2010-2011 HICOP Blog
It's a new year!
August 28, 2010
Summer is back. Was it ever hot in camp. It must have been miserable for the hawthorn cutting team again. They are slowly but surely getting the hawthorns along the road cleared out. Awesome job.
Last month we had a visitor from Sweden. Doc met Martin Eliasson at the SCENES conference in Kandersteg Switzerland. He is trying to turn their camp, which is a Swedish island into a SCENES camp and he visited us looking for ideas. Marty gave him the grand tour and explained what we were doing at Camp Nemo. Martin took many photos at Nemo, including the field sparrow eggs used here, and he used some in an article that he wrote for their web site. You can see the article which is in Swedish here and the pictures here. Their camp is huge and they appear to be way ahead of us when it comes to program. Maybe one day one of us will be able to visit his camp.
777th Mississauga Scouts were in camp again this weekend. Marty went through the requirements for the fish and wildlife badge with them in the morning and as part of the program they helped us install four new bird boxes in Harvester field. We are sure that they will be every bit as successful as the four that went up in the spring.
On our way back from hanging the boxes Marty noticed a little brown bat with its wings all caught up on a thistle bush. The scouts watched as he used my T-shirt to protect his hand while he gently peeled the poor little bat off the plant. It was too weak to fly so we left it hanging on a branch. It was gone when Marty and I went by later on.
Another visitor passing through camp this weekend was the monarch butterflies, lots of them, which are probably attracted to our milk weed. Lots of them.
We must have lots of bees in the valley this summer because we have a bumper crop of apples on the apple tree down by the HICOP.
We found a large beetle in the HICOP. It looked very agitated so Marty put it under the microscope. It turns out that the beetle had about a dozen little parasites crawling around on it and trying to drill into it. It was pretty gross looking. Bugs with bugs. Yuck. We took it out into the sunlight so I could get a picture of it and they all promptly died in the heat and fell off. Oopsie.
August 20, 2010
My summer vacation is over and it's time to get cranked up again for a new Scouting year. If we had our way Camp Nemo would be busier in the summer than in the winter. There did, however, seem to be more summer usage this year.
It looks to be another great year for Camp Nemo. Last weekend 10 members of the new Hamilton Rover Crew showed up at camp to meet with us. We need help, at camp, with everything from clearing trails, to building maintenance, ecological monitoring, helping staff the center and running programs. We are very excited about the chance to have a Crew attached to camp and they seemed interested in the idea. There were certainly lots of intelligent questions asked. It seems there could be as many as forty Rovers in the Crew. If each of them only spent one Saturday every month or two in camp that would still mean that there would be a good Crew helping out every weekend.
Hamilton-Wentworth's new field executive was with the Rovers. Marty and I met Catriona Forrest for the first time and I must say we are impressed. Elizabeth's shoes will be hard to fill but Catriona is young, friendly, intelligent and energetic and those are the qualities that served Elizabeth so well. We are looking forward to working with Catriona.
A crew has been working very hard removing hawthorn trees along the camp road. The plan is to plant memorial maple trees in the open spaces. My hat is off to the volunteers on that team. I saw lots of blood, sweat and tears. Blood from the hawthorns, sweat from the summer heat and tears from the smoke from the burning fire. There was also an abundance of smiles and laughter. It was wonderful to see some new (younger) faces working alongside the diehard camp volunteers.
Last year about 25 chicks made up of a mixture of tree swallows and house wrens fledged from our nest boxes. This year, with the addition of the four new boxes in Harvester field and the removal of spruce trees to open up the meadow, that number rose to 90 eggs in our boxes and 82 chicks that fledged. Better still bluebirds were added to the mix. We haven't seen nesting bluebirds in camp for a number of years so it was a much welcomed return.
Our motion activated camera (wildcam) has given us some remarkable images of wildlife in camp. It has also proven to us that we have at least two does with fawns in camp. One with a single fawn and one with two.
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Last year we cut a new trail out to Bronte Creek and we have a volunteer who has agreed to lead fishing activities and has already gathered together some fishing gear. From what I have heard the fishing in the creek can be pretty good too.
We need to stock up on feed. Last winter we went through a full galvanized garbage can of sunflower seed and with the chipmunks becoming tamer we will need a lot more peanuts this year. If anyone has a good cheap source of good quality sunflower seed and/or peanuts in the shell please let us know. We can use suet blocks too.
We have plans to build a permanent compass bearing course in Confed field in the near future. Watch the activities page for more information.
I love my job.
Last year's blog can be found here.