The South Forest from Above
A view of the Assiniboine Forest in Google Earth is revealing. In the following satellite view of the South Forest, the stands of aspen (lighter green) stand out from the stands of oak or mixed forest (darker green to grey) and from the prairie or marshland (sandy). It appears to be an early autumn view, because of the colour of the prairie and marshland.
Google Earth satellite images are copyrighted by Maxar Technologies and must not be used for any commercial purpose.
Marshland
The North Forest from Above
Mapping the Forest
Plant Identification
Plant identification is a great activity in the Assiniboine Forest, forcing you to engage in some serious detective work. With each footstep, you have to keep your eyes open for the unusual, you have to build evidence (mostly photographs), you have to evaluate alternatives, and at some point you have to decide whether you have a good enough case to affirm a species.
About 25% of the Harte Trail from Shaftesbury to the perimeter highway is within the Assiniboine Forest. My plant identification project also includes the full Harte Trail, although there are relatively few species found beyond Chalfont that aren't also in the Assiniboine Forest. Any photographs in the Plants section which were taken between Chalfont and the perimeter highway are identified as Harte Trail in the captions.
As I've said elsewhere, I'm not a botanist. My means of comparison and confirmation is primarily visual, sometimes taste test (berries) and at other times spit out (buckthorn berries).
I try to identify plants using a variety of resources - books, Wikipedia, searches for pictures on Google, and plant identification software (mostly PlantNet, sometimes PictureThis). I've found that with plant identification software you have to be careful - the plant that the software proposes is not always the right one, and sometimes you can clearly see that. Frequently, plants have multiple common names, and conversely, a common name is frequently a generic name for a variety of species and sub-species. The names that your plant identification software (or nature handbook) uses is not always the one that the Habitat Site Report uses.
On the computer, it's very useful to keep botanical photos organized by category and subcategory. Grouping all the photos of a particular species and subspecies together can be a nice way to capture the seasonal changes in plants' appearances. With subsequent photographic trips to the forest, new photos can be filed into the named folders or into "unidentified" folders for future review. The dud photos can be removed as better photos become available.
I also keep all identifications in a spreadsheet, with further details such as alternate names and botanical names. The spreadsheet was originally created from the Habitat Site Report, and still includes content for plants I haven't yet located and photographed.
I've also started a new spreadsheet to keep track of the GPS locations of certain plants - mostly flowering shrubs and perennials. This should allow me to associate seasonal photos of the same species. For example, Pin Cherry, Crabapple, and Plum have very similar flowers, and I can more accurately associate a flowering shrub with a species if I already know that the plant in that location is (for example) a Crabapple. It should also allow me to return to specific plants later in the year or in the following year to get seasonal photos or better photos.
Old Cars in the Forest
There are at least three abandoned cars in the forest. I won't reveal where they are located, because that would take the fun out of your explorations.
Me and My Gear
In the forest, aches and pains go away. The legs go into automatic mode. Time becomes unimportant. The mind travels to the present.
Apart from the occasional bike ride, I hadn't spent much time in the forest until the winter of 2019. Now I can't stay out.
As I walk or cycle on the trails, my eyes are always looking for things that stand out - it might be an unusual plant or a good shot of a common plant, or trees and grasses that make a nice composition, or the way the light is falling on a scene, or an interesting object on the trail like a root cluster or a stump. I take a lot of photos. I found that plant identification is great motivation for getting out into the forest and for using a camera. And I'm a member of Charleswood Art Group. A lot of my photos are taken with an eye to what might be a good painting, or what forest elements I could piece together to make a good composition.
I bring with me either of two digital SLR's: an 18 megapixel Canon EOS T5i camera or a more compact 20.3 megapixel Canon PowerShot SX-730. Neither has GPS, but I have a Solmeta GMAX GPS attachment for the T5i which allows me to tag my photos with GPS coordinates and to map my routes.
On the T5i, I usually have an 18-55mm zoom lens mounted, but sometimes I'll head out with a 55-250mm (amateur-grade) telephoto zoom lens, either mounted or in my backpack or bike bag. Sometimes I'll bring accessories like a set of 2x to 10x close-up (macro) lenses for the T5i. The following photos of pink slime mold show the value of a close-up lens as compared to a standard lens.
The SX-730 doesn't have interchangeable lenses, but it has 40x optical zoom and 160x digital zoom, either of which can be handy for distant (not close-up) shots. It's OK to use 160x optical zoom in the forest, because the forest calms your nerves and you don't shake so much. Just kidding. The SX-730 also has excellent close-up photography, with a minimum focusing range as low as 0.4" in auto or macro modes.
I always photograph with autofocus, in one of the automatic modes. Today, I find that with the number of photos I take on a hike, it would take too long to adjust settings with each shot. I think that over time, as I take fewer shots in the forest, I'll focus more on depth of field for plant and scenic shots, and shutter time for moving objects such as bees on flowers.
That said, I've found that when shooting in automatic mode in forests it's advisable to have your camera options set to high contrast, so that photos taken in the depth of the woods won't appear washed out. And when you set out, it's important to ensure that the external controls on the camera haven't been bumped away from the settings that you really want. I learned the hard way and continue to do so.
With both cameras, I'm set to the largest image setting and the JPG setting with the least compression, so my photo image files are very large, usually 6 to 10 megabytes each, but very detailed. These settings allow me to crop the images to create close-ups. When I edit photos on the computer without cropping, I keep them at low compression, except when I reduce the file size of a photo (generally to 33%) for email purposes or for uploading to a web site like this one. When I do that, I add 10% compression to further reduce the file size.
I do most of my post-processing with PaintShop Pro 2020. For normal photo photography, I find I never have to adjust colour saturation, and anyway I want my photos to look natural, not like tourist postcards. Frequently I adjust brightness / contrast, and sometimes I sharpen the images a little. For my Nature+ Photo Art though (see Artworks section), I really go to town.
"There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing." My wife Shirley, quoting Alfred Wainwright, from "A Coast to Coast Walk".
How true this is. With the right boots, a double layer of clothing, and a good balaclava in extreme weather, deep winter is one of the most enjoyable times to go into the forest.
I usually bring a walking pole into the forest, one of a pair of Komperdells I have. A pole is very handy on minor trails or on deep snow or where there's ice nearby. I find that for my purposes one pole is sufficient, on any terrain. A pole is also very useful for helping old bones get up off the ground when there isn't a tree handy to hold on to. The sign at the parking lot gate suggests that a walking stick is a good idea if you meet up with coyotes in the forest too. I haven't yet had the pleasure.
Building a Web Site with Blogger
Blogspots are built with Blogger, an online content management system designed for multi-user blogs. It was developed by Pye Labs, who were bought out by Google in 2003. Google provides the service for free. Thanks, Google. In return, Google has access to all the content of a blogspot site, including images.
Although intended for multi-user blogs, you can also use Blogger to develop a more traditional web site, even with ready-to-use themes and layouts. The secret is to limit the blogspot to one "post" only, which becomes the home page, and to not allow any postings or comments from readers. Apart from what's on the home page, you place all the content of your site into "pages", and you can have up to 20 of them in a blogspot.
Your menu can be at the top of the screen, at the side, or elsewhere, and it generally lists most or all of your pages so that visitors can click on the topic in which they're interested. Menu items can also link to other web sites.
In Assiniboine Forest Trails (a4trails.blogspot.com), most of the menu items relate to pages. However, four of the pages (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring Melt) aren't on the menu, and instead are accessed by links embedded in the Scenic page.
But the menu does include links to Assiniboine Forest Plants (a4plants.blogspot.com) and to Assiniboine Forest Fine Art (a4fineart.blogspot.com), which as you can see are separate blogspots. This is done partly in consideration of the maximum of 20 pages within a single blogspot. As well, there are numerous categories of plants, and I'd prefer to keep the Trails menu simpler and deal with those in the Plants menu.
That's true of Fine Art also, which keeps the menu even simpler by linking to the artist pages from within the body of the Fine Art home page. There are 50 members in the Charleswood Art Group, and the future number of contributing artists to this web site is an unknown. In consideration of this and of the 20-page limit, I've also set up a4fineart2.blogspot.com, which can handle another 20. Artist pages will be on one or other of these blogspots, but all are accessed from the home page of Assiniboine Forest Fine Art. The implementation is pretty well seamless.