By Denise Potter

While Rod and I have tried to explore every public park and ravine in our neighbourhood, the David Dunlap Observatory property was always off limits to us, the dense forest surrounded by a fence laced with “Private Property! No Trespassing!” signs.

We’d often see deer in the meadow fronting on Bayview, and once a coyote, and once a fox streaking into the woods like a ghost, but rarely had we ever passed the gates and climbed the winding road up to the Observatory itself.

It is not an old forest. Our people chopped down the original forest to farm the land before Confederation. Decades ago, U of T students planted many of the trees we see now, and many are transplants from Europe and elsewhere, but still they have grown to make a place that is something like wild.

Because the University of Toronto may soon declare these 189 acres of meadow and forest to be “surplus land”, we need to explore the interior, document it, get to know it, just in case it disappears forever beneath the asphalt desert that has buried much of the rest of Richmond Hill.

So for the past few weekends we’ve walked the DDO, and have been startled by the diversity and abundance of wildlife we’ve found. In a brief hour on Thanksgiving weekend we surprised a Cooper’s hawk, three passing Sharp-shinned hawks, and a red-tailed hawk…a triple-handful of flickers, hairy and downy woodpeckers, a pair of Eastern Towhees, an astonishing number of robins, hermit and wood thrushes. There were gold finches, house finches, purple finches, chickadees…tiny ruby-crowned and golden-crowned kinglets, red- and white-breasted nuthatches. Some thickets were full of white-crowned sparrows, others offered cover to hordes of white-throated sparrows and juncos. Yellow-rumped warblers and cedar waxwings trilled while a family of catbirds mewed at us.We didn’t see deer but they clearly saw us…we heard their alarm calls in the forest all around us but never laid eyes on them through the thick undergrowth. On later walks we’ve seen a phoebe and even a merlin, glowering at us from the radio tower.

The following Saturday was the Ontario Nature meeting of representatives from Nature groups around central Ontario. Keynote speaker was Ian Shelton, a well-known U of T astronomer longing for Dark Skies, but pointing out that much real valid work still goes on at the DDO.

Despite the blustery weather, some of the visiting representatives and several Richmond Hill naturalists spent another pleasant hour walking the DDO lands. RH Naturalist Joe Ag, a long-time neighbour of the DDO lands, led us along a well-used deer trail through meadow, orchard and thicket to a kind of secret place. Coyote, raccoon and other creatures have left their mark in many places on the path. Not far from Bayview, but completely hidden from the traffic, among the stands of maple, birch and hawthorn, we found the fascinating yellow birch trees, standing on their toes above the dirt, their tangled roots sprawling naked to the world over the ground.

Fortunately an MNR forester (not sure of his name) was there to explain that the yellow birch often begin growing on the stumps of dead trees, so their roots begin above the ground and grow down over the stump, spreading across the top of the soil. The damp earth beneath the roots was scored with the prints of deer hooves.

Several explorations later Rod and I realize we have barely begun to know this piece of land. I suppose to many people it’s just an obstacle they have to drive around. To me it is the largest remaining fragment of wilderness within walking distance of my home, a refuge where hawks spiral across the empty sky and the sounds of traffic are slightly muted, a place where you might see anything, if you look carefully.

A hardy group of folks from the RIchmond Hill Naturalists met at the Kleinburg CoffeeTime on a relatively mild Saturday morning before heading over to Joan Love’s spread. Joan’s feeders as usual were attracting a nice variety of birds (Red- and White-breasted Nuthatches, Downy Woodpeckers, Goldfinches, Junco’s, House Finches, CHickadees, Cardinals, Bluejays), but nothing exotic. A walk down through the river valley produced nothing of note. Upon heading down the hill back towards the house, a raptor was spotted at the top of a bare tree. Initial guesses were of Kestrel, but upon more close looks that was rejected. At a distance, through binoculars, it looked somewhat like a sHarp-shinned Hawk, but the tail was not right. Finally we brought a scope out and we all got a good look, including the eyebrow and tail markings, which all pointed to Merlin. As we were finishing our last looks at this very cooperative bird, another raptor flew into a tree on the other side of the house. This was undoubtedly a SHarpie, and gave us all a great chance to do the comparison.

Heading off up Major MacKenzie from Joan’s place, a Northern SHrike on the phone line was seen by a number of people. Up on the flats a number of raptors could be seen, the first couple being Red-tailed Hawks. The next one to show up was kind enough to land in a tree not too far from the road, and was clearly a (light-morph) Rough-legged Hawk. It was nice enough to take flight when people had it in their binoc’s, showing the neat ‘elbow patches’. While trying to scope the various hawks, a few folks tracked down some Song Sparrows and Field Sparrows down a side road/driveway. Seeing that a very long freight train was blocking the southward portion of McGilvary and Huntington Roads, we opted to head North up Huntington, along which more Red-tails and another Rough Legged Hawk were seen, as well as a Coyote in a field seen by a few.

Stoppping at the Nashville Cemetary, the group began a scanning of the row of cedars at the back, which quickly yielded what turned out to be 5 Long-Eared Owls. One took off over the cemetary, being harassed by a noisy flock of Blue Jays, but giving us all great looks.

Given the hour, it was agreed to head South now, in hopes that the train had crept out of our way. It had indeed and, along with a few more sightings of Red-tails, we had great luck at some freshly manured areas on a field on the East side, where a large number of Horned Larks were busy working over the bugs. A good chance for great scope views.

After these successes, we headed off to the pub in the Longchamps restaurant, which had a cheery fire going to help revive frozen toes and fingers. A pleasant lunch with lively discussion of the neat birds seen brought a nice outing to an end.