Trail Talk: Beautiful weather means more people on the trails, be wary of ticks

Four-spotted Skimmer.

With the weather increasingly improving, there are now many reports recording an increase in people being bitten by ticks.

Until this year, I had never had more than one tick bite per year, but this year I have had three already.

The second one was well imbedded so I went to the emergency department and had it removed. I was also given an antibiotic prescription to take.

A few days later I got my third tick bite and as recommended I used tweezers to grab the tick and pulled it out and washed the affected area with soap and water and then disinfected my skin and hands with rubbing alcohol.

The few days of very hot weather ensured that even the Black Walnut trees came out in leaf.   There was a magnificent display of crab apple blossoms on the twenty carb apple trees on Highway 4 near Huronview. They were planted in 1967 as a Millennium project.  Unfortunately, the blossoms quickly faded in the hot weather.   

Near the Auburn end of the Maitland Trail the patch of wild Blue Phlox was in bloom.  These have five petals and are much smaller than the garden variety. Dame’s rocket which has four petals is just starting to blossom, and it is often mistaken for a five petal Phlox.

I have seen many Northern Azures; these small butterflies look pale blue when flying but are white when landed with folded wings. As I expected, some Cabbage Whites are out and about.

What I did not expect to see was an Orange Sulphur, which I usually first see in mid-July.  At Hullett I saw a Great Egret, these birds used not to be very common in our area, but now are regularly seen.  I noticed that the Hullett bird checklist had not been recently updated so did not include the Great Egret.

Other interesting sights at Hullett have been some dragonflies. They usually don’t look very interesting until they land.

When I take a close-up photo of them, I can see some wonderful colours and patterns.

Two new species for me this year were a Spiny-baskettail and a Four-spotted skimmer. Both species are rarely reported in iNaturalist in our area.

For example, the skimmer had only been previously reported in Hullett in 2019, and the next closest report was in the Pinery.  The rarity could be for several reasons, such as they don’t often land so it is difficult to photograph them, or not many people photograph dragonflies, or maybe they are genuinely uncommon in our area.

The registration for the Maitland Camino event on September 19 and September 20 opened on May 16 and by May 21 over half of the 300 maximum enrolments had been filled.  The options include a two-day hike of 30-km and 20-km, or less distances on one of both days.

NOTES:

Saturday, June 6 – Be aware of the number of participants. Please register by email or phone to Ralph Blasting at rjblastingjr@gmail.com or 519-525-3205. Meet at the entrance to the Sawmill trail at the end of Sawmill Rd.

Tuesday Trompers meet at 9 a.m. on Tuesday to hike for about an hour. If you wish to be on this email list, send an email to mta@maitlandtrail.ca

Midweek hikers meet at 9 a.m. and hike for 1.5 to 2 hours on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Contact Patrick Capper at pcapper99@gmail.com

LIFE hikers meet every Friday for a hike of about 1.5 hours, with a choice of pace, striders moving a little faster than the strollers.  The hikes now start at 9a.m. and can be joined through One Care.