The Mighty Monarch Butterfly Mating

Every year, I recall the season when we are most likely to see a lot of butterflies. Generally it's end of Aug, very early Sept. For the Monarchs, it is the beginning of their migration time. If you ever get a chance to, it's very interesting to read about the life cycle of the Monarch Butterfly, it's just amazing and interesting! These seemingly delicate creatures, the 4th generation being the one that makes the trip to Mexico.

Doris McCarthy Trail, in Scarborough (now the City of Toronto), is one of our favourite places to go. It has the combination of varying terrain of a light forest and treed area as well as the lake shore, some inclines for exercise, it's not super long, it has ideal conditions for birds and butterflies, there are the bluffs, it's never super crowded with people like Bluffers Park yet has the same landmarks and aspects. It's definitely worth checking out, especially in Spring and late Summer. Spring, it attracts a lot of migratory birds, it has humming birds pretty much the whole season into Fall, and it has raptors and cliff swallows, as well as Cedar Waxwings. The wild flowers are always abundant, especially in the meadow like area at the west end when you reach the end of the terrain and hit the breaker wall of rock and an inlet of Lake Ontario. Lots of butterflies fuel up there and can be seen in the hundreds in late Aug. Lots of Swallow Tails and Monarchs. We even got the pleasure of seeing a Cedar Waxwing in a nest, in mid July.


Yesterday, as soon as we came off the trail down, at the lake shore area, we spotted pairs of coupled Monarchs floating through the sky and landing on trees and plants. We must have timed our trek right, to hit the mating for the 4th generation of the life cycle, the one that is then born and makes the journey to Mexico.

The landscape is so gorgeous and wild, so full of living creatures and beautiful plant life, but death too sometimes. A couple weeks ago, we ran into the pretty much disintegrated carcass of a white tailed deer. Patches of hair everywhere, ribs and bones scattered around. This trip down, there was little sign of it left, just a patch or 2 of its course hair and a couple small bones.

Several Walks at Rosetta, East Point Park, and Birkdale Ravine in Scarborough

Last few weekends, we've gotten out to Birkdale Ravine, which is a walk from us, and Rosetta McLean's Gardens, which is a drive.

We didn't have our car much this summer, having lent it to my daughter probably 65% of the summer, so we didn't get out to High Park, Col. Sam Park again, nor the Leslie Spit much, which is fine. There is Plenty to see right near us.

Birkdale, which is so close, we were happy to see 3 or 4 Cooper's Hawks, so we knew the babies from this year did well, and are out and about, lingering around the area. Three were playing together in the sky above our heads on one of the visits.

We walked the Doris McCarthy path once in the last 3 weeks as well. This is by far our favourite. We tend to stay away from Bluffer's Park in the summer, just too crowded with groups of people and laden with garbage. Similar situation to if one goes out to Oshawa lake front too.

East Point Park is great for birds, and a really nice walk. You just need to be aware of the "rendezvous crowd", if you venture into certain spots along small foot paths. The guys mostly park down at the far west end lot, and traipse in a constant stream in and out of their established paths. Walking along the beach shore of this park is also really fun, lots to discover and lots of old dead drift wood textures and shapes too. Just be prepared to disrobe at Scarborough's famous "Nude Beach" lol!

The Monarch butterflies seemed to be just starting, early Aug walks, and are now out in full force this Labour Day weekend at Rosetta.

This seems to be the year for Cicadas. There were a lot of them flying around, making their loud buzzy sounds, at East Point Park in Scarborough. I had not seen them so active before, either we see them dead or just sitting.

Sunflowers were beautiful at Rosetta! Lots of bees, tons of wasps, and small butterflies and moths too.

We were treated to humming birds, twice, both times at Rosetta, feasting on the flowers there. I did get some shots of them, not great ones, but good compared to most years :-)

It's a treat just walking around these areas, seeing so many different types of people along our jaunts, lots of photographers, and of course, all the thrilling textures and such, as well as the creatures! Not to mention, the one lawn that was green this summer, the AstroTurf lawn on Brimley lol! I used to threaten to do this to the lawn at my old house as I hated trying to keep a good lawn lol! Seems someone else actually went further.

Cool Walk at Toronto's Rouge Park!

Last weekend, we decided to hit Rouge Park again! Last time, we enjoyed the first ever sighting of a Pileated Woodpecker!

There were clear warning signs near the odd patch of giant hog weed or cow parsnip plants we saw, but most of these plants had been already dead and were a bit in from the paths, some very far in.

Upon entering the park, we heard what sounded like a bird of prey in distress or upset about something, continuously calling. Soon enough, looking up, there was an adult red tailed hawk circling and circling the large same area radius. This went on as we got out of ear shot and it was a bit upsetting as we couldn't really do anything for the bird, which was quite far away and looked to be over an unreachable area up an incline. The bird seemed physically fine through my lens but it was continuously calling and in a high pitched drastic sort of distressed way. Our assumption, uneducated I must add, was that possibly its juvenile was missing, injured or its mate was missing. Later on, on our way out 3+ hours later, we came close to the area again, could still hear it, then suddenly there were 4 hawks, 2 in pursuit of each other, so we figured it was some sort of  not welcomed stranger thing or territory argument, which in a way did help to alleviate most of the upset it caused us to feel, thinking some horrible imaginings.

There were lots of butterflies around and a few awesome dragonflies. We saw red admirals, an Aphrodite frittilery, and lots of white butterflies. We saw dusky brown coloured butterflies too, the name of those I forget.

As for birds, we saw red breasted gros beaks, cedar wax wings, black capped chickadees, cat birds, song sparrows, the pileated woodpecker,

The most exciting plant we saw, and it has to be real cool for me to get all worked up about a plant, was the globe thistle. They were actually in bloom with little purple flowers! First time we've ever seen that, The butterflies and bees just Love them it seems.

The Rouge Park also has a camp ground, which is a municipal camp ground, owned by the city of Toronto. I've never camped there, considering I lived in Ajax which is next door practically, and now live only 20 mins away in Scarborough, but it is always full, fire wood smoke smells are often detectable as one passes it on the 401 Highway lol! Many of the campers though were out on the trails along with the crop in hikers like us. It is a lovely conservation and hiking trail park, with a mix of a bit of short rugged inclines in spots of the paths, which are excellent for exercise if one wants to go those directions. There are a couple more advanced hiker paths, steep inclines, lots of rugged uneven gravel ground, but there are lots of stretches of mainly flat path trails too. We encountered no mosquitoes the late afternoon/evening walk we did, although part of the trails go along the river.

We do enjoy this park and its trails and will be going back in the fall again for the autumn leaves and raptors hopefully.

Butterfly Day Walk at Doris McCarthy Trail

One of our favourite places to go, is the Doris McCarthy Trail in Scarborough. It's great exercise due to the incline and ruggedness of the hike back up, plus it is alive with local and migratory birds, dragonflies, bees, butterflies, deer, wild flowers, and leads to the shores of Lake Ontario.

Our favourite time to go there is late afternoon/evening due to the really beautiful evening light, back lighting photo opportunities, and it isn't quite as busy with people and dogs as much later on. Early morning would be great too, where there'd be a better chance of seeing deer, though we have seen them in the afternoon too. We often spot their tracks down by the water in the damp clay and sand spots.

The hike on Saturday produced quite a few sightings and photo opportunities for butterflies. We spotted the Red Admiral, Silver Spotted Skimmer, White Cabbage, tiny orange moths, Mourning Cloak, and little purple guys whose names I forget right now.

For birds, we saw cardinals, chipping sparrows, heard a white throated sparrow, saw baby robins in a nest, American gold finches, cedar wax wings, terns and gulls fishing.

We even saw a mommy spider with baby spiders on her back, for the second time down there lol!

Such a great place to visit and an awesome work out.