Happy 5 Years, Norfolk Naturalist!

Today marks 5 years of nature blogging on norfolknaturalist.ca! For my blogversary, we’ll do the usual summary of the past blogging year interspersed with some pictures and then we’ll look at some mini reviews of nature-related books I read this past year. In December, I’ll post my top photos from the past blogging year and take a look at the creatures featured in said photos. Here we go!

As is tradition, I began last year’s posts with a roundup of photos from the past blogging year: Norfolk Naturalist Year in Photos (Dec 2022-Nov 2023). My first series of posts in 2024 were detailing my Algonquin observations from August 2023. This time, instead of following a strict chronology, I focused on the different areas I spent time at and the things I observed there. I began with organisms observed on or near our campsite, moved on to the Lake shore observations within Pog Lake Campground, and then described what I have come to call “Warbler River”. My final post in this series was all about the creatures I observed on the Peck Lake Trail, including carnivorous plants and dazzling dragonflies. 

In May 2024, I went on an amazing weekend trip to Point Pelee and did a lot of birding while there. So much birding that I observed over 20 different families of birds and more than 50 species!!! I want to look at each family of birds I observed (and eventually plan to do a couple non-bird posts too) but so far I have only posted about 2 of the bird families: Hirundinidae (the Swallows and Martins) and Icteridae (New World Blackbirds). Stay tuned for more of these bird observations to come.

In August, I did a re-post from my old tumblr blogsite, about some midges I observed in Pinery Park in April 2018. I still have several old tumblr posts to re-post here on my current blogsite and I will continue to do so in future.

Also in August, I wrote a post about Ant Books, something I am particularly fond of. Check it out for your next ant book read. I’d like to do some more posts like this one in the future about other categories of nature books since I have an obsession with book collecting and have many more topics I could cover and explore through the books on my shelves.

Speaking of nature books… next up we will explore the nature books I’ve read over the past blogging year…

Dr Dhrolin’s Dictionary of Dinosaurs, by Nathan T. Barling and Michael O’Sullivan, Illustrated by Mark P. Witton

A combination of some of my favourite things, this book exceeded my expectations. Filled to the brim with incredible artworks by world-renowned palaeoartist Mark Witton (and the supplementary non-Witton art was also really well done). Chock full of theories of prehistoric creatures’ ecologies and behaviour (complete with scientific literature references). Intriguing creature design and optional magical rules to meld the species into a more fantastical setting. In-depth reconstructions of extinct ecosystems such as Hateg Island, Crato Formation, and more (complete with paleo-flora with their own magical abilities and uses to complement an exploration adventure). 

I was blown away by how much content there really was here, and all of it made for someone like myself who is fascinated by animal behaviour, extinct creatures, and incorporating those things into the fantasy worlds of roleplaying games. 10/10 for the art, 10/10 for the science, 10/10 for the format/style (there is a ribbon bookmark included, the pages are good quality, the images beautiful to behold).

If you are interested in prehistoric animals or ttrpgs, do yourself a favour and buy this beautiful, content-filled book.

A Season on the Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration, by Kenn Kauffman:

* I listened to the Audiobook *

Part personal memoir, part reflections on past migration seasons, this book was a bit meandering, kind of like its subject birds. I enjoyed the impressions of people and the author’s heartfelt joy at the rise in birding and birdwatching as a hobby, and many of the stories of birds or people or projects were interesting. Some chapters focused on a particular group of birds, such as Warblers, Waterfowl, or Shorebirds, while others focused on aspects of migration. One of the most interesting was the chapter about methods of studying migrating birds because it fascinates me how little we still know and how much people have unraveled so far. A running thread through the book is a proposed wind turbine project in a bird migration hotspot and the local birding association’s struggle to halt its progress. I was surprised how invested I became in this story, despite it feeling a bit out of place in some of the other portions of the book. Overall, this was an easy read, most like a memoir or personal collection of impressions and interactions with migrating birds with some specific threads running throughout.

The Homing Instinct, by Bernd Heinrich:

I really enjoyed this tour through the world of animal migration and homing and home-making behaviour. The tour was very idiosyncratic and a bit thematically messy. There was not as much of a common thread running through as there have been in other Heinrich books I have read, though he tried to link the stories within to “animal homing/homemaking”. 

Despite the lack of cohesiveness, the stories themselves were for the most part fascinating (I thought he spent way too long on a journal-style chapter about him hunting, felt out-of-place even amid other not-so-linked chapters) and informative. I learned some fun things about animals and plants, and appreciate them even more now.

The Red-winged Blackbird: The Biology of a Strongly Polygynous Songbird, by Les Beletsky:

An excellent overview of the biology of a much-studied and common bird. The book focuses on Red-winged Blackbirds’ breeding biology and the studies most focused on are for a particular population in Washington state which the author has studied for years. One of the interesting points the book puts across is that Red-winged blackbirds are common across the United States, southern Canada, and Mexico but they exhibit different behaviours in different populations/regions. This is sort of a rule across animal species but it was interesting to see it demonstrated and explored with this familiar bird. Lots of interesting discussions of how animal behaviour research is done and how we know so much about a species because we’ve studied them for so long but as a consequence we open up more frontiers of mystery to explore (the research questions never stop, they only split into more questions).

Bird Migration (New Naturalist #113), by Ian Newton:

An incredibly detailed look at Bird Migration, focusing on the migrants in Eurasia-Africa because of being a British Natural History book. This book expanded my worldview on bird migration, bringing out the true complexity of this wondrous phenomenon. The book was dense with information, but the data was presented very readably, with very helpful concluding/summarizing paragraphs at the end of each chapter. Excellent photos were sprinkled throughout, illustrating the myriad species of birds discussed.

Well, that wraps up another year of blogging on norfolknaturalist.ca! If you’ve been reading along for the past 5 years, I want to extend a sincere thanks for journeying along with me. And if you’re new here, I want to welcome you to share in my observations and wonder at the natural world all around us.

For previous blogversary articles, see:

–Happy Birthday, Norfolk Naturalist!

–Happy 2nd Birthday, Norfolk Naturalist!

–Happy 3rd Birthday, Norfolk Naturalist!

–Happy 4th Birthday, Norfolk Naturalist!