Dispatch From Petrie #173, October 2026

Opening the car doors on arrival in the parking lot, we were greeted by the shotgun blasts of hunters on the Quebec side. Not the nicest way to start the day. In hopes of seeing a beaver, we had arrived 15-20 minutes before sunrise. We did spot a swimming beaver for all of five seconds, after which it disappeared.

Not sure if it was the shotguns, but the geese seemed restless with constant honking, the mallards were quacking, even a great blue heron was awake in the reeds. 

(Heron “lit” up in photo editing as the day was still dark.)

When the sun did rise, it lit the trees; unfortunately the clouds rolled in shortly afterwards.

The trees lining the river on the Quebec side

Some of the colour within Petrie

Virginia creeper vines, poison ivy, green ash 

A plant I had not paid attention to before: a three-seeded mercury. If you look closely, a caterpillar of the small white butterfly is at the top.

Something else I must not have paid much attention to – bittersweet berries on small plants low to the ground. I had only noticed them on vines hanging like grapes. The poison ivy berries I knew well.

Damp burst seed pod on a common milkweed, and burst pods on a dog-strangling vine.

Some fleabane daisies were blooming still/again. A fresh sow thistle flower with an accompanying litigated furrow bee. (That’s what the phone app said it was😊) 

While the beaver only showed itself for a few seconds, we could see where it had been eating overnight. Small branches cut from a recovering stump had been stripped of their bark.

And not far away, it looked like a muskrat had been gathering reeds for its winter den, or maybe for eating.

The deer and raccoon tracks along the river seemed quite fresh.

While walking the trails we saw/heard chickadees, juncos, robins and nuthatches, however none posed long enough to get a photo.

But a female pileated woodpecker didn’t seem to mind us being quite close to her.

The geese were actively leaving the river and heading to fields, likely hoping to find fallen seeds on freshly harvested fields.

A lone juvenile herring gull took off as we approached

In previous visits there had been a lone cormorant on a deadhead in Turtle Pond, this time there was a pair sitting on the log.

An hour or so after sunrise the herons and egrets were more active

A mallard pair were swimming (conveniently) through some fall colour reflections. Several wood ducks were out on the water as well.

Several crows were flying about, landing on a nearby dead tree.