Northland Paradise Lodge
51 Stevens Rd P0H 2H0 Temagami, ON, Canada

Mushrooms are very plentiful now since the temperatures have cooled down and there's been plenty of rain over the past couple weeks. With that in mind, we will be having mushroom tours on both the coming Saturday & Sunday and they will start at 9:30 a.m. from the tower parking lot on Caribou Mountain. Pre-registration is required with Living Temagami and there's a 20-person limit on each day. Posters are up around town in all the usual locations as well as on Facebook (which I'm not very good at but others have graciously posted). Let's hope the weatherman is right when he's predicting nice weather for the weekend. I'll have a limited number of mushroom guide books available and more can be ordered if these sell out. I'll see you "on the mountain".

This female Pileated Woodpecker(Dryocopus pileatus) was kept quite busy supplying ants, grubs and whatever else she could find for her male and female offspring. She had built a nest in a new pressure treated hydro pole and we were watching it carefully to see when the chicks had enough feathers to distinguish their sex. After getting these photos, I returned 5 days later for more, only to find that they had fledged and "flew the coop" in late June.

This male Snow Bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis) wasn't bothered by my presence as he scratched gravel looking for something to eat. After a few minutes, he flew up onto a rock and provided a much better background for this photo. Buntings have more white feathers than any other songbird and this one is just starting to shed his winter tan colors on the head, shoulders and breast. He will soon be heading to the summer range in the Arctic where he will be just black and white.

It looks like we're in for an excellent year for birds this year as everybody has reported lots of them on roads and ATV trails this summer. There were 2 successful hatches, both in dry weather so there's plenty of young birds in the bush. It looks like we're getting past this month's full moon without any major frosts so it will probably be a month before October's moon chills things off significantly. Very few trees are turning color yet. Bird season opens in 2 weeks on the 15th.

Orchids are winding down now that the warmer parts of summer have passed. There are still showings of Helleborine and Ladies Tresses. Overall, it was a poorer year for the number of species that we usually locate in all the regular places. No shows included the Club spurs, Twayblades, Tall Northern Green Orchids and most, if not all, of the Plantains. I did find 3 or 4 small plants of Checkered Rattlesnake Plantain but the diameter of each of them was less than an inch.