Tommy Thompson Park, 2018 (Jason Ramsay-Brown)
Hello Junior Naturalist Friends, What an exciting week you all had in Toronto, Uxbridge, the Grand River and Algonquin Park!! We continued to experience our fellow creatures–on lakes, in forests, and around our homes. Thanks for sharing your photos so we can enjoy them together. Our parks and Greenbelt protected countryside are special places where motorized Read More
Hello Junior Naturalists! This week’s theme is lakes! There are different types of lake habitats, all of which are important to sustaining aquatic plant and animal diversity. Canada has the most lakes of any country in the world, and it’s important that we take good care of them. Toronto was built on the shore of Read More
Hello Junior Naturalists! This week’s theme is forests! We are very lucky to live in a city with a large urban forest. Toronto’s tree canopy covers about 28% of the city, which is much more than most other major cities in the world! Forests provide many ecological, economical, and social benefits. They give us oxygen, Read More
Hello Junior Naturalists! This week’s theme is meadows! A meadow is an open area that is dominated by herbaceous plants like grasses and wildflowers. Meadow habitats provide shelter, water and food to many animals, including birds, bees and butterflies. Meadows also help us by absorbing water during floods and reducing erosion. Meadows are hard to Read More
Hello Junior Naturalists! This week’s theme is wetlands! Wetland habitats include swamps, marshes and bogs. These places are very important to humans and wildlife, even in big cities like Toronto. Wetlands help clean our water, protect us from floods and storms, and are great places to go hiking and bird watching! Here are some photos Read More
Hello Junior Naturalists. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the TFN Juniors slideshow this week. We always enjoy sharing the adventures everyone has been on this week. What a surprise for those of us that have been raising butterflies–a Black Swallowtail chrysalis was harboring a parisitoid wasp! What a handsome spider wasp mimic she was Read More
Hello Junior Naturalists! Thanks to everyone who shared photos for this week’s blog. We continue to see interesting things in nature all around us. Please have a look at this week’s slideshow and enjoy the adventures others have been on! Many creatures look similar, and we are all learning to be more observant of slight Read More
Hello Junior Naturalists! Thanks to everyone who shared Nature photos and observations this week! Please enjoy the lovely images in the slideshow below: Now you can challenge yourself by doing Vanessa’s True-False game on Bees. You can download the Quiz, enter your answers, and email your page back to us. You can also check your Read More
As in previous years, TFN will again be sponsoring students in the GTA to attend Ontario Nature’s annual Youth Summit for Biodiversity and Environmental Leadership – rebranded for 2020 as the Virtual Youth Summit for Mother Earth! For four Saturday afternoons in August & September this summit will bring together youth from dozens of communities Read More
Hello Junior Naturalists! Thanks to everyone who has been nature-watching this past week–even despite the extreme heat and thanks for sending in your pictures. Our challenge for this week was to study flowers and try to discover their pollination strategy–how do they trick the insects, or the wind, into carrying and depositing their pollen? Please Read More
Toronto Field Naturalists wishes to acknowledge this Land through which we walk. For thousands of years, the Land has been shared by the Wendat, the Haudenosaunee, and the Anishinaabe. Toronto is situated on the Land within the Toronto Purchase, Treaty 13, the traditional and treaty Lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is also part of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum, a covenant agreement between Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Wendat peoples and allied nations to peaceably share the land and all its resources. Today, the Land is home to peoples of numerous nations. We are all grateful to have the opportunity to continue to care for and share the beauty of this Land.