Sand Ripples
Few things say PEI more than the expanses of red, ripple-marked sand on our shores at low tide. One of my favourite things about those...
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katemacquarrie22
Feb 213 min read
Beaver Extirpation and Reintroduction
Over the past few centuries, PEI has lost some native animals and seen introductions of new, non-native ones. One of the most interesting...
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katemacquarrie22
Feb 143 min read
Game Bird Introductions
Releasing new species into the wild is generally frowned upon today, but this wasn’t always the case, and the 1940s were the heyday of...
91 views2 comments
katemacquarrie22
Feb 72 min read
Rockhounding on PEI
You may not think of PEI as a rockhounder’s paradise, but there are interesting geological finds here. Sure, you’re not likely to come...
1,277 views2 comments
katemacquarrie22
Jan 173 min read
Black Banks
I describe natural history as the story our land tells about itself. PEI’s bogs tell many interesting stories, and at Black Banks the...
175 views3 comments
katemacquarrie22
Jan 102 min read
2024 Eclipse
The highlight of this year’s natural calendar is the total eclipse on April 8th. PEI will be in the path of totality, making this among...
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katemacquarrie22
Jan 32 min read
Coal
I hope you didn’t find a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking, but did you know you can find it along PEI’s shores? Let’s start the...
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katemacquarrie22
Dec 26, 20232 min read
A New Year's Resolution: Nature Literacy
We’ve lost our nature literacy. Here’s why that matters. It wasn’t that long ago that just about every Islander knew how to catch a...
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katemacquarrie22
Dec 6, 20233 min read
Stories in Sandstone
To me, Natural History is the story our land tells about itself. PEI’s oldest stories are told by our sandstone cliffs and go back some...
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katemacquarrie22
Nov 15, 20232 min read
Sandstone Oxidation
With the change of seasons, my plant and fungus posts are coming to an end and my two popular winter series – PEI natural history and...
202 views0 comments
katemacquarrie22
Jul 12, 20232 min read
Walchia Fossil Find
I’ve been checking my favorite coastal sites to see how they’re doing after Hurricane Fiona. As predicted, our sand dunes are recovering...
178 views1 comment
katemacquarrie22
Apr 5, 20233 min read
The Ring-necked Pheasant Introduction
The 20th century was the ‘Wild West’ of wildlife introductions on PEI. You can read more about the Island’s White-tailed Deer experiment...
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katemacquarrie22
Mar 15, 20234 min read
Hungarian Partridge
During the 20th century, no fewer than six species of game birds were released on PEI with hopes they would establish. The most...
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katemacquarrie22
Mar 1, 20233 min read
PEI's White-tailed Deer Experiment
I recently received this lovely photo from Joyce Dewar, granddaughter of Walter Jones who was Premier of PEI from 1943 to 1953. This is...
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katemacquarrie22
Feb 22, 20232 min read
Permian to Present 13: The 20th Century
Through 12 chapters of my ‘Permian to Present’ series, we’ve explored PEI from the formation of its bedrock 300 million years ago,...
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katemacquarrie22
Feb 8, 20233 min read
Permian to Present 12: Introduced Wildlife
In recent editions of Permian to Present, we’ve seen how and why PEI lost its large, native mammals. But in the 1900s, people thought...
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katemacquarrie22
Feb 1, 20233 min read
Permian to Present 11: Land in the 1700s and 1800s
In the last three editions of ‘Permian to Present’ we looked at aspects of PEI’s forests and wildlife hundreds of years ago, before...
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katemacquarrie22
Jan 25, 20232 min read
Permian to Present 10: Otters!
Today you get two posts in one! My winter series ‘Permian to Present’ and ‘Wildlife Tracks & Sign’ intersect to tell the story of River...
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katemacquarrie22
Jan 18, 20233 min read
Permian to Present 9: Pre-settlement wildlife
In the last edition of Permian to Present, we got a glimpse into the Island landscape of three centuries ago, around the time Europeans...
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katemacquarrie22
Jan 11, 20232 min read
Permian to Present 8: Pre-settlement forests
In the last edition of PEI: Permian to Present, we learned what ancient pollen and early Indigenous sites tell us about the Island...
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