Geoff and Emily Styles
are extremely excited to be leading this group. We are both elementary school teachers at
Bastion, and are both passionate not only about the outdoors but also about
taking children outdoors! We have been
lucky to have had many experiences with children out in nature, from our time
in South Korea to our work here in Canada as teachers to discovering nature
with our own two young kids. We are looking forward to the adventures we will
be sharing with you and your children in the years to come! Emily and Geoff
We’d like to snowshoe/walk the Eagle River Nature Trails starting at 1:00pm in the parking lot. This is an under-visited park (especially in winter), that could offer some great animal tracks and will get us down to the river as well, not to mention the massive Western Red Cedar trees that grace the space there! Here is how to access the park: https://goo.gl/maps/UMZVczufQpA2
White Lake Lookout trail
We’ll meet at the bike trail parking lot. This trail offers a nice suite of ecosystems as well as a lovely flower show, many bird species and an amazing view from the viewpoint after a less-than-arduous 40-minute hike.
Nature Bay Trail Head
Ed Dahl will meet us there and show us the ins and outs (no pun intended) of cleaning out the nest boxes used by swallows last year. This is an exciting opportunity to see what the world of nesting birds looks like up close! We’ll open up each box and clean out the nest contents to get them ready for this year’s birds. Along the way I’m sure we’ll bump into a number of bird species, possibly recording as many as 40 that afternoon.
Sunday February 14
1pm
Skull Discovery!
Our skull discovery day with Jeremy Ayotte will be held Sunday, February 14 at 1:00 pm down at the bay. We’ll aim to gather under the covered pagoda where the band plays for Wednesdays on the Wharf.
If you could RSVP by Thursday, February 11, that would be great. It promises to be a very educational outing with a chance at seeing some animals like you’ve never seen them before!
Second annual Christmas Bird Count for Kids!
1 pm
Salmon Arm Wharf
We’ll meet at the Salmon Arm wharf at 1:00 pm and work our way to Christmas Island along the foreshore trail. We’ll then turn our attention to Peter Jannink Park to end the count. All are welcome!
Sunday, October 4th
We’ll be driving up to South Hub and walking into the forest from there with one goal in mind – mushrooms!! We hope to cover most colours of the rainbow as we trip along patches of an amazing variety of mushrooms in the lovely forest up there. We’ll be led by Shuswap Naturalist Club President Ed MacDonald.
Sunday, September 13 at 1:00pm
Meet at Bastion school parking lot
We’ll
be heading out to the brand new North Fork Wild Conservation Park to
see the new trail and boardwalk system just built this past summer.
It’s not very often you get to visit a park that is in its first year of
having infrastructure built. We’ll head down to the gorgeous sandy
beach along the Perry River, then head up to the 400-year old Hemlock
forest and on over the new swamp boardwalk. There will be lots of
interesting plants, possibly early mushrooms and some iconic Shuswap
wet-belt scenes to take in. There may even be some barefoot walking:)
April
Pond Peek
Plans are in motion for an excellent invertebrate study along the Nature Trail with local insect expert Art Borkent. We’ll have microscopes, plenty of tools to safely pick out bugs from the water we scoop up, and ID cards to help us determine what it is we’re discovering!
Sunday March 29th, 2015
Building Bird Houses
Sunday, February 22nd
Snowshoe Hike
We’d like to offer a snowshoe hike around the amazing new regional park called North Fork Wild just north of Malakwa. If you don’t know much about it, it will be a great chance to get to know it now that phase one of trails are to be completed this spring. It is a wonderful place to spend a few hours, and hopefully we’ll get the chance to see tracks of some of the animals that wander through that property.
Sunday, January 4th, 2015
9 AM
Christmas Bird Count for Kids (CBC4Kids)!
If numbers work out, we will fan out in two directions, counting all the birds in and around the bay between Peter Jannink Park to the west and the Raven Trail to the east. This will be Salmon Arm’s very first Christmas Bird Count for Kids, and the results will be tallied up and sent in to the bird count headquarters once we’re done!
Sunday, November 23rd
12:30 – 3 PM
October 19th, 2014
We’re heading to the Adams River to take in the wonder of the Sockeye Salmon return migration!