Alison Forde

I do the same 😊

Close up of @n8rnerd in a black CAN95 mask and Tilley hat in the garden.

Shifting air quality baselines. Apocalypse lifestyle creep. Just some light gardening in a Southern Ontario summer.

'Alarmingly low' monarch butterfly population calls for international conservation strategy: Guelph professor | CBC News In the last 15 years, the monarch butterfly populations in North America have dwindled to "alarmingly low" levels, University of Guelph associate professor and ecologist Ryan Norris. He was part of a ...

A Monarch visited my tiny milkweed patch recently. No eggs or caterpillars yet, but I'm hopeful!

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The podcast art for Songbirding, a Blackburnian Warbler. Art by @tinylongwing.bsky.social

Songbirding is back after a short summer hiatus. 🥳

This week we explore a short, obscure trail deep in Allegheny National Forest. One of the highlights between this and the second part (next week!) is a nest of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers.

#birds #birding #podcast

pnc.st/s/songbirdin...

A black goo was oozing from a ship on the Great Lakes — and teeming with life Research vessel Blue Heron trawls the Great Lakes, gathering data from the water. The floating laboratory’s most recent discovery, however, came from an unexpected location: its own rudder.

Blue Heron research vessel discovers black goo with life-forms share.google/lhAr7yuqhtIh...

ON Nature magazine - Summer-2025 - Page 38-39 Last Word Everyone Has a Role in Conservation 38 ON Nature | Summer 2025 Carolinian species, making its preservation as habitat essential. Tapping into the

This is your reminder that “Every square inch of planet Earth has ecological significance.”
From balconies to backyards, everyone has a role in conservation.
📖 Read the Last Word in ON Nature:
catalog.ontarionature.org/summer-2025/...

I didn’t know rabbits liked trampolines, but then again…..

How lovely!

How Doug Ford Plans to Dismantle Ontario’s Most Popular Provincial Park More than half of the Wasaga Beach shoreline could be opened to development

Doug Ford plans to dismantle Ontario’s most popular provincial park.

More than half the shoreline of Wasaga Beach could be opened to development.

pressprogress.ca/doug-ford-pl...

A construction site sign that says "nothing you do on this site today will be as important as going home to your family and loved ones"

A good reminder about the dangers of posting

welcome to GUESS! THAT! CANADIAN! CITY! BY! ITS! BIRDS! Canadian city #1 (Mallard, Song sparrow, American Herring gull, American crow, European starling) is HALIFAX. Canadian city #2 (Black-billed magpie, mallard, Canada goose, American robin, Northern flicker) is CALGARY Canadian city #3 (Great blue heron, glaucous-winged gull, Olympic gull, bald eagle, Barrow's goldeneye) is VANCOUVER

I've just created a new game show.
It's called "Guess That Canadian City by the Top 5 Birds With the Most Observations on iNaturalist"!

(Answers in alt text)

Ontario Plans to Sell 60% of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park Beachfront for Development - Environmental Defence The Government of Ontario plans to sell parts of the park worth tens of millions of dollars to developers. This represents almost one third of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park.

Ontario Plans to Sell 60% of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park Beachfront for Development environmentaldefence.ca/2025/07/28/o...
#onpoli

Stay away if you're in Manhattan

Snakes Use Smelly Musk to Keep Ants Out of Their Pants

My dad's latest research, written up in the New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/s...

Illustration showing a pair of Mirasaura perched on fern fronds. The green animals show their tall orange, brown and white crests while a small beetle flies over one of them

Here it is! Please welcome the AMAZING Mirasaura grauvogeli, a NEW MARVELOUS Drepanosaur published in NATURE today!
This astonishing reptile lived during the Middle Triassic in Europe and it possessed an amazing crest made of plume-like structures!

I was commissioned to bring it to life
#paleoart

Wow!

A raccoon peering over the top of a cut tree trunk, with two paws placed on top

Good evening 🦝🙂

It's very unusual to see polar bears still out on so little sea ice. This is a change in behaviour compared to the past when 30% ice cover meant heading for land. Perhaps the hunting is still good? Perhaps they need to fatten more? Maybe they found a few solid bits of ice?

The white nest, with green flecks of lichen on its side, is built on top of a bare branch. The baby ruby-throated hummingbird now fills the nest, facing left and looking upwards. There was a spider crawling on a branch above it and it was quite intrigued by it, in fact I thought I was going to see it fledge and go after the spider!

I started this #hummingbird series with a photo of mom sitting on her nest. Here's her baby on the nest, 18 days later, 3 days before it fledged. I don't know how there is room in the nest if they raise more than one! #birds #birding

ATTENTION @mark-carney.bsky.social

#DavidSuzuki is 100% correct.

You can fight #ClimateChange & address Canada's ever-worsening climate-jacked #Wildfire problem or you can build more pipelines but you can't do both.

Build Canada's future, not its failure
#MarkCarney #cdnpoli

Turtle cafeteria

In the last 2 weeks I've added another 49 species! Includes 2 new fireflies, several moths, and a very interesting insect called the Thin Hangfly (Bittacus strigosus). I know my proximity to natural areas acts as a source, but it's still neat to have this #biodiversity in my yard ❤️ #inaturalist

I was volunteering at a kid's exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum and Peter Dinklage came to my table with his ~2 y.o. daughter and stayed for almost 20 minutes while she interacted with the beaver pelt and turtle shell. She was really into turtles. He was super nice, too.

With wings, height isn't much of a woodpecker deterrent 😅 but it helps with mammalian predators and snakes.

I haven't seen it at my other two bat box monitoring sites (3 different styles of boxes) but I guess I'm not surprised. Just not particularly thrilled it's at the top on the south-facing side where bats probably want to roost...

Thanks! If we can get the right equipment to carry out a repair, wrapping in chicken wire should be relatively straightforward.

Hey #bat folks - has anyone dealt with woodpecker damage to bat boxes? These boxes are nearly 20ft up 🫠

@albertabats.bsky.social

First Nations to launch legal challenge against Ontario Lawyers representing nine Ontario First Nations say they are launching a constitutional challenge against provincial and federal laws meant to fast-track infrastructure projects that the Indigenous co...

Lawyers representing nine Ontario First Nations say they are launching a constitutional challenge against provincial and federal laws meant to fast-track infrastructure projects that the Indigenous communities say infringes upon their rights.
www.chch.com/chch-news/fi...

You Have No Idea How Furious the Canadians Are There’s nothing like a common enemy to make a country come together.

The one thing I really noticed in this piece was that in all of the talk about Canadians not wanting to head to the US, not once was the threat of immigration detention or extradition to El Salvador mentioned. The whole of Canada read the story of the Jasmine Mooney in ICE detention and said "Nope."

With almost every American policy decision now, it seems the stupid option wins out The chaos down south could, and maybe should, force us to explore our relationship with the rest of the world and stand on our own two feet a bit more, writes Steve Buist.

With almost every American policy decision now, it seems the stupid option wins out