Mushrooms
Unlike plants, mushrooms cannot synthesize their own food from the sun’s energy.
They lack chlorophyll – the substance which permits plants to use sunlight to form sugars from the water and carbon dioxide in the air.
Mushrooms therefore had to develop special methods of living: symbiosis, saprophyte and parasitism.
Most of the mushrooms growing on the forest floor are intimately linked to trees by symbiosis.
This association, called mycorrhiza, occurs between the root ends of a tree and the vegetative system of a mushroom. Mycorrhiza benefits both organisms: there is an exchange of nutrients, one providing to other what it cannot synthesize or extract from the soil by itself.
In general, the mushroom helps the tree extract minerals and water from the soil; in exchange, the tree supplies the mushroom with sugar compounds (carbohydrates).
Trees
Ever since I've been a little girl, I've adored trees.
Our magnificent giants, and little ones create such amazing structures, scents, and lovely memories.
Whether it's climbing trees, to find a great spot to relax within all its splendor, or sitting in a tree house to recline, or looking up into the sky, through the leaves playing in the wind, whilst relaxing in a hammock; trees can give us a huge feeling of comfort, coziness and restfulness.
Imagine your favorite tree, when you can't wait for it to be bursting with blossoms, within in all its splendor, or just imagine the luscious desire to indulge into delightful fresh fruit, directly from our generous trees.
Appreciating trees, with all their marvels, is a huge part of Sunny Nature Park.
Spring at Sunny Seas Nature Park
Why are Marshes so important?
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All wetlands are very important sites for biodiversity. A salty marsh, is defined as having no woody plants, such as salt marsh grasses, reeds, or sedge.
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Salt marshes produce more basic food energy per acre than any other known ecosystem including tropical rain forests and freshwater wetlands.
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Fresh water marshes tend to have a neutral pH, which leads to an abundance of life, far more than what is expected to grow due to the sometimes minimal sizes of marshes.
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Migratory birds such as shorebirds and ducks use salt marshes as stop-over points while traveling between summer and winter habitats.
Where have all the apples gone?
Apple varieties were numbered in the thousands, until the commercialization of apples began, now the numbers dwindle into a few choices.
The protection, and care-taking of heirloom apple species, as practiced at Sunny Seas Nature Park, is such a gratifying joyride.
Imagine biting into a fresh apple, with a certain eager expectation of crunch, crispiness, juiciness, sweetness, and all kinds of flavors, and ending up with a totally different experience of superb flavors.
It's the differences among apples that we should value, especially the old, late-season varieties for which high praise is due.
Trees are valuable both dead and alive.
At Sunny Seas Nature Park antique apple trees are still standing for our awesome Wild Life. A Bald Eagle, Osprey, Owls, and Falcons in particular have accommodated these trees to their perch and nesting areas.
Dead trees, whether standing snags or fallen logs, are habitat for an astonishingly variety of plants and animals.
They provide:
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a place for small mammal dens and bird nests
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home for many herbs, mosses, ferns
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home for spiders, insects, etc., which are the base of the food chain
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foraging site for many insectivorous birds such as woodpeckers
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food, protection, shelter, cover, and suitable climate for thousands of tiny organisms.
Even dead wood that falls into a stream continues to perform an ecological role. It provides habitat and a source of food for aquatic animals and plants. It controls current velocities and helps prevent scouring of the stream bed. It stabilizes stream banks, and provides waterfalls and pools important for fish feeding and spawning.
A standing dead tree is surprising hub of activity.
No owl builds its own nest!
Canada's best-known owl, the great horned, usually appropriates the discarded nest of a red-tailed hawk. Great horned owls will also use an artificial platform or even a ledge in a barn.
The latter is the usual nesting place of the barn owl, a species restricted to southern parts of Ontario and BC. The large, reclusive great gray owl of the Boreal Forest prefers a northern goshawk nest in a larch swamp.
The crow-sized, long-eared owl takes over nests of the common crow or black-billed magpie. The short-eared owl, present transcontinental, and the snowy owl, restricted in summer to the arctic tundra, both nest on the ground.
Their diet also shows how important owls are, in fact owls play a vital role in controlling, for example, mice.
Owls are generally beneficial. Great gray, long-eared, short-eared, boreal and saw-whet owls eat substantial numbers of mice. Great horned owl numbers rise and fall with the 10-year cycle of its favorite prey, the snowshoe hare. Great horned owls also take Norway rats, American coots and pocket gophers.
Is there an owl in your neighborhood? Probably. Some can be found almost anywhere with trees, even in the city! Even so, owls are famously mysterious. Many people have never seen one in the wild.
Winter is a great time to look out for owls, as the bare branches help reveal roosts. Some owls such as the Great Horned and Northern Saw-Whet also become more vocal in late winter as breeding season approaches.
270-degree vision
One of the main things that distinguish owls as a group from other birds is a highly developed sense of sight. Owls have excellent eyesight and can see well in low light conditions.
In addition, owls have eyeballs that are so large that they are fixed in their eye sockets. Fixed eyeballs prevent an owl from being able to look around while holding their head still like a human can.
To compensate for fixed eyeballs, owls have twice as many vertebrae in their necks as humans do; extra vertebrae allow the neck of an owl to rotate or twist more and allow owls to swivel their heads about 270 degrees when perched.
Pinpoint hearing
In addition to excellent eyesight, hearing is highly developed in owls. While there is variability among species, owls have evolved to direct sound into their ears in a very sophisticated way that enables them to accurately determine where a sound is coming from.
Of course, like other animals, they have an ear on each side of their head, so if you imagine a mouse scurrying around on the forest floor, they can easily determine if the prey is to their right or left as the sound will reach one ear a fraction of a second before it reaches the other.
I’ve been bird watching all my life. The main reason I loved bird-watching as a kid, is that I spent many hours a day in trees, also in search of another species with new sights, and sounds to be discovered.
From the start, I was absolutely fascinated by owls and their near silent flight, as solitary hunters, and their ability to fly so majestically.
Many, but not all, are nocturnal and they are generally shy and reclusive, however careful observers can be rewarded with stunning encounters with these nocturnal marvels.
Creating a habitat that matches our target species’ requirements;
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Does it need a perch with a view?
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Open space for hunting?
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Dense forest for shelter?
All this happens at Sunny Seas Nature Park, to ensure that our owls find their perfect spot, and enrich our biodiversity with their longtime presence.
