Please join us for Peter Money’s talk on The Appalachians and their Margins. Peter Money, a Toronto Field Naturalist, retired geologist and expert photographer will share with us some of the Appalachians mountain region, accessible within a few hours drive from Richmond Hill. This ancient system extends from coastal Newfoundland to the northern reach of Florida. Fossils with the oldest known multicellular life are found there. This area has an impressive array of living fauna from puffins and moose to salamanders, pelicans and armadillos and many flowering plants.

When: October 21, 2010 at 7:30pm

Where: Wallace Hall, Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church, 10066 Yonge St. (west side, first block north of Major Mackenzie Drive)

For further information on Richmond Hill Naturalists, contact Marianne Yake, 905-883-3047, or visit the web site http://www.RHNaturalists.ca. Public are welcome. Admission free. Donations accepted.

Andy will share his story of the Rouge valley through photography.

Join us on Thursday March  18th at 7:30 pm for speaker John Urquhart of Ontario Nature. He began his love of the environment like many young boys: mucking around in wetlands and streams looking for “creepy crawly” reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates. John will share with us the work being done across Ontario to gather data on Amphibians, Snakes and Turtles. Researchers, citizen scientists and local naturalists organizations can help with the Ontario Herpetofaunal Atlas Program.

He will help us identify species that we can find locally, endangered species and how to report any finding of frogs, salamanders, turtles and snakes as we travel around Ontario this year.

Frogs, Turtles & Snakes Flyer

Location: Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church, Wallace Hall,
10066 Yonge St., Richmond Hill
(west side, just north of Major Mackenzie Dr.)

Free admission & parking, all are welcome, donations accepted, and refreshments will be served. For more information, contact Marianne Yake, 905-883-3047 or [email protected].

The Richmond Hill Naturalists cordially invite you to join us with our special Guest Speaker and Nature Story Teller, Allan Foster on Thursday, February 18, 2010 @ 7:30 p.m.

Everyone is invited to join the Richmond Hill Naturalists for an evening of great nature tales by renowned story teller Allan Foster.  Allan was a frequent guest on CBC’s Fresh Air program and has appeared many times on Roger’s Daytime.  A long-time manager of the Kortright Centre, Allan recently retired to travel and make time to write a book of the nature stories that he’s been telling for years!  Please visit this web site to preview the book.

Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church,
Wallace Hall, 10066 Yonge St., Richmond Hill
(west side, just north of Major Mackenzie Dr.)

The public is cordially invited to this event which is sponsored by the Richmond Hill Naturalists.

Free admission, all are welcome, donations accepted, parking is free and refreshments will be served.

For more information, contact Marianne Yake, 905-883-3047 or [email protected].

The Richmond Hill and West Humber Naturalists are proud to present:

Bridget Stutchbury
York University Canada Research Chair &
Professor & Author of “Silence of the Songbirds”

Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 7:30 p.m.

Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church’s Wallace Hall
10066 Yonge St., Richmond Hill
(west side, first entrance north of Major Mackenzie Drive)

Prof. Stutchbury will be speaking on her recent ground-breaking research on tracking the routes and destination of individual songbirds in migration.

All members of the public are cordially invited to this event. There is no admission charge, however donations would be appreciated. Parking is free and refreshments will be served. Richmond Hill Naturalists is an organization of town residents concentrating on discovering, appreciating and enhancing the natural world. For more information about our organization, consult the web site www.rhnaturalists.ca or contact Marianne Yake, 905-883-3047

The Richmond Hill Naturalists Annual General Meeting and Potluck Dinner will be held on Thursday April 16, 2009

• Potluck Dinner at 6:00 p.m.
• Annual General Meeting to Follow
• Speaker at 7:45 p.m. Christina Sharma of Project CHIRP will speak on the topic
  Creating Habitat In Residential Areas and Parkland
  

Presbyterian Church – 10066 Yonge St.
Wallace Hall – Richmond Hill
(1/2 block north of Major Mackenzie Dr., west side of Yonge St.)

Please bring along a potluck dish. Please remember to bring a plate, mug and cutlery. I look forward to seeing you there. If you have any questions please call, Marianne at (905) 883-3047

At the Oct 16th RHN general meeting, Jean Iron, former President, Ontario Field Naturalists, will speak on Shorebirds, Bears and Natural History of Akimiski Island.   While volunteering on Akimiski Island in James Bay, Nunavut, Jean Iron conducted intense ground surveys of shorebirds and their habitat for the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. The north coast of this uninhabited island of 3001 sq. km. is particularly important to southbound shorebirds.

The public is cordially invited to this event which is sponsored by the Richmond Hill Naturalists.  There is no admission charge, parking is free and refreshments will be served.

When: Thursday, October 16, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church, Wallace Hall, 10066 Yonge St.
More information: Marianne Yake, 905-883-3047

Don’t miss our annual Richmond Hill Naturalists AGM and Potluck Dinner on Thursday, April 17th. Dinner will be at 6pm, followed by a guest speaker presentation at 7:30pm.

This year, the RHN is proud to present, Travels with Theo: Coastal Chile and Puru by Theo Hoffman, Pharmacist, Biochemist, Professor Emeritus of U. of Toronto, Serious Birder. Theo will present a stunning slide show and talk on his recent travels to South America and Easter Island.

The public is cordially invited to our speaker’s event. which is sponsored by the Richmond Hill Naturalists. There is no admission charge and parking is free. For more information, contact Marianne Yake, 905-883-3047. Location: Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church, Wallace Hall, 10066 Yonge St.

-Moai figures on Easter Island

-Humboldt Penguins on Islotes pajaras

-Moon Valley, Atacama Desert

Join the West Humber and Richmond Hill Naturalists for a special presentation of An Inconvenient Truth with Anne Parker, a volunteer with The Climate Project. Anne Parker’s slide show and talk will combine views from this movie on the “planetary emergency of global warming,” slides of current climate change occurring in Canada and solutions for environmental sustainability.

November 15, 7:30 p.m.
Richmond Hill Presbyterian Church
Wallace Hall, 10066 Yonge St.
(west side, first block north of Major Mackenzie Drive)

For more information on this event, contact Marianne Yake, 905-883-3047. Non-members are welcome to attend.

The Richmond Hill Naturalists annual general meeting and potluck will be held on Thursday, April 19, 2007 at 6:00 p.m. at Richmond Hill Prebyterian Church (Wallace Hall) located at 10066 Yonge Street, Richmond Hill (North of Yonge and Major Mackenzie Drive)

In addition to good food and good company, Gene Denzel will speak on Our Adventure in South Africa at 7:30pm

Please bring potluck (your favourite recipe perhaps). Please invite a friend or neighbour who might be interested in our club. And, please remember to bring a plate, mug and cutlery. We look forward to seeing you there! If you have any questions please call, Marianne at (905) 883-3047

Charlene and I were fortunate enough to be able to travel to South Africa for three weeks last Fall, with a small group of people interested in birds, fauna and flora there. We spent a few days in and around Kruger National Park, where we saw lots of bird and animal life. We then traveled to Lesotho (a small mountain country imbedded within South Africa) by car (an adventure in itself!), which was quite interesting in its own right. Then we made our way to Durban, from which we flew to Cape Town. There we spent some incredible hours in Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, which has to be one of the floral wonders of the world. In addition to wonderous vistas of flowers and mountains, it also had a lot of neat birds.

Of course, no birding trip would be complete without a visit to some sewage lagoons, and we did travel to one on the Western shore with good results. We travelled down to the Cape of Good Hope, seeing besides some nice birds a few Southern Right Whales in close to shore.

After the group finished up, we took a pelagic trip for one morning, with good luck on the weather front (no seasickness!), and incredible views of all sorts of sea birds mobbing the trawler’s catches as they were hauled in.

Of course, we can only touch on the highlights in the brief time after the potluck dinner, but we’ll try to whet people’s appetites for all of the natural beauty and variety to be found in South Afrtica.

Many of us have seen the great Redwoods and sequoias and the Douglas Firs of the west, and been awestruck by their majestic and ancient vigour, and yet we tend to forget that Southern Ontario was once home to its own gigantic and long-lived trees, the white pines. Greatly desired for ship-building and construction, they were logged nearly to extinction when Europeans first came here. Only a handful of the eldest now remain, and the younger generation of this species faces intense pressure and hardship. Hamilton-based botanist and landscape designer Paul O’Hara shares his botanical passion, science and talent for story-telling to lead all of us to a deeper understanding of what has been lost, and what may yet be gained.

We were fortunate to experience his presentation at the Richmond Hill Naturalist club meeting on Feb 15th. Beginning with a painting of Oakville from the middle of the 1800s, where a host of white pines can be seen towering above the forest canopy, O’Hara led the naturalists on a surprisingly gripping vision quest centred on the life cycle of the White Pine. But “The Faithful Witness” goes much deeper than a typical life cycle story. Lighting the way with a series of beautiful photographs of the many plants who share space with the White Pine during its long decades of childhood and adolescence, he both teaches us about the natural cycle of change and makes us viscerally aware of the crossroads where we stand in time and space.

If you have even a passing interest in nature you won’t want to miss O’Hara’s multimedia presentation. He’s due to tell the story again at the Halton Eco-festival March 31-April 1. You can find out more at his website www.blueoak.ca

White Pine Photo by emrld_cicada