Summer Frog Walk June 2nd

The first summer frog walk at Hyla Park for 2010 was a hit! Many people had either heard about our walks from Don Vail’s interview earlier in the day on CBC radio, or by seeing one of our posters around town. Because of the small group our walk was very informal, be we were lucky enough to have Jessica Orlofske along (an entomologist) and Chris Tyrrell (a botanist). They both provided much exciting and interesting information about the plants and animals we saw along the way. One boy was always very eager to find new things to ask them about.

Although we did not see any frogs, we did hear green frogs, as well as the famous Grey Tree frogs. We were lucky enough to see a small hare, and found a beautiful garter snake with very white (almost blue) colouring. Jessica also taught us about a club-footed dragonfly, whirligig water beetles, small scarab beetles, slugs and other interesting specimens we found along the way. One of the most exciting things we got to see was a Luna moth coming out of its cocoon! We were all very pleased with this find.

Lucky for us the mosquitoes were even manageable during this walk. Both because of the interest and knowledge of our attendees and the managable bugs, the walk went on until about 8:15 pm and only ended because it had started to rain.