature is 15°C and up, they bask. Who wouldn’t? They’ll float at the water’s surface or suntan on logs as they try to boost their metabolism. If spooked, a Blanding’s will immediately plop into the water, where, with only the head poking out, one can look more like a venomous yellow-bellied sea snake. (Which is not found in Canada. Do. Not. Worry.)

When do they breed? 

Although Blanding’s turtles breed any time during summer—like other turtle species—romance is really in the air soon after hibernation. A male turtle will spend more than an hour wooing a potential lady friend. (That’s a long time in the turtle-verse.) He’ll caress her head with his chin, and nibble her neck. It’s true love! Except not really; most Blanding’s turtles are promiscuous, and usually more than one papa is responsible for fertilizing the eggs. Once pregnant, a mother heads onto land to lay her clutch, after digging a hole with her back legs. It takes an entire day—nearly until midnight. Before returning to the water, she might stop to forage for berries, leaves, and worms. She just built her nursery and gave birth. She’s owed.

Categories
Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the flower fly

By Paul Reeves Photography/Shutterstock

Oh no, it’s a wasp…or is it a flower fly? Yep, it’s a flower fly. A harmless bug. These black-and-yellow bee-and-wasp imposters don’t sting or bite. Instead, they make it their business to pollinate as many white and yellow spring blossoms as possible. Like honey bees, and native bees, flower flies—along with other flies—are responsible for the proliferation of all kinds of agricultural crops, everything from carrots to cabbage. In fact, non-bees such as flower flies account for 38 per cent of global agricultural pollination. A huge shout-out to you, non-bees!

What are those bees that hover in one spot?

Flower flies are also called hover flies. When you spot one, it’s obvious why: they appear motionless in mid-air as they inspect a prospective bloom. Flower flies have two wings, not four like bees and wasps. But no matter! Those two wings whir at 1,000 beats per second, allowing the insect to hover, helicopter-like, instead of bobbing up and down the way a bee would. Flower flies aren’t as efficient at pollinating as bees are, but they make up for this by visiting more flowers in a shorter amount of time. They seem to prefer to forage in cooler temperatures, when there are fewer bees around.

Spot a group of hover flies? They’re probably males  

In the spring, male flower flies tend to hang out, hovering, over landmarks—paths, hilltops, or shrubs—in order to attract females. Mating, too, involves a lot of mid-air hovering. At least, at first: eventually, a flower fly pair flaps its way over to a nearby perch to continue with the important job of…well, you know. Their bug babies—a.k.a. maggots—spend their youth in puddles, rotting plant life, and animal droppings. They’re translucent and blind, but are excellent predators that feed voraciously on aphids and other tiny crop pests. It’s gruesome—they attack their victims and suck out the liquid innards. So disgusting. But so incredibly helpful to farmers.

Categories
Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the red-bellied snake

By Mike Wilhelm/Shutterstock

Snakes don’t usually get the label of “cute”—but maybe that’s because nobody remembers the red-bellied snake. Look at that little face! C’mon. This guy’s not so bad.

Are red-bellied snakes venomous?

Like almost all of Canada’s snakes, red-bellies are not venomous. They are also unlikely to attempt to bite you, even if you picked one up. They tend to be timid when handled. They’re very skinny—more like long worms—and sometimes only as long as eight inches. Even turtles and blue jays eat them. The most a red-bellied snake will do to you is curl its upper lips back in a snarl, or attempt to roll over and scare you away with its red stomach. (Because red is scary?) As with all snakes, this one might try its best to intimidate you with fakery. But…when a snake is as small as a red-belly, its efforts kind of fall short. Well, you gave it the old college try, little buddy.

Where does the red-bellied snake live? 

In Canada, you can find the red-bellied snake from southeastern Saskatchewan east as far as Nova Scotia—although they seem to be absent around Lake Superior. If you can find them. With their dark backs and small size, they blend in with dead pine needles and other leaf litter. Plus, they tend to only emerge from rock crevices and under logs at night, to hunt for their dinners of slugs, earthworms, and beetle larvae.

Is this snake endangered?

Red-bellies mostly breed in April, after hibernating over the winter. But a mother doesn’t give birth—to a litter of up to 14 live, baby snakes—until August or September. The snakelets shed one layer of skin within an hour; after two years, they’re mature and able to reproduce. But it’s hard to monitor this snake’s longevity and numbers, in part because of their nocturnal, super-secretive nature. Currently, they’re not assessed under COSEWIC or SARA; under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species—it catalogues the extinction risk of the world’s animal and plant species—they’re considered “of Least Concern.” So that’s a better outlook if you compare it to the future of plenty of other snakes.

 

Categories
Cottage Life

New Ontario Parks’ system notifies you when a campsite is available

Photo by Day of Victory Studio/shutterstock

If your search for a campsite at an Ontario Provincial Park has ended in disappointment these past two years, you aren’t alone. Due to high demand in 2021, Ontario Parks has now introduced several new features to make booking your campsite easier, including a new availability notification system.

Should your desired park and dates become available within the five-month booking window, you will receive an email alert that will allow you to book within this time slot. This feature is a simpler solution for campers to stay up-to-date with cancellations, and current availability.

“Cancellations are made up to the day before someone is set to arrive,” explained Zachary Tucker, management advisor with Ontario Parks. “If you’re looking for something in August, you could keep looking from now until August. You never know what’s going to come up.”

Popular destinations like Bon Echo, Sandbanks, Pinery, Killbear, and Algonquin Provincial Parks tend to fill up more quickly than others, but other parks, such as Inverhuron and Restoule, have also been flooded with a large amount of booking reservations.

“This year the volumes are still quite high. The reservations are going well and we’re still seeing some consistency with how things were going last year,” Tucker said. “Last year was actually our record year, so we’re just behind that by approximately 9 per cent this year.”

There are a few other features available to campers who are keeping an eye on campsite openings this year, such as the new similar experiences feature. This allows campers to find the best possible alternative to their park of choice.

Categories
Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the tiger swallowtail butterfly

By Maria T Hoffman/Shutterstock

Nothing brings spring cheer like the sight of tiger swallowtail butterfly flitting about and fluttering its wings as it drinks nectar from its favourite plants. The tiger swallowtail isn’t quite as recognizable as the monarch or the luna moth, but it’s certainly eye-catching with its black-and-yellow markings. There are actually several North American species of these tiger-striped insects; the eastern tiger swallowtail is the most widespread.

Do male and female butterflies look different from each other? 

Everyone knows that the males and females of plenty of bird species have different plumage, and different body sizes, in some cases. Male and female butterflies have differences too. In some species, males have a thinner abdomen, for example, or differently-shaped forewings. But, in the southern reaches of their range, eastern tiger swallowtail females are, in many cases, nearly pitch black. Why? It’s likely an evolutionary adaptation. In areas of North America where the tiger swallowtail occupies the same habitat as the all-black pipevine swallowtail, this form of mimicry helps the lady tigers. Pipevine swallowtails taste nasty to bird predators, so a black outfit tricks birds into also avoiding any tiger swallowtails.

What does the tiger swallowtail eat? 

Along with nectar—which the butterfly identifies and samples using taste buds on its feet—butterflies drink the water from mud puddles. (This is why you might notice groups of them hanging around wet roadsides in the spring.) Males are especially fond of the salt they can suck up from the muddy side of the road. They need sodium, along with amino acids that they get from animal droppings and carcasses, to build up nutrients in their sperm capsules in time for mating. (The tiger swallowtail only produces one generation of offspring per year, so it has to count.)

What does a tiger swallowtail caterpillar look like? 

Tiger swallowtail babies aren’t pretty: they’re tiny and look like black-and-white bird droppings. As they get older, the caterpillars turn green, with yellow or orange black-dotted spots positioned behind their heads. This is another mimicry strategy. The spots look like eyes, which makes the caterpillar appear a little like a fat green snake. (At least to a predator.) But the caterpillars also have a defence strategy if an ant, spider, or parasitic wasp attacks. A tiny fork-shaped appendage springs out from behind the caterpillar’s head, and produces a gross smell to deter the potential predator. It must work—who would eat something attached to a stinky fork?

Categories
Cottage Life

10 events happening in Canadian cottage country this Easter

Photo by Yuganov Konstantin/shutterstock

The arrival of spring means for many families, Easter is just around the corner. If you plan on spending the long weekend at the cottage, hop to it with these ten events for kids and adults that are happening in cottage country across Canada over the Easter weekend.

Easter Egg Hunt

When: April 15
Where: Bracebridge, Ont.

Hosted by the Bracebridge Agricultural Society, the third annual Easter egg hunt is back for Muskoka cottagers. Don’t forget to BYOB (bring your own basket). Click here for more details.

Nutty Chocolatier Egg Hunt

When: April 17
Where: Huntsville, Ont.

Another fun community event with free admission, Muskoka Heritage Place is where to be for this egg hunt, especially if you have kids 10 or younger. Thousands of eggs are up for grabs, including rare golden eggs which come with a prize courtesy of the Nutty Chocolatier.

Click here for more details.

Easter Art Walk

When: April 17
Where: South Pender Island, B.C.

Perfect for the artsy cottage-goer, this South Pender tradition is back for its 23rd year. The Easter Art walk is a great opportunity to check out South Pender’s talented artists and their work. Revel in the different art mediums including hand-crafted jewelry, and unique stained-glass pieces on your self-guided tour.

Click here for more details.

Easter Quiplash

When: April 16
Where: Gibsons, B.C.

Kids aren’t the only ones who get to have some fun this Easter. If the traditional egg hunt isn’t your jam, head to Gibsons Tapworks for a side-splitting game of Quiplash.  Tickets are $10 a person for the event or join in on the fun for free as an audience member. Click here for more details.

Lions Egg Hunt

When: April 17
Where: Sechelt, B.C.

Join in on the annual Easter egg hunt in Sechelt. There are around 2,000 eggs hidden in Porpoise Bay Provincial Park. All that eggs-ploring calls for some food and refreshments, which you can find at the concession stand on site. Click here for more details.

ECO-EGG Event

When: April 16
Where: Lindsay, Ont.

Cottaging in Kawartha Lakes? Gamiing Nature Centre is putting on a kid-friendly event with tons of activities. Spend the day enjoying the fresh air while your kids learn more about nature, the signs of spring, and, you guessed it, an egg scavenger hunt. Click here for more details.

Easter on the Farm

When: April 15
Where: Little Britain, Ont.

Calling all Paw Patrol fans, this is the event for you. This farm event gives kids the opportunity to take part in a Paw Patrol-themed scavenger hunt and a meet and greet with characters. There are plenty of other activities to do on the farm like going for a pony ride or indulging in some sweet treats from the bake sale. Click here for more details.

Easter at the Eddie

When: April 17
Where: Prince Edward County, Ont.

Enjoy a delicious Sunday brunch at the Eddie Hotel and Farm. The Eddie is an iconic venue situated in the heart of Prince Edward County. Reserve your spot now for an egg hunt with gorgeous scenery and a hearty meal afterwards. The Easter Egg Hunt gets underway at 10:30 a.m. Click here for more details.

Easter at the Mountain

When: April 15-18
Where: Eastern Townships, Que.

If you’re looking to stay active this Easter, there’s still time to hit the slopes before the seasons are over. One of Québec’s popular ski resorts, Mont SUTTON, is holding an Easter event perfect for sports lovers. Click here for more details.

Easter Movie Screening

When: April 16
Where: Annapolis Royal, N.S.

Last, but certainly not least, kick back and enjoy a movie that’s perfect for the whole family. King’s Theatre will be screening Zootopia with free admission in the spirit of Easter. Zootopia is a critically acclaimed film that won an Academy Award in 2017 for Best Animated Feature. Mark the date now, movie-lovers. Click for more details.

Categories
Cottage Life

Wild Profile: Meet the Western meadowlark

By Matt Knoth/Shutterstock

A sure sign of spring is a Western meadowlark perched on a post and singing its lungs out. Well, not really, because bird lungs are small, rigid, and very different than mammal lungs. But you get it. As soon as the snow melts, male meadowlarks return to their spring and summer homes in the prairies and B.C. after having spent the winter in the southern U.S. and parts of Mexico.

When do the female birds return north?

Female meadowlarks don’t show up on the breeding scene for at least another two weeks. They have the same unmistakable plumage as their male counterparts: a bright yellow breast and throat with a black V-shaped marking—a little like a cravat—around the neck. But a male meadowlark starts singing as soon as he gets home. He needs time to establish a breeding territory before the ladies arrive.

What does the meadowlark sound like?

Each male bird has a playbook of up to 12 slightly different flute-like melodies. Sometimes, two males will try to out-sing each other by matching their tunes. Their voices are audible from about 400 metres away (not bad for a bird the same size as a robin). A female will pick the best singer, and the two hook up within minutes, then mate multiple times over the next couple of weeks as she builds a nest. When you know, you know, right?

Meadowlarks usually nest twice in one season—one male pairs with two females. Even though it’s the lady bird that builds the nursery, a simple, grass-lined bowl, sometimes covered by a waterproof “dome,” Dad helps with childcare. Once the brood of five or six hatches, he’ll periodically bring food and stick around to chase away intruders. Careful, though, if you intrude on a meadowlark nest. Back away! The birds aren’t bold enough to attempt to scare away a human interloper, and they might abandon the babies.