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J lO-Orono Weekly Times, Wednesday, May 17, 1989 A twelve hour danceathom in the fresh green of the wood nettles, nettles, a Palm Warbler picking about in the mud, a lilack throated Green , .(lilting in one of the trees, and a Common Yellow-throat perched for an instant to-drink. All about us, Yellow Warblers, incandescent in the gloom, seemed to admire their own reflections in the pond. Pelee, a little oasis bustling with life, illustrates the importance of habitat protection through the parks system. For it is largely in national national parks like Peiee, and provincial provincial parks like Rondeau, that the vegetation and creatures of the Canada's deep south survive. Without the protection of the parks, this Carolinian region of Canada, a part of our heritage, would probably have vanished before the onslaught of "civilization." "civilization." If you would like to find out more about this unique region of Canada, the Federation of Ontario Naturalists has produced a special issue of its magazine, Season, about the Carolinian region of Ontario. It is available from the FON for $4.50, including postage and handling. handling. Send your requests to Marion Strebig, FON, 355 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, M3B 2W8. -- Macramé Supplies -- Lampshades - -- Hanging Tables -- Chairs -- -- Custom Orders Diane Bus: 987-1313 Res: 987-1253 1 Mill Street North, Box 130 Newcastle, Ontario LOA 1H0 Weekly Classes Call for apppointment Last Friday evening and into late dawn Saturday some one hundred students at Clarke participated in a the Clarke danceathon in aid Music department. It was steady going throughout the twelve hour period with lots' of hip, hand and feet action. Woods, Water and Wildlife by Marion Strebig Deep South Last weekend I went south. To get to the heartbeat of the spring migration I visited Point Pelee which is in the same latitude as northern northern California. This southernmost southernmost tip of the Canadian mainland is paît of a chain of islands and peninsulas which act like stepping stones across Lake Erie and funnel southern migrants onto the point. For a time every spring and fall this little sand spit provides s show as spectacular as any in North America. But the birds are not the only attraction attraction of this small (6 square miles) spit. Here one of the few remnants of southern Ontario's original hardwood forest, which once stretched all along thé north shore of Lake Erie, extending.north to Sarnia and east to Toronto, still flourishes. Because of the moderating influence of the lakd and the latitude, Point Pelee supports supports vegetation and wildlife which are more characteristic of the southern United States than the rest of Canada. Tréfes like black walnut, shagbark hisekory, butternut, hackberry and red cedar are common here. This forest, just beginning'to put on spring spring foliage, rises majestic and almost tropical with its drapery of vines. The grooved trunks of the hackberry and the massive white elephant trunks of the sycaipore, the white ash and red oak are festooned festooned with vines like Virginia creeper, wild grape and poison ivy. • But this forest is only one of the habitats on the Point. By far the largest portion of the park consists of a marsh complex of cattails and submergent aquatic vegetation. Then there is the Long Beach area exposed to the sudden fury of the lake, and ridging the beach, an area like dry meadow. Within the park there are open meadows, a dry forest of hackberry, white ash, red oak, may apple and Virginia creeper, and a wetland forest with silver maple as the dominant species, and shrubs like spice bush. In such a varied habitat it is not difficult, at the peak of the migration, migration, even for a slow birder like me, to identify more than a 100 species. The first day I was there was bitterly cold, windy and damp, and the poor migrants hunkered down low in the vegetation searching for insects. insects. Yellow Warblers and Ruby- crowned Kinglets behaved like Brown Creepers, moving up the trunks of trees, picking insects from the bark crevices. Swallows hawked for insects inches above the sand, and a small flock of Kingbirds, exhausted exhausted new arrivals, huddled, hunched hunched and motionless on the ground. That day the dawn chorus was muted and few birds sang. The persistent cool, overcast weather has slowed the migration so that it is now.a week to 10 days behind schedule. Instead of the more than 20 species of warblers we might have expected to see, some of them rare in the rest of Ontario, we saw 14 species. But those we saw were often low, and we could study them. At one of the wooded ponds, we sat and watched a Veery, russet Clarke Museum and Archives Victoria Day Celebrations SUNDAY, MAY 21 TREE REPLACEMENT PROGRAMME PLAQUE DEDICATION Recycled Papermaking and Bookmaking Demonstrations Plaque Dedication at 2:00 P.M. Paper and Book Making from I to 4 p.m. FREE ADMISSION Bramah's Ontario (Continued from page 7) customer once called Elisabeth to say she should fire the delivery man because he was so grouchy. "Don't let him kid you," laughed laughed Elisabeth. "He's the best sales and public relations type you could find anywhere." < Elisabeth has been on the entrepreneurial entrepreneurial merry-go-round for years, and finally caught the brass ring with the carousel idea. A full- sized horse can cost up to $4,000. And with prices like that, there are few people who would look a gill horse in the mouth. Heritage '89 Parade Saturday May 87 th 10 a.m. in downtown Bowmanville Downtown Parade Route Starts at Central Public School, ^Commercial, Community and Individual Entries Welcome Ç^No Entry Fee Prizes Include Best Heritage Float Best All-Round Float, Best Musical Group ' ; For Further Information Call Stewart Chisholm 623-4301