On the ground In cyberspace News from elsewhere The Fletcher Wildlife Garden is a project of the Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club. It is located on 6 ha of land just south of the Arboretum in Ottawa, Canada. Check our Blog often for photos and notes on what's happening at the FWG. And, for a longer-term view, read our Progress reports	What's up at the Fletcher Wildlife Garden January 2008 Happy New Year!! This is a great time to look back over the last year, think about what we've done, and plan for this new year. First we'd like to thank all the volunteers who make the FWG possible. Many people don't realize that the FWG is run entirely by volunteers; our only paid position is 10-week summer job for a student. Regular and casual volunteers maintain the Backyard Garden (the FWG's showplace), staff the Interpretive Centre and keep it shipshape, mow the trail, control invasive species (a huge job and very grueling work), inventory wildlife, maintain our nursery, do repairs, grow plants for our annual native plant sale, apply for grants, prepare and staff displays on and off site, give talks and conduct tours, liaise with Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada, and maintain links with a number of local conservation groups. Needless to say, we always need more help. Although the work is hard, it's also very satisfying and we have a lot of fun. If you can join one of our regular crews or volunteer for only a few hours, please let us know! More about volunteering at the FWG... As always, we would love to hear your comments, ideas, suggestions about this newsletter and the Fletcher Wildlife Garden in general. Please e-mail us at fletcher@ofnc.ca
On the ground	Our visitors This spring, we hosted a Carleton University geography field camp. One of the exercises the students carried out was a visitor survey that allowed us to find out more about the people who come to the FWG. More...
	Upcoming workshops at the FWG The Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club (our parent organization) has scheduled a number of interesting workshops at the FWG this winter and spring — a good reason to join the club, if you haven't already done so! Details of these workshops and OFNC excursions are available on our web site. Sunday, 27 January, 2-4:30 p.m. Keeping the heat in (how to weatherproof your house and save energy) Sunday, 30 March, 2-5 p.m. Mineralogy workshop for beginners Saturday, 5 April, 2-5 p.m. Petrology workshop for beginners In addition, Christine Hanrahan will be presenting an update on research into invasive species to FWG volunteers. Watch the FWG web site for details or contact us if you are interested in attending.
	A little help from our friends A big thanks to David Stewart of Landscape Ontario for donating logs for our new habitat signs, topsoil for potting up plants, and great piles of leaves for mulching the garden next summer. Thanks to Jim Ronson for bringing us rocks, something a wildlife garden can always use. Thanks to Neville Woodman for thinking of us when a friend wanted to get rid of some split rails. And thanks to Dave (a regular visitor to the FWG) for the supply of tarpaulins.
In cyberspace	Inventories and monitoring The Carleton field camp experience (mentioned above) also taught us that we have good records in specific areas, but poor records in other respects. In an effort to remedy this situation, we gathered together all the butterfly observations we could find — Peter Hall's early observations dating back to 1990, Christine Hanrahan's more recent records for 2004-2006, miscellaneous notes by other people, and photos taken by student employees and volunteers. These are summarized on our web site. In addition, Christine updated her inventory of plants at the FWG this summer. Differences from previous inventories were noted as was the increase in diversity from about 68 species in 1992 to over 200 this year. Perhaps more important, in 1992, 65% of the inventoried plants were non-native; in 2007, this proportion had decreased to 53%. Annie Belair translated the list of species into French, and we are currently adding photographs of as many as possible. More... Henry Steger designed an observations database and entered all the information from the notes that we tend to scribble into a book in the Interpretive Centre. This exercise made us all aware of the need to be as precise as possible in our observations (and especially to initial them in case there are questions). For example, one person's "a few" may be someone else's "many." What does it all mean? We're not sure. It seems that the number of species of wildlife that we are monitoring has increased over the last 15 years. Every other conclusion must be taken with a grain of salt. On a positive note, Peter Hall remarked recently that although we may not see an immediate purpose for these lists and notes, the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility is built on just such observations from a variety of sources. In the great scheme of things they all add up to a huge and important resource. More FWG inventories...
	Cinquefoils of the Ottawa District Thanks to retired botanist and OFNC honorary member, John Gillett, we now have a key to the local species of cinquefoils on our web site. Unlike many of our native plants, which are adapted to woodland setting, these plants love sun and bloom in mid-summer. Not all are native, but we've introduced several of the native ones (Silverweed and Three-toothed Cinquefoil) into our Backyard Garden. Key to cinquefoils...
News from elsewhere	Great Backyard Bird Count Millions of novice and accomplished bird watchers can make their fascination with nature add up for science and for the future during the 11th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, led by Audubon and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. From February 15 to 18, 2008, anyone can count birds from wherever they are and enter their tallies online at www.birdcount.org. These reports create an exciting real-time picture of where the birds are across the continent and contribute valuable information for science and conservation. FWG spin-offs We were delighted this summer, when a former FWG volunteer emailed to ask about the labels in our Backyard Garden. Sarah is a teacher in Kanata, where she and her students have created a 300-foot hedgerow on the school grounds as part of Project vert. She came to us for help with labels for the native plants and shrubs they've used — and ended up buying some perennials from our nursery that will attract wildlife to the new hedge. More about the project... Another teacher at a different school asked us for help with a Monarch butterfly conservation project. We helped her find enough milkweed seeds for her students to distribute to all their neighbours in the hope that they will grow them for next year's Monarch caterpillars. If you are creating wildlife habitat or have a nature project on the go, we'd love to hear about it!!
	Friends of the Farm publish book on Ottawa's Arboretum With over 500 colour photographs and maps of several walks, For the Love of Trees gives an intimate view of the tree collection at one of our country’s most precious national historic landscapes. The book is available from Friends of the Farm and in bookstores.