Mosquitoes beware, Pacific Tree Frogs are here!

We have tree frogs in the bog! The latin species name is Hyla regilla. This year we have had a bumper crop of tadpoles in the pond. On Thursday, I was told the frogs had started climbing out of the pond, so I went there to see. I found all the different life stages, except for complete tadpoles and tail-less frogs. The frogs are only about as big as your thumbnail, from head to toe.

Tadpole with hind legs

Tadpole with the head of a frog, and hind legs

Rare Bird Found in Camosun Bog

There is a rush of birders to the bog to see a rare chestnut-sided warbler. This is a common species in eastern North America but is very seldom seen west of Saskatchewan. It was observed by Christine Atkins on June 25 and is still around (June 27). It is singing from the tops of pine trees near the 19th Ave entrance and is very hard to see.
This warbler was last seen in the Lower Mainland in June 2004 and interestingly it was also found in Camosun Bog. This really is a great place to find birds

this photo was taken at Camosun Bog  by a photographer identifying himself as West Coast Birder, observed and photographed on July 1, 2011, published here in BirdWatchingDaily.com. caption updated by Susan

Bog Buddy pics

Prince of Wales Secondary partnered with Charles Dickens Annex, Queen Elizabeth Elementary and Carnarvon Elementary.  The Bog buddy program started when our very own Laura Super was in grade 11 and proposed bringing her biology class to Camosun bog for a field trip.  Laura is now in grad school, Botany, in Hawaii.

I will update with a scan of a sample of the marvelous stories created by the biology 11 classes.  some of these stories were borrowed by the community for bog interpretation.  Last year, Metro Vancouver Parks used "The King and His Bog", 2010).  This year, "Spanky the Sphagnum Moss", 2011  was selected to be used by the Beaty Museum during Wetlands month.

Congratulations biology classes for a job well done and many thanks to our elementary school partners.  Teacher Ms. Cultum arranged for her class to respond to the activity with poems.  Photos are courtesy of Marian De Gier Design. Marian was there as a volunteer photographer.

How deep is the bog?  

Salamanders, tadpoles, and a little shrew

The attached picture is the cluster of eggs Heather found while pulling Juncus out of the bog on Sat. morning. They are not frogs eggs so we surmise they may be salamanders. If you look closely you can see the external gills.  There are also "tons" of tadpoles in the pond! All that croaking in early spring by the adults has produced a bumper crop. Frogs may be disappearing in other locations around the world but lets hope our Tree Frogs have found a permanent home in the bog.

    Gerry

Ode to the bog

I miss everyone. Sending my love from abroad to all the crazy boggers and the bog.

Where does all the water go?

Excess water from the bog now flows into a drain at King Edward and Crown St and disappears. Originally this water went into Khahtsulek (Head of the Lake) Creek and flowed through Chaldecott Park and down to the Fraser. Coho salmon used to swim right up to the very edge of the bog. Thanks to Terry Slack, this has just been recognized in the new sidewalk at King Edward with stampings in the concrete of fish and the name of the creek. As Terry says, it was exactly 100 years ago that the last salmon spawned adjacent to Camosun Bog. See http://dunbar-vancouver.org/

Sphagnum Nurseries

Ever wonder where Laurence gets those plugs of sphagnum moss  for the restoration process? it's impossible to buy them in any garden store.  All the sphagnum in the restored bog comes from the nearby forest, but the forest is on former bog.

When the city installed drains, the water table was lowered and the bog was almost swallowed up by hemlock forest.

Some Interesting Artefacts from the Bog

During the restoration of Camosun Bog, we often find unusual items buried beneath the surface of the peat. Often these are garbage from another era but often they tell us a lot about conditions in the bog in years gone by

 This shows an old hockey puck. We have found many of these over the years.  The pond used to be a lot larger than it is now and winters were colder. Every year, local kids played ice hockey in the bog and inevitably lost their pucks through the ice

 We have found large numbers of glass marbles in all areas of the bog. Some of these are quite beautiful. We believe these were used as ammunition for sling shots as kids tried to hit ducks and other creatures in the bog. Conservation ethics were quite different in those days - hopefully they were not successful in hitting anything.

This shows a “button hat” - a craze in the 50’s that dates back to the old Archie comic strips where Jughead was depicted wearing a hat of this type. In those days kids would swap buttons with their friends – the one with the most interesting buttons had the highest prestige. It looks like this hat was not particularly good as it had only one type of button.

 We have found many coins in the bog. The oldest is an 1870 silver coin from Spain. Silver coins are not much tarnished. However copper coins are badly etched in the acid conditions of the bog (pH around 4.5). It is often very hard to see the original inscription on them.

Few people today write with a nib and ink. This was the standard way years ago,and this picture shows an ink bottle containing a reservoir that can be filled with ink 

Of course we also find a lot of real garbage. Years ago the bog was used as an unofficial garbage dump. There were major efforts in the 1980’s to clear up this mess but we still find a lot. The most unpleasant are broken bottles and we always have to be careful when we work to avoid hurting ourselves. Nevertheless it is interesting to find things in the bog as there is always the lure of finding something really unusual. We have never found any mummified human remains such as have been found in European bogs.