Biokits add a fun twist to park visits
Nature education leads to more eco awareness
Standing just a few feet away from a red-winged blackbird’s nest, I could see the heads of two tiny chicks popping up above the edge of the nest.
I zoomed in with my camera, clicked and then screamed.
Without my realizing it, the mother bird had left the nest and flown up into the air. As my kids watched, she flew down and grazed the top of my head, successfully getting me away from her babies.
It was a little bit closer to nature than I had intended to get while visiting LaSalle’s Parc des rapides last week. I was using a Biokit, developed by Montreal’s Biosphere museum, to learn more about the history and wildlife of the 30-hectare park that hugs the shores of the St. Lawrence River.
The guide to Parc des rapides is one of 10 biokits the Biosphere developed for city of Montreal parks. Other parks include Mount Royal, La Fontaine, Cap St. Jacques and Pointe aux Prairies.
The two-page downloadable pamphlet is designed to help park visitors experience the biodiversity in urban parks. The more people know about nature, the museum says, the more likely they will be to protect it.
The biokits each contain information about three or four aspects of the park, along with GPS co-ordinates and a map to help locate the sites to observe them.
You can use the Biokit on an iPhone, but we printed out the Parc des rapides pamphlet at home and then headed for the park. There are also plasticized copies available at the park chalets.
Parc des rapides is a strip of shoreline along the St. Lawrence, along with marshes and islands that offer up-close views of the churning whitewater of the Lachine Rapids.
Our visit took us to a lookout over the rapids where we saw some brave souls riding the waves in kayaks. We learned that eels were once caught there, but that Quebec’s eel population has been reduced by overfishing, pollution and dam construction. The snakelike fish is expected to be added to the province’s threatened or vulnerable species list.
Walking through the park gave us ample opportunity to check out the wildlife. The park has been a migratory bird sanctuary since 1937 and birds are easily spotted there.
There were lots of red-winged blackbirds, their yellow-and-red striped wings flashing as they flew among the trees. We saw ducks bobbing for food in a quieter part of the river and a majestic great blue heron perched on a log in the water. It’s not surprising to see herons in the park: In the middle of the river across from the park lies Île aux Hérons, a protected island with a significant heron population.
Birds aren’t the only wildlife to keep an eye out for. One of the many photographers in the park that day warned us to stick to the paths to avoid nesting snapping turtles.
The Biokit for Montreal’s Lafontaine Park features wildlife of a different kind: “voracious squirrels” that wreak havoc on the park’s trees, tearing through the bark in the spring to get to the sap and weakening tree branches. Ignoring the squirrels, we were able to admire part of the park’s history – a shuttered building that is all that remains the Jardin des merveilles, a zoo located in the park from 1958 to 1989.
While each kit also includes the GPS co-ordinates for a hidden geocache with interesting information about the park, we weren’t able to find it at two of the parks we visited.
City spokesperson Valérie de Gagné said the geocaches are indeed hidden. We’ll just have to look harder next time.