Peace Country Naturalist – Page 3

Peace Country Naturalist

Hello, and welcome to my blog and website! I am Jessie and I am a biology instructor at Northwestern Polytechnic (formerly Grande Prairie Regional College) in northern Alberta, Canada. I teach university-transfer courses, including introductory courses in biology and second-year courses in evolutionary biology, botany, and animal physiology.

The blog associated with this site will feature posts on natural history (especially of Alberta and British Columbia, but also of other places I may travel to), ecology, hiking, evolution, dogs, and exotic pets. I often place trail cameras out in the bush to captures images of wildlife, and many posts will feature those pictures. I also use autonomous recording units to monitor vocal bird species and will post about those projects in the future as well.

I will also sometimes post items I have written for the students I teach, if I think they will be of general interest.

The latest blog posts are linked to below:

Wildlife Camera Pictures

I went out to retrieve a couple of the wildlife cameras I have set up in Saddle Hills county. Here are some of the highlights:

May 13, 2022
Getting Started with Recreational Dogsledding

When I was a kid, I had an odd obsession with sled dog breeds, like huskies and malamutes. I read every book I could find about them, put pictures of them up in my room, and dreamed about having my own sled team someday. Of course, I did eventually come to realize that keeping a…

February 20, 2022
Winter Birding in Alberta

Birdwatching in the winter in Canada may not seem like it would be very fruitful. Lately (as I write this in late December), it has been extremely cold, windy, and snowy in Alberta, with temperatures dipping to – 30 C or lower. The land looks stark and frozen. It is worth it to go birdwatching?…

January 22, 2022
Grande Prairie Christmas Bird Count

This past Saturday (December 18th), I participated in the Grande Prairie Christmas bird count. You can read more about the Christmas Bird Count at this link: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count I’m rather far north, so only a few dozen hardy species can be found around here during December. These include chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, a variety of finches, Brown…

December 21, 2021
Trail Camera – Carnivores

Last year, I set up a couple of wildlife cameras just north of Sexsmith, Alberta. I set them up in a nice, mature mixedwood forest that is composed primarily of aspen and white spruce. You can see the forest in the map below: it’s the dark green area north of Sexsmith. A lot of the…

September 4, 2021
Trail Camera – Ungulates

I have also “captured” images of many ungulates with my trail cameras. Both white-tailed and mule deer are rather common in the area and both have made appearances on the cameras. There are elk in the area too… …and plenty of moose: The area contains a variety of habitats – clear areas, wetlands, old forest,…

September 4, 2021
Trail Cameras – Fort Mac Edition

I lived in Fort McMurray for a few years and set up a trail camera on a trail out of town (down Tower Road, for people familiar with the area). That one primarily captured images of white-tailed deer, moose, foxes, and coyotes. I set the camera fairly low because I wanted to see what kind…

September 4, 2021