June 20, 2000
How better to spend the summer solstice than in surveying nature's most vocal celebrants? This morning I managed without an alarm clock to wake myself at 4:15. Maybe because I perched myself uncomfortably on the couch at the cottage and slept with one propane lamp glowing and the clock in full view.
All weekend I had been mentally preparing myself for this moment. I had to drive 32 km (20 miles) to Dwight, Ontario, and arrive at my first site in the Breeding Bird Survey 30 minutes before sunrise. At this latitude, that required starting at 4:54.
I had already run a reconnaissance on Sunday evening. The former surveyor had changed the route two years earlier to avoid the increasing tourist traffic on highway 60, main traverse of Algonquin Provincial Park, the heart of Central Ontario's canoeing country. My forebearer, who is now deceased, didn't leave detailed descriptions of the 50 sites along the 40-km (25-mile) trek. So Bev, the survey co-ordinator for Ontario, encouraged me to scout it out ahead of time and make sure there were no problems.
Precambrian granite
I'm glad I did. Ideally, the sites are supposed to be spaced 0.8 km apart (0.5 miles), about a minute's drive. But my passage wended through some of the province's most scenic territory. Here is the Canadian Shield, largest of the world's great Precambrian continental rock masses. Muskoka and Haliburton Counties, on the southern edge of the shield in Ontario, consist of rolling pink granite bedrock dotted with lake after lake. Most of the forest was logged decades ago and has naturally redeveloped a second growth dominated by sugar maples, American basswood, American beech, red and white oak, Eastern hemlock and white pine. The woods is moister, cooler and less humid than the Carolinian forest further south, slightly less diverse, but a rich breeding ground for many wood warblers and other neotropical migrant bird species.
My problem was choosing stops that were adequately spaced along a sometimes narrow shoulder on steep slopes and winding roads. But I measured my way and carefully described each location so that I or later volunteers can keep count in the same places each year.
Index of biodiversity
The data are imprecise. The purpose of the survey is to provide an index of bird species diversity. Hundreds of birds can inhabit a hectare of such rich forest, and a person will only detect a handful in the three-minute
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