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Southern Ontario Wildlife / Re: Foxes and Rabbits
« Last post by Ally on June 25, 2022, 09:46:15 pm »This morning, at 6:15ish, a fox ran by my door, so it's not that I don't have foxes here, they are just early risers
Recent Posts
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General Discussions / Re: The Health Of This Board
« Last post by Ally on June 25, 2022, 09:43:52 pm »I have not had a lot of time to birding, those times I do, it was super windy. I am making a trip to Windsor and hopefully to Pelee next week, so hopefully I will have something to post.
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General Discussions / Re: The Health Of This Board
« Last post by TransAtlanticGoose on June 25, 2022, 02:57:10 pm »That is a wonderful phrase. I think English would do well to adopt a sentiment like that.
I can only imagine what this site was like in it’s heyday (I’ve only been here for a couple of years now), but looking at historical posts I can certainly imagine the rich contributions that the regular members made. While I imagine that a few members have moved on to Facebook-groups or other social-media platforms, I suspect that most of those original posters have dropped off the posting radar due to a lack of time to post (or worse still, time to photograph!). The big shame is that their illustrious mantle isn’t being taken up by a new generation, and that is probably due to the simple fact that searching the web for sites like this one are not as easy as it used to be. (And that’s assuming that a new generation even knows to search for such a forum. … and I suppose knows what a forum is for that matter…) This forum certainly doesn’t employ the fancy search-engine optimization techniques used by the big players.
Oh, and thanks for the thumbs up on the revamping of the site. I know it was a bit of a change out of the blue, but I suspected that the old look would probably seem dated, and would be a potential turn-off for newcomers. Moreover, since the site needed to be migrated to a new server anyway, changing the look was really not much extra work.
To hopefully answer some of the other queries:
I can only imagine what this site was like in it’s heyday (I’ve only been here for a couple of years now), but looking at historical posts I can certainly imagine the rich contributions that the regular members made. While I imagine that a few members have moved on to Facebook-groups or other social-media platforms, I suspect that most of those original posters have dropped off the posting radar due to a lack of time to post (or worse still, time to photograph!). The big shame is that their illustrious mantle isn’t being taken up by a new generation, and that is probably due to the simple fact that searching the web for sites like this one are not as easy as it used to be. (And that’s assuming that a new generation even knows to search for such a forum. … and I suppose knows what a forum is for that matter…) This forum certainly doesn’t employ the fancy search-engine optimization techniques used by the big players.
Oh, and thanks for the thumbs up on the revamping of the site. I know it was a bit of a change out of the blue, but I suspected that the old look would probably seem dated, and would be a potential turn-off for newcomers. Moreover, since the site needed to be migrated to a new server anyway, changing the look was really not much extra work.
To hopefully answer some of the other queries:
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‘it is weird that the moderators are the same’- Well their accounts still exist, and I tried not to change the moderating assignments (except for those who asked to be removed), but really, none of the mods have been active in over a year, some longer. So there hasn’t been much moderation, except when I happen to notice a spam post coming in. And really, you guys don’t really need much moderation, you generally all get along pretty well. ;-P
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‘I notice that the administrators have changed’- Yup. I took over from Andy when he posted that he was planning on shutting down the server because his health was preventing him from keeping it running.
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‘Most online ever was only yesterday’- Sadly I suspect that a lot of those daily visits are bots crawling the site, rather than real users, because the number is roughly the same from day to day, which would be unusual for real people. - In fact, in the last year the number of fake-user signups have increased really dramatically (187 pending ‘new users’ today alone as of writing this!). I have actually had to disable automatic acceptance of new users because The Bots are becoming too smart, and can bypass the CAPTCHA and bird-related questions with ease these days. Now I have to manually review each ‘new user’ to see if their email is already in a database of spam emails, and if their IP makes sense.
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Toronto Wildlife / Re: Minnows trying to jump up Don dam north of Pottery Road
« Last post by dodo on June 24, 2022, 04:03:02 pm »I went by the dam today and the Creek Chub were still jumping in the same spot but not as many as yesterday. I counted at least 15 large Carp below the dam but they weren't doing any jumping. I grew up in Orillia and would ocassionally catch yellow perch in the spring at the narrows between Simcoe and Couchiching.I don't have any familiarity with Creek Chub like you do Axeman.
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Southern Ontario Wildlife / Re: Foxes and Rabbits
« Last post by Dr. John on June 24, 2022, 12:38:39 pm »Well it's great that you got to see both. Hope that the foxes come back again to save your plants.
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Toronto Wildlife / Re: Minnows trying to jump up Don dam north of Pottery Road
« Last post by Axeman on June 24, 2022, 12:34:08 pm »My parents bought a townhouse in the cookeville area of Mississauga back '72....brand new development....cornfields all around....and we backed onto the "ravine"....Cooksville Creek....I spent a couple of summers when I was maybe 7 - 8 walking up and down the creek with a little net catching Chub....keeping them in a live well until the end of the day and then dumping them out....that's in the fond memory bin in my head.
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Toronto Wildlife / Re: Minnows trying to jump up Don dam north of Pottery Road
« Last post by dodo on June 23, 2022, 09:25:40 pm »Yes Axeman they do look like Creek Chub .Thanks for the feedback.
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Southern Ontario Wildlife / Foxes and Rabbits
« Last post by Axeman on June 23, 2022, 09:11:54 pm »I wish life were like Disney....where the foxes and bunnies could get along...
I love seeing both the foxes and the bunnies....for the past few years we've had a fox den out in front of our house...last year we were fortunate enough to have 2 fox dens on our property and not that far from each other either....maybe 600 m or so apart....but there were absolutely no rabbits about...none at all....I had a feeling that our resident foxes had decided to move on in the spring when we started seeing bunnies again...first a couple...and now there are hundreds of tiny little bunnies all over....and....at first I was delighted....but I'm noticing that they're eating EVERYTHING they shouldn't be....they're on my deck eating potted plants....I planted roses for my wife in a planter and well they picked the one bush I could find that was labelled as moderate scent (everything else this year was light)....they ate the buds...they ate the leaves....sigh....at least the foxes didn't eat the plants.
I love seeing both the foxes and the bunnies....for the past few years we've had a fox den out in front of our house...last year we were fortunate enough to have 2 fox dens on our property and not that far from each other either....maybe 600 m or so apart....but there were absolutely no rabbits about...none at all....I had a feeling that our resident foxes had decided to move on in the spring when we started seeing bunnies again...first a couple...and now there are hundreds of tiny little bunnies all over....and....at first I was delighted....but I'm noticing that they're eating EVERYTHING they shouldn't be....they're on my deck eating potted plants....I planted roses for my wife in a planter and well they picked the one bush I could find that was labelled as moderate scent (everything else this year was light)....they ate the buds...they ate the leaves....sigh....at least the foxes didn't eat the plants.
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Toronto Wildlife / Re: Minnows trying to jump up Don dam north of Pottery Road
« Last post by Axeman on June 23, 2022, 09:07:12 pm »Sounds like creek chub from your description....google and see if that's the fish.
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Toronto Wildlife / Minnows trying to jump up Don dam north of Pottery Road
« Last post by dodo on June 23, 2022, 08:35:57 pm »I was going past the concrete Don River dam north of Pottery Road at 5PM today and I noticed a constant stream of minnows flying out of the water at the edge of the dam beside the bicycle trail. The water drops about 2 feet here so very few of the miniature fish were able to swim over the dam. I could see there was a very large school below the dam. I sat on the dam and it did not take long to catch some in my hand. They were 2-2.5 inches long.I don't know what species they were but they had a black lateral line and were dark grey above and white below.