RAINY RIVER VALLEY FIELD NATURALISTS
Alberton Municipal Building
Meeting # 124
Monday, September 7, 2020
Present: Mike Hammond, Henry Miller, Gaby Emond, Ilka Milne Henry Van Ael, Bob Saunders, Randy Spritt,
Call to Order: Meeting called to order by interim chair Henry Miller at 1830 hrs.
Agenda: Gaby made a motion to accept the Agenda as distributed. Ilka seconded.
Carried…
Minutes: Bob Saunders made a motion to accept the minutes of Meeting # 123 (January 20, 2020), as previously distributed via email. Seconded by Henry Van Ael.
Carried…
Treasurer’s
Report: Treasurer’s Financial Report (Henry Van Ael)
Henry reported that as of September 1, 2020, we had $2972.31 remaining in our account at RBC. The bank statements were not circulated as a COVID 19 precaution. There has been no activity in the account other than our monthly interest of approximately $0.02. Currently there are no outstanding bills, and we have one outstanding deposit for $30 (membership fee collected earlier this year for 2019/2020).Membership fees for 2020/2021 are currently due which most members present immediately settled up with Henry. (These funds will show up in the next Treasurer’s Report at our next meeting).Mike made a motion to accept the Treasurer’s Report as discussed, Gaby seconded.
Carried…
Club Correspondence:
There has been no correspondence received by the secretary since our last meeting.
Old Business:
- a) Treeplanting (Henry Miller) The Stewardship Council donated 1000 trees to Henry to be planted by the RRVFN. They were planted, however the project was heavily impacted by COVID 19, with social distancing requirements etc. Although Henry would like the group to do it again, he did have difficulty finding enough areas to plant this spring, so has decided not to pursue it for now.
- b) Boardwalk (Henry Van Ael) Ahlan had been collecting garbage at the Boardwalk this spring and did not feel it was right that he had to bring it back to town and use his ‘bag tags’ to dispose of it. Henry then wrote a letter to the Municipality of Alberton explaining the situation and asked them to consider placing a garbage receptacle at the Boardwalk site itself or at the Municipal building where garbage could be deposited. Council discussed it and said no. Other members present said they always pick up a little bit of garbage on their visits to the Boardwalk and found this to be a non issue. Ilka and Henry did offer to have garbage dropped off at their house should people find it to be a problem. Mike did replace the one sign that had disappeared last year. Randy took the Wood duck Nesting box down to clean it (a large hornet’s nest had taken up residence). and noticed that it had been sponsored by Duck’s Unlimited. Duck’s Unlimited had donated it to the Sportsmen’s Club which Henry Miller had then placed at the bog. Although we’ve had ducklings at the bog, it appears that they have not used the nesting box yet. Randy will return the box to Henry Miller.
- c) Invasive Species (Henry Miller) Purple Loosestrife is an invasive plant which had been managed in the past by Henry Miller and his Conservation group, however the MNR no longer is concerned about it. The abnormally tall cattails too are an invasive species that clog our lakes with large floating bogs, however since some wildlife like them (muskrats enjoy them for meals), nothing will be done about them as well.
Committee Reports:
- Blog/ Website: (rrvfn.org) (Bob) Ilka and Bob had been diligently working on it, but with the sprouting of leaves on the trees at Bob’s house, the internet pretty much became non-existent for Bob. Fall is now here and leaves are falling, so please email him at bobsaunders01@gmail.com with any pictures of wildlife, plants, you enjoying our great outdoors etc. that he could then use on our website/blog in the future. It is a ‘Read Only’ site with Ilka and Bob as the web managers and looks absolutely terrific already! (Thanks very much Bob & Ilka for all your work done here).
- Special Events: (Ilka) All events were cancelled due to COVID 19. Some members did get together to do some birding @ Sable Island, some Dragonfly /Exuvia Identification (very exciting as several new species were identified for this region). Bob and Ilka also went and checked on the Oak Grove property in the west end as requested by the Nature Conservancy of Canada. Members were presented with a list of proposed events for 2020/2021 season(COVID dependant). Upcoming events currently being scheduled are a Bird Identification Fieldtrip (end of September) and a Night sky outing (end of October).
- Publicity: The Bird Identification workshop was well received and we hope to do more of these information sessions in the future. Henry Miller also suggested we write more ‘Nature themed’ articles for the paper. Although members agreed that I was a good idea no immediate plans were made.
- Bog/Boardwalk: (Ahlan submitted written report via Bob) As of September 3rd, there has been no serious vandalism at the Boardwalk. Ahlan thought visitor attendance was down this year (140“150 people wrote in the Visitor’s book).Other members did report noticing other groups present while they were there, perhaps not everybody writes in the book.
- Stewardship Council: (Gaby) The Stewardship Council was pretty quiet over the summer as per norm, with their first meeting scheduled tomorrow. All 11,000 trees received in the spring were sold or donated and planted. Lowey’s Greenhouse was the Distribution Centre this year due to COVID restrictions at the Ag Centre, and it worked out very well. Blair will do it again next year. The White Spruce sold out very quickly (in case you’re thinking you might like to order some for next year). Some vandalism did occur on the “Fort Frances Tree Walk”. The destroyed and/or missing tree labels were replaced over the summer thanks to a donation from the Rainy Lake Conservancy (see ‘Rainy River District Stewardship’ on Facebook for more information on this project and others).
- Bluebird Routes: (late addition by Henry Miller) It was a very successful year for Bluebirds and Tree Swallows. Henry Miller has been monitoring the Bluebird populations in our District for the last 29 years and was joined by Bob this spring. Bob reported that 71/72 Tree swallow eggs actually fledged this year and they had a higher number of eggs per nest than usual with 6-7 eggs per nest. Henry reported 113 Bluebirds and 231 Tree swallows fledged out on his routes, with minimal predation on the nests observed.
New Business
- Oak Grove Monitoring: Ilka was asked by Nature Conservancy Canada (Ilka used to be the regional rep for NCC) if our group was interested in monitoring the Oak Grove property (located in the west end of the district off Hwy 600 near Oak Grove Camp, at the mouth of the Rainy River where it empties into Lake of the Woods).NCC does not have many properties up in our area and the regional rep recently retired. Monitoring would entail us visiting the site periodically and reporting back on any vandalism, garbage dumping, the illegal cutting of trees etc. Bob and Ilka did go out and found it to be intact, however the existing trails were very overgrown and almost non existant. Upon reporting back, the NCC then asked Ilka if we were interested in maintaining the trails for them. Ilka reported that it is a very unique area both historically and environmentally with many unique plant and tree species thriving there such as Black Cherry, Burr Oak & Hill’s Oak. It used to be a First Nations settlement where they lived for a very long time. A Fort used to exist on the property, it was part of the Fur Trader’s route, and was once a mink farm as well. The members all thought that it would be a great place for our group to visit on a fieldtrip.
Gaby made a motion that our group agrees to monitor the area and clear the trails, Bob seconded it.
Carried…
Ilka will contact NCC and ask what their future plan for the area is (when Ilka worked for them previously, they were not wanting the trails to be maintained; and she will also ensure that our club is not holding the liability if somebody should get injured while exploring the trails we cleared.)
- Our Constitution: Gaby (on behalf of Phyllis & Dale Callaghan) brought up some suggestions re spelling and grammatical errors noticed in Draft copy. It was also suggested that we change ‘Executive members’, ‘Executive positions’ to ‘Executive officers’ as that is more the norm these days. Members present had no objection.
Bob made a motion to make it free for all students to become members. Seconded by Randy
Carried…
Gaby made motion to include ‘Voting by Proxy for the AGM only”. Seconded by Henry Van Ael
Carried…
Ilka made motion to accept the New Constitution as amended, seconded by Bob.
Carried…
- Election of Executive: Henry Miller has decided to step down from the Presidency. He had graciously took it upon himself to act as ‘Interim President only’ when the club was debating its future at the November 20, 2019 meeting. (Thank you so much Henry for volunteering to get us all up and running again, and for all your efforts in doing so over this last year! It was very much appreciated by us all!!) Ilka Milne is the new President by acclamation. All other Executive Officers remain in their positions as part of their 2 year term (as per Constitution).
President Ilka Milne
Vice President Mike Hammond
Treasurer Henry Van Ael
Secretary Gaby Emond
Ontario Nature:
Henry Van Ael has not paid the membership fee for Ontario Nature and none of the members present have received any response back from Terry Kawulia to see if he still receives the Club’s magazines. Bob does subscribe to the magazine himself and graciously offered to bring his magazine in to share with other members .However it was brought up that by renewing our club membership we would then benefit by being part of a greater organization, we would be kept abreast of the projects, concerns, and activities of the other clubs, and at one time it also included insurance coverage under this larger umbrella organization as well.
Gaby made a motion to pursue our club membership with Ontario Nature and to pay our annual fee. Seconded by Henry Van Ael.
Carried…
Gaby will look into it and send invoice to Henry Van Ael.
Bill 197:
Bob drew our attention to Bill 197 which drastically changes Ontario’s environmental laws & policies, reducing or eliminating environmental
Tales From the Wild Side
Did you know that Praying Mantises eat hummingbirds? Henry Van Ael shared a picture of the Praying Mantis (rarely seen up here, more common in southern Ontario). The Praying Mantis eats a hole in the Hummingbird’s head to kill them.
Gaby had a family of 7 racoons at her place this summer, relocated 1 adult and 1 young one, the rest are eating her leftover corn now that the radio and Christmas lights are turned off.(It has kept them out of the garden so far)
Bob had a family of woodchucks at his place for quite some time this summer with 6 young. One day only the mother remained. Predators? Mike shared that it is common for the mother to take her young into the bush and just lose them there when they are of a certain age.
Randy is currently feeding a short tailed weasel all the dead mice he’s catching.(everything is trying to get inside these days with the fall weather having arrived) Bob is feeding his mice to the bluejays.
Next Meeting: November 9, 2020 @ 6:30 pm, Alberton Municipal Office
Adjournment: Ilka made a motion to adjourn @ 2033 hrs.
