Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada

19 June 2014 found me three kilometres northwest of Winchester Springs, Ontario, painting a view across the South Nation River from a steep grassy bank on its north shore. Tall grasses screened the river's edge. I flattened some of the Bromus and Reed Canary Grass into a nest for sitting to paint in the combined shades of a licheny sprawling Manitoba Maple and a stocky low-spreading Ash tree. The purpose of this visit was to explore this part of the South Nation River where the Trans Canada Pipeline crosses it. You can read more about this idyllic spot and what we found there at our Vulnerable Watersheds blog. 

1 June 2014 found me on another Cockburn Island beach, called by the locals "Connell's Dump", used until 1960 as a depot for the lumber and pulpwood industry on the island. The Connells floated the logs off the beach in booms, which were towed around to the dock at Tolsmaville, some to be loaded onto ships, and some to be made into boards at the two local sawmills. The last of the logs still remain, with White Cedars growing up among them, behind the ridge

30 May 2014  found us at Sand Bay on the south shore of Cockburn (pronounced  'Coeburn') Island, a large island off the western tip of Manitoulin Island, a team of biologists led by Nature Conservancy staff.  When we arrived here at Sand Bay on Cockburn Island's Lake Huron shore in the early afternoon, wraiths of mist were drifting inland across the upper beach and over marshy pools bristly with Juncus reed, but as things warmed up the mist disappeared. I sat to paint in the shade of a Tamarack among mats of Horizontal Juniper on the low dunes, where larval Lacewings lurked in conical Ant Lion pits waiting for careless Ants, and Tiger Beetles with olive-coloured backs scooted between the reaching branch tips of the Junipers. Gray Treefrogs called from bushes where a little old log cabin faced the beach, backed in among tall Spruces.

1 June 2014 found me exploring a wetland on a tributary to Sand Lake, 9.5 km south of Tolsmaville, on Cockburn Island, off the western tip Manitoulin. It was a cool sunny day and we stopped at a marsh where a team of visiting biologists had seen Painted Turtles and mating Snapping Turtles the day before, still hoping to find a Blandings Turtle. Beavers had piled mud and sticks against a grating that had been propped against the mouth of a culvert to baffle their attempts to stop the flow. Water was still flowing through the culvert in spite of the Beavers' efforts. Fred and the others noted three Painted