By W. D. McIlveeen

During the summer of 2014 (May 26 to August 25), a total of 14 evening walks were organized for various areas of Halton and Peel Regions. The site locations are listed in the following table along with the names of the leaders and the numbers of participants on each walk. An attempt was made to alternate sites in the south and the north part of the area. Overall, there were five different leaders (Ray Blower, Kirsten Burling, W. McIlveen, Dawn Renfrew, and Leanne Wallis).

One of the walks was cancelled due to heavy rain which reduced the potential attendance and to eliminate any safety concerns that wet trails might cause. Excluding the cancelled walks, the numbers of participants (excluding the leaders) ranged from two to 9 with an average of six participants per walk. This is very close to the attendance in 2013. There was a small core group of participants that came out for most walks but there were also many walks where the participants were infrequent attendants. Two were not typical walks. The trip that took place on the weekend of August 9 and 10 went to two oak savannah sites in Windsor and to two sites at Point Pelee. At those locations, the participants were treated to fine weather and saw many rare species of plants and butterflies. The trip on August 18 met in Limehouse but the event actually happened in Glen Williams where we participated in the ‘Shadfly Festival’ and we got to see huge numbers of mayflies emerging from the river.

Overall, comments from people that did come out for the walks indicated that they found the trips to be interesting and enjoyable.

It is anticipated that evening walks will be continued in 2015. If possible, we will try to time one of the evenings in August to take place at the time of the Shadfly Festival. Consideration will also be given to having one evening walk coincide with a Chimney Swift count (e.g. Oakville).