Eastern towhee; credit: Larsek c/o Shutterstock

I knew that the time would come when I’d have to commit to learning bird songs in earnest. I’ve toyed with the idea before, even laughed that yes, I was on my way to becoming one of those birders, downloaded an app, and then proceeded to abandon the whole enterprise after I nearly drove my husband and myself crazy by singing along to a bird call CD while driving. (I don’t recommend this approach.)

And, honestly, knowing bird calls wasn’t exactly urgent on my to-do list. You see, recognizing bird calls in the winter helps, but it’s not essential. Since the trees are bare, you can spot almost anything that’s out there.

But spring is a whole other story. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly trees don their immense cloaks of foliage, and then it’s next to impossible to spot a warbler nervously flitting from branch to branch and thwarting my gaze by deliberately hiding behind a leaf. Being able to bird by ear gives you a tremendous advantage. Knowing exactly which bird you’re looking for makes it infinitely easier to spot and no longer renders the enterprise akin to playing “where’s Waldo” while blindfolded.

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been spending Saturday mornings at the Tommy Thompson Park Bird Research Station. Not only do the people there display incredible professionalism and stunning knowledge about the bird world, but they have also trained their ears to perceive the most incredible modulations and sonorous detail.

People who know bird songs also engage in thrilling bird-description-talk, which can rival the most subtle literary analysis. For instance, I learned that a rose-breasted grosbeak sounds like a robin on speed or like a robin that’s had singing lessons. And the scarlet tanager sounds like a robin singing with a cold.

And so I decided to begin with what every bird book suggests: I started learning common bird calls. I thought I had mastered the red-winged blackbird’s nasal, gurgling omnipresent yelp (so unsuited to the bird’s lustrous demeanor) until I arrived at Leslie Spit. It was here that I discovered that the red-winged blackbird actually makes about ten different sounds, including all sorts of bizarre staccato greetings and a sad whistling groan (with a slight decrescendo at the end). Though I was demoralized, I tried not to show it. Instead, I moved on to a beautiful new bird whose song is associated with what seemed like the easiest ever mnemonic – or memory aid: “drink your tea.” How could I not recognize the Eastern towhee now?

Well, the problem with mnemonics is that I began to hear every single bird singing, “drink your tea.” By my calculations, based exclusively on my newly acquired song-recognition skills, there would have been over a hundred Eastern towhees in Tommy Thompson Park that morning. In reality, according to census, there were about four.

Mnemonics are tricky. It’s one thing to memorize them, and another to actually hear them amidst a plethora of other songs. I find it challenging to resist the temptation to impose the mnemonic on every sound I hear around me.

The process of learning to listen is truly humbling. Though I review the bird songs I’ve been exposed to over the course of the day at home, with my handy Audubon app, I can’t yet detect the songs amidst the abundance of other calls I hear in the field. But slowly, I’m beginning to point out the cardinals, and the robins, and the red-winged blackbirds, and chickadees, and I can sense incremental progress. And, I can already imagine how rich the rewards are going to be.

Yellow-rumped warbler, Photo: Michael JThompson, Audubon

Sometimes I worry about what it’s going to feel like to see the first warbler of the season. Will it be as exciting as last year? Will the colors be as bright as I remember them? Will the enterprise of trying to spot the flitting, anxious, tiny birds that refuse to sit still feel as rewarding? Will I be able to ID anything other than a yellow warbler or a black and white? Will their songs all sound the same? Might something like this get old one day?

And then I saw my first yellow-rumped warbler this weekend, and all my doubts dissipated. The bird was perfect – even more stunning than I remembered, with just enough flashes of yellow on its face, sides and rump to illuminate the trees around him, and to remind me that spring has finally arrived. Miraculously, I managed to fix my binoculars on the bird and followed it for about thirty seconds: in one tree and out the other, bursting with energy, fluttering up, then swinging down low, and up, up, up again until my neck could take it no longer.

I can’t say I look forward to seasonal “warbler neck,” but the familiar pain now registers as a strange badge of honor rather than a real ache. Yes, this is something I will endure. And yes, it’s entirely worth it! I’ve always mocked my husband’s sports-related injuries, telling him he should “know better” and asking him whether it could possibly be “worth the pain” and here I am, craning my neck willingly to catch another glimpse of the yellow-rumped avian beauty, to see it tilt its head to regale us with its trilling song before darting off into the next branch. I do all of this knowing full well that I will pay a price the following day.

It’s not that the yellow-rumped is a particularly rare or challenging bird to ID, but in spite of that, I can’t stop grinning. It’s my first of the season.

This migration season, I’m trying something different. I have begun volunteering at the Tommy Thompson Bird Research Station (TTBRS) on the Leslie Spit in Toronto. Ever since visiting the banding station at Ruthven Park – where I held a tufted titmouse for the first time and (mostly) overcame my fear of touching animals – I’ve wanted to have more exposure to birds, to see the detail on their plumage, and to gain a greater understanding of their world up-close. Though I’m mainly observing for now, the experience is changing the way I look at birds and also helping me become a more proficient birder. (And do I ever have a lot to learn!)

There’s something magical about waking up with the birds and watching the sunrise over Toronto. There’s also something humbling and wonderful about being surrounded by such knowledgeable, talented and generous bird researchers and volunteers who answer my every question (no matter how ignorant) and let me participate in their fascinating migration monitoring project.

One of the volunteers summed up his feelings about Tommy Thompson Park early in the morning during migration season: “It’s like being in a candy store!” And that’s exactly how I felt.

Male Wilson's warbler, credit: Tim Zurowski

Next Saturday, May 11^th is International Migratory Bird Day! This is a fantastic occasion to celebrate not only the stunning spring migrants making their way through our province, but also an occasion to celebrate all birds as well as conservation efforts. It’s a chance to marvel at the things we often take for granted and to recognize how wondrous, surprising, colorful and precarious nature around us really is.

We owe the creation of International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) to the dedicated people at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. IMBD has grown over the years and has turned into a fabulous environmental education opportunity. There are bird festivals happening all over the country (and the world!), with bird walks, workshops, and events that promote ecological awareness.

Why not join in the fun? If you happen to be in the GTA, come and visit the Spring Bird Festival at Tommy Thompson Park. Activities include bird walks, hikes, nature photography workshops, a visit to the bird banding station, and much more. Most of the migration hotspots in Ontario will be holding birding events to coincide with IMBD. If you happen to be in the Long Point area, you’re not likely to experience a dull moment during the Birdathon weekend celebrations. A little further west, you could also partake in the Baillie Birdathon at Rondeau Provincial Park. Out east, the Prince Edward County Spring Birding Festival also kicks off on Saturday and lasts until May 20. And, of course, there’s the crème-de-la-crème of migratory bird destinations – Point Pelee National Park, where things have been going strong since the beginning of the month. Should you find these large events intimidating, smaller-scale walks are being organized all over the province – just contact your local naturalist organization.

Don’t miss out on this chance to get to know the birds around you! You’ll get to meet other quirky, good humored, knowledgeable, compassionate and quite possibly Tilley-hat-clad bird enthusiasts. The best thing about these events is that beginners are always welcome and very much appreciated. What better way to hone one’s birding skills than to show a beginning birder a bird they’ve never seen before and explain its distinctive qualities or to bear witness to someone else’s a-ha moment?

I love the idea of celebrating and taking the time to think about migration. Learning more about migratory patterns and trends also shed light on a host of other environmental issues, including climate change, the Endangered Species Act and habitat protection.

But a little part of me wonders: shouldn’t every day be bird day? Shouldn’t we celebrate the fabulous birds in our midst – the ones whose stunning physique or color scheme or calls encourage us to look more closely, and pay greater attention to detail in the world around us – on a daily basis? Taking the time to really see the birds around us not only instills a sense of wonder but also reminds us that we’re a part of this fragile yet magical natural world.

Let me know if I have missed any great bird events in your area on or around May 11^th!

Julia and her husband in Spain's Donana National Park

I like to think that birding has changed me for the better. I’ve become more attentive to detail, more attune to the natural world around me, more cognizant about conservation issues and the perils facing bird habitats. Birds have changed the landscape of Toronto for me; I now marvel at urban parks because of their ability to transport me to a magical realm – one where warbler songs manage to drown out city noise.

And yet, I’m starting to see how these bird-related revelations might not be as enticing for my non-birder partner. Actually, sometimes my birding habits make me downright annoying to live with – like when I set the alarm clock for 5 a.m. on a Saturday to go see a Baltimore oriole or an indigo bunting.

Another problem is that once I acquire new information, I want to share it and assume that everybody is just as fascinated as I am by notions of Renaissance natural historians who believed that swallows migrated underwater. Since I find almost every ornithological tidbit riveting, I have a difficult time assessing what will be of equal interest to my interlocutors. Suffice it to say that my husband puts up with a lot of bird lore, including conversations about sexual dimorphism in phalaropes and the poor hermaphrodite cockerel (Gallus monstrificus) that was burned at the stake in Basel in 1474. And he listens, quite likely without registering a single thing I say, but my enthusiasm makes him smile.

Aside from over-sharing and alarm clock issues, birding also seems to have changed my travel preferences. Now when booking a vacation – whether abroad or here in Ontario – I research the possible birding options and include a guided tour whenever I can. (Birdingpal.org has proven to be a great site with resources and helpful contacts.) The curious thing about birding is that the more you learn about birds, the more you recognize that what awaits you is undoubtedly more spectacular than anything you’ve already seen, and the urgency to add new species to your life list becomes all the more pressing.

As a result, my husband has now explored the Western avian wonders in and around the Arcata Marsh in California, Caribbean birds in Turks and Caicos and, most recently, phenomenal African migratory species in Donana National Park in Spain, in what happens to be Europe’s largest protected wetland. What started out as short, two-hour excursions have now morphed into more expansive, half-day tours in all-terrain vehicles that require early wake-up times and long bus rides to reach our destinations.

I can’t say that the bird trips have transformed my husband into an ardent birder, or any kind of birder for that matter. But he appreciates my birding as a quirky hobby that takes us to unexpected locales, and is surprisingly happy to come along for the ride, Tilley hat and all!

Birding at Ontario Nature's Quarry Bay Nature Reserve

The first time I went out to look at birds, I had no idea what I was doing. Not only did I show up without binoculars, but I didn’t even know how to refer to the activity. When I met my birding group for the first time in a parking lot in Mississauga, I asked: “Are you all here to birdwatch?” “No. We’re here to bird.” My first taxonomic faux pas.

Initially, I thought distinction between birdwatching and birding was pedantic. I mean, how different could the two be?

It turns out that the two verbs – birdwatching and birding – refer to vastly different experiences and states of mind. Birdwatching is a passive pursuit. You see, one can birdwatch from one’s kitchen window simply by looking out at the garden and marveling at the avian creatures that stop at the feeder. It is a casual hobby that rarely involves driving long distances. This doesn’t mean that it’s frivolous; on the contrary, most birdwatchers own field guides and binoculars, are passionate about the species they see, and can usually successfully identify birds.

There’s something deeply contemplative about birdwatching. As the birdwatcher marvels at a bird in question, they are perhaps more likely to linger at the impressive sight and find themselves awestruck by the miraculous bird at the other end of her binoculars. The birdwatcher knows how to relish in the truly mysterious aspect of watching nature and letting the scene unfold in front of them.

Birders, on the other hand, are slightly more obsessed versions of birdwatchers. The birder is actively – sometimes even compulsively – pursuing birds; they are in it for the chase. The birder will think nothing of hopping into her car and driving two hours (and often much more) just to see a vagrant bird. In a sense, birding is about our human impulse to hunt – but without the blood.

Numbers are critical for the birder; when a birder has seen 22 waterfowl species in a day, they will likely want to drive to yet another wetland to raise the count to 25, or beyond. Often compulsive listers – birders who keep track of everything they see – subdivide their all-important life lists according to year, season, day, country, province/state, county and so on.

There can also be a competitive side to birding. For some, the quest to see and list avian species transforms into an elite sport. Particularly obsessive birders enter competitions such as the cross-country (or now, cross-province) “Big Year” or the even fiercer 24-hour New Jersey-based “World Series of Birding,” not to mention the myriad of smaller scale, more local contests. (Now these competitions are not only about fueling our competitive drive, but also about raising substantial funds for conservation.)

By the end of my first half-day in the field, once I’d seen and fallen in love with the red-winged blackbird, I wanted to see more. I craved more first-time sightings and realized that becoming a birder wasn’t as far fetched as I originally thought. After all, I’m seriously contemplating participating in my first Baillie Birdathon this May.

So what am I? A birdwatcher or a birder? I think it depends on the day. The more knowledge I acquire, the more I want to see. And yet, sometimes when I become obsessed by the chase I lose track of the contemplative aspect and miss it. In the end, I aspire to be a little of both.

What about you? Are you a birder or a birdwatcher?

Least bittern credit: Craig Kempf

The first time I saw a male bobolink, I was stuck by the bird’s coloring: a sleek black face and shiny bill with a lemony yellow nape and a glistening white back. A rock star of a bird. I watched its undulating flight pattern and delighted every time the bobolink landed on the top of a low bush. The whimsical, bubbling song amused me, even though I couldn’t quite detect a melody. In any event, I was smitten.

I came home shocked to learn that this bird’s grassland and hayfield habitat is disappearing in Ontario, in large part a casualty of poor economic returns in the beef industry and current strong markets for corn and soybean crops. For some reason, I was naïve enough to think that endangered species were a thing of the past, a horrifying reality I had read about in Fred Bodsworth’s gripping novel, Last of the Curlews, where human stupidity (in the form of excessive game-hunting) and short-sightedness pushed the Eskimo curlew to extinction.

I had underestimated the precariousness of the natural world so close to home.

The bobolink is one of over 200 species at risk in Ontario. Another is the least bittern, one of the smallest herons in the world, and also one of the most difficult North American marsh birds to spot. Most birders recognize the bird by its song – a baritone, slightly monotone, staccato “coo-coo-coo”. The majority of least bitterns that breed in Canada are found here in Ontario, and yet their habitat is under severe threat due to the catastrophic loss of wetlands in the southwestern part of our province. Currently, an estimated 1,500 breeding pairs of least bitterns remain in Canada.

First listed as at risk in 1988, the least bittern is one of 65 species slated to receive habitat protection under the ESA this summer – after years and years of waiting. Yet there’s a catch. According to Dr. Anne Bell, director of conservation and education here at Ontario Nature, “the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) is proposing to waive ESA protection requirements for a broad suite of activities that would damage or destroy the places where these species survive.”

Will the government get away with creating large-scale ESA exemptions for industry? I only wish that Last of the Curlews were mandatory reading for everyone in the Legislature and in the Ministry of Natural Resources. What’s the worst that could happen if people revisited Fred Bodsworth’s brilliant prose? Who knows – the novel might just awaken the requisite collective responsibility and sense of compassion that we owe endangered species by protecting their habitats and enabling them to flourish.

A flock of gulls at the Leslie Street Spit, credit: Dave Pijuan-Nomura

One of the things I love most about birding is that it has given me the chance to rediscover Ontario. I’ve lived in the province for a large chunk of my adult life, and yet it wasn’t until I donned my binoculars that I appreciated how much surprisingly wonderful nature exists in the southwest corner of the province, where we sit flanked by three of the five Great Lakes. Long Point, Presqu’Ile, Rondeau, Rock Point, Selkirk and Awenda are just a few of the provincial parks I’ve discovered on my avian adventures.

Sometimes I get so excited to venture out of town in search of a rarity that I forget about the birds closer to home. Only recently have I begun exploring the bird habitats in my own city. Thanks to walks organized by the Toronto Ornithological Club (TOC) and the Toronto Field Naturalists (TFN), I’m gaining a new appreciation for the wondrous pockets of nature my city.

This weekend, I joined the lovely and knowledgeable TFN group on a bird walk along the Leslie Spit. I think it is Toronto’s best-kept secret. The spit – otherwise known as Tommy Thompson Park – is a five-kilometre-long peninsula (with a splendid lighthouse at its tip) that juts into Lake Ontario. Over 300 avian species have been recorded on the spit. The park hosts a thriving bird research station and a banding station that is open to visitors on weekends (A great time to visit is May 11, when the park celebrates its annual bird festival.) It’s hard to believe that this nature sanctuary is actually a man-made structure, originally designed in the 1960s as a breakwater for harbor expansion.

And on this almost-spring day, we were greeted by a stellar array of waterfowl, including elegantly-coiffed common and red-breasted mergansers, ring-necked ducks, black ducks, bufflehead, long-tail ducks, red-necked grebes, goldeneye, scaup, gadwall, trumpeter and mute swans, and scoter. Overhead, killdeer whistled their nasal song before landing on the shore. We even happened upon a group of turtles with black shells glistening in the sunlight that didn’t seem fazed by the ducks swimming in their midst, and the latter hardly expressed concern over the lugubrious creatures dotting the logs in the water.

I had my first gull epiphany on the spit, though I’m usually not a gull person. I’m not one to muster enthusiasm at the words “Iceland gull” or “glaucous gull” or even “kittiwake.” I regret to admit that I’m still at the birding stage where most gulls look the same to me – with the possible exception of the black-backed gull, for obvious reasons. But on Saturday, the colossal numbers of ring-billed gulls circling overhead in haphazard formations literally took my breath away. There were dozens of thousands. And when a hawk flew overhead, up they went, all aflutter, suddenly sprinkling the horizon in a fit of anxious flight.

It turns out that Leslie Spit is home to 6 percent of the world’s breeding population of ring-billed gulls. That translates to roughly 55,000 pairs. Seeing them all nearly inspired me to order a book about gulls. And we saw the awe-inspiring cormorant nests on the bare trees – the sight looks positively Hitchcockian. Wait till thousands of cormorants will breed there in the coming month.

Just think: migration hasn’t even started. I can’t wait to see and hear what Leslie Spit looks and sounds like in a month! What are your favorite urban birding haunts?

Western tanager, credit: Kati Fleming

What I find most remarkable about birds is their intrepid nature. I love to point my binoculars and watch a bird soar above me, seemingly out of reach of all human pettiness. I never tire of watching warblers flutter from branch to branch, challenging me to look closer, observe more fiercely and attend to details even more vigilantly. Spending hours observing birds could lead to the false conclusion that they’re invincible, otherworldly creatures.

I often forget the danger birds find themselves in constantly. A migratory flight may well end up in disaster (and a sizable percentage of them do). A bird could find itself off-course – like the western tanager that appeared in Oshawa this past December – and live out its last days in a foreign locale, entirely unprepared for its climate. Birders marveled at the rarity, but what began as a miraculous sighting tragically turned into a deathwatch, since the bird wasn’t prepared for our winter.

Anybody living in a large urban centre recognizes the constant danger birds face when navigating office buildings and high-rises. Toronto alone claims about a million avian casualties every year – many of them migratory birds that collide with skyscrapers, fatally deceived by reflective windows. The Fatal Light Awareness Program (FLAP) is working to spread awareness about the senseless bird deaths and also to increase bird-safe buildings by developing collision reduction strategies for architects, developers and building managers. Last week, the Royal Ontario Museum mounted an annual exhibit displaying the corpses of 2,400 birds that died while passing through the Toronto skyline to raise awareness about avian casualties.

But what happens when you come in contact with an injured bird? About a year ago, while birding on the Toronto Islands, I saw a dying cormorant on the beach while on a group tour. My group leader was qualified enough to assess that it was too late to call for help of any kind. Suddenly, I wondered what I would have done if I was alone. Before this moment, I had operated under the illusion that birds were invincible. The fact that I had no idea what to do or who to call terrified me.

Ontario Wildlife Rescue has an informative website dedicated to orphaned, sick or injured wildlife in our province, including rehabilitation centre addresses and phone numbers. Most hotlines are available seven days a week and will provide you with guidance.

The first thing to do if you find a small, injured bird is to confine the bird. Place the injured bird in a covered box – with air holes punched in it – and keep it in a warm, quiet place without trying to feed it or apply any kind of medication. If the injuries look serious – the bird has blood on it, is missing a significant amount of feathers, is swollen, asymmetrical, or can no longer stand on its own – the best thing to do is to take the bird to a rehabilitation centre immediately. For less serious injuries, there is a chance that if the bird is left along for a few hours, it might be able to fly away on its own, once released. Always use your judgment and never try to confine birds of prey or large birds such as cormorants or swans.

The City of Toronto website has a useful page about how to confine injured birds and FLAP also has a section of their website devoted to helping individuals save birds by reporting injured bird incidents and also offering practical suggestions about what to do with an injured bird.

Tundra swans near Long Point Provincial Park, Ontario; Credit: mdf

I never imagined that I could happily spend six hours in a car on a Saturday in search of migrating tundra swans. Among birders, there’s a palpable excitement that comes with the advent of spring even when it isn’t quite here. This weekend, my bird group was so desperate for the first signs of spring, we stubbornly refused to admit that winter was nowhere near over.

It’s not that I’d never seen swans in large numbers before. I’ve seen hundreds of trumpeter and mute swans at Leslie Spit. But it’s that these tundra swans really are the harbingers of spring. As we drove to Long Point, with temperatures well below freezing and near-constant flurries, we were convinced that spring was finally on its way.

There’s something magical about seeing tundra swans migrate on their way to breed in Alaska and the far reaches of the Canadian north. It could be the sheer numbers – we saw at least a few thousand swans resting at the wetlands in Aylmer – or their joyous choral calls, or their beautiful V-shaped flight patterns. Or it could be nature telling us that if the tundra swans are heading north to breed, it won’t be long before the warblers make their way north as well.

The tundra swans that fly over Ontario spend 51 percent of the year migrating from the Arctic to Chesapeake Bay in Maryland (they make the 6,000 kilometres journey twice a year). By no means the most fascinating migratory species – the arctic tern, for instance, travels close to 71,000 kilometres every year, shuttling between north and south poles – tundra swans nevertheless delight precisely because they offer us the first taste of migratory excitement. In a sense, they awaken our own chase-instinct and give us a taste of what’s to come.

What is it that makes migration so fascinating to us? In a sense, it should get boring, given how predictable it is. These birds travel the exact same distances year after year; in fact, they’re such creatures of habit that they often stop to rest on the exact same trees and rocks. And yet, we never tire of watching (and counting!) them. Why doesn’t it get old? Perhaps it’s that they’re so very different from us: most of us lead sedentary lives. We couldn’t imagine actually setting off on a life-threatening journey season after season, although it’s probably something we fantasize about at certain points in our lives. There’s something otherworldly, not to mention gravity-defying, about the thrill of flying. When we watch birds migrate, it’s almost like we’re living vicariously through them.

In the end, weather conditions notwithstanding, the trip to Long Point and Aylmer convinced me that spring had finally arrived. I saw my first killdeer of the season and my first red-winged blackbird. Actually, I saw not one, but hundreds of red-winged blackbirds dotting the bare trees, producing a sinister Hitchcock-effect. Technically, spring begins on March 20, but for me it’s already here in spite of the snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures – just ask the birds!

Wind turbines at Wolfe Island, credit: NapaneeGal

I’m the past president and long-time member of the Prince Edward County Field Naturalists, and our group is currently fighting the construction of a 9-turbine wind project in an Important Bird Area (IBA), here in Prince Edward County.

We’ve been waging this battle for awhile, and this is our last stand. In December, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment gave Gilead Power the green light to proceed with its industrial wind turbine project at Ostrander Point. We launched an appeal of that decision and as a result are now in hearings before the Environmental Review Tribunal.

Ostrander Point is a special place, rich in biodiversity and wildlife. Many bird species travel through here: loggerhead shrikes, short-eared owls, king rails, bobolinks, red-headed woodpeckers and barn swallows. Eastern whip-poor-wills and Blanding’s turtles can also be found at Ostrander Point, and it is one of the few places in the province where there is a rare alvar ecosystem.

In short, Ontario Nature, Nature Canada, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, BirdLife International, Audubon Society, the David Suzuki Foundation, Sierra Club and Environment Canada all agree with us that Ostrander Point is the worst place for wind turbines.

To date, two expert witnesses have testified that this place is truly unique and supports globally imperilled species. Dr. Paul Catling believes that turbine and road construction will cause serious and irreversible harm to the plant communities and the alvar ecology at Ostrander Point. Moreover, in his expert opinion, the environmental studies carried out by Gilead Power identified only 30 percent of the vascular plant species that grow there.

Dr. Robert Barclay from the University of Calgary testified about bats and wind turbines. In his opinion, the project will cause serious and irreversible harm to the bats migrating through and living in Ostrander Point.

Other expert witnesses will testify about endangered species in the IBA, the cumulative effect of wind projects in the eastern end of Lake Ontario on wildlife, the importance of Great Lakes migration stopover areas such as this one, the impact of roads on the ecology of Ostrander Point, and the impact of turbines on migrating monarch butterflies.

The Prince Edward County Field Naturalists are fund raising to pay for the appeal.  For more information about Ostrander Point, the hearing, and our fund raising efforts, please visit us at: www.SaveOstranderPoint.org.

We greatly appreciate your support.