I suppose the mallard is the most familiar duck in the northern hemisphere. The grey body, brilliant green head, yellow beak, and substantial size are the marks of the mallard drake.
About that green head. It isn’t really green at all—that is, there is no green pigment in the feathers. If you took those feathers and crushed them all up, no green would show at all, just a dull brown.
The green is caused by reflection of light from a very, very thin coating on each feather.

You all know this insect. He is a pretty stocky fellow—black and yellow. And he tends to fly in a sort of unprogrammed way.
Most insects fly as though they know where they want to go, but the bumblebee seems to fly in a sort of clumsy way. He even will fly right into things, and if he lands on something, he seems to move around as though he was lost.
I suppose this is sort of, well, bumbling.

The Bufflehead is a very small duck, with the males weighing a pound and females smaller still.
Many of you hunters will know these as “butterballs.” This is because, in the fall, they store up a large amount of fat for use during the long migration.
The male bird usually is seen as black and white. On the water, it is black on top, white below. In flight, a lot of white shows up—on the back and on the wings.
He has a prominent white patch on the back of his head, which separates him from the Goldeneyes and Scaups.

Will the caribou ever return to its old haunts in Northwestern Ontario?
Maybe? There are still a few in some parts of the northwest, and a few in the east, too.
Once upon a time, the caribou was the most common game animal in Ontario—ranging all the way from the far north to the shores of Lake Erie and Ontario.
Their population in Canada was estimated to be about 2.5 million. But by the 1960s, this had fallen to about 200,000.

We’re lucky in Northwestern Ontario to be able to successfully target multiple species of fish of all sizes; from panfish to large sturgeon and everything in between.
If you’re like most anglers, you probably own a few different rod and reel set-ups for various fish and fishing techniques.
But with the wide array of lures available to anglers today, how do we go about picking the proper outfits to do an adequate job for the technique we are trying to employ to catch the species of our choice?

Most people who feed birds in the winter in this area will be familiar with the Evening Grosbeak. It has a body about the size of a robin, but with a short tail and an enormous beak.
The male birds are beautifully marked in yellow, black, and white while the females are more conservatively arrayed in dull brown with a wash of yellow.
Both have black and white wings.
The Evening Grosbeak has been steadily extending its breeding range for some years. At one time, it was a native of western Canada, but now its range extends right through to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

In the great scheme of things in the universe, we do have some things which help us against these tiny pests.
For one thing, we have some “built-in” protections of our own. Our skin, and the mucous membranes which are inside your body openings, are very effective in preventing viruses from getting right inside, you where they can get at your interior cells.
Then, when cells are injured by viruses, they often release substances which are antiviral in nature and white blood cells (which eat bacteria and other foreign materials) to get into your blood.

Well, it’s not only us that get sick. Thousands of other animals, birds, plants, insects, and even bacteria, get sick, too.
In the first place, a virus can’t do anything to harm anything unless it is inside a cell. As long as it is outside of a cell, on any surface, floating in the air, in the water, on your kitchen counter, or your own skin, or inside your intestine, it can’t do you any harm.

With this article, we are starting out on a series about viruses.
We all know something about them. Have you ever had a cold? Of course! How about chicken pox? Warts? Hepatitis?
If you’ve had any of these (and many, many more), then you have come up against one of our smallest, and the strongest, of our disease enemies—the viruses.
The word “virus” comes from Latin, and it means slimy liquid, stenchy, poison. And that is strange because viruses don’t have any of these characteristics at all.

This is “nannook” of the frozen north. Its home is on the ice or on the shore near the ice.
A totally Arctic animal, it is at home all around the North Pole—in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Russia, and Norway.
In the very early days of exploration on this continent, they sometimes were spotted in Newfoundland—and even as far south as Cape Breton.
The mature male is a huge animal. He may weigh in at 1,200 pounds or more and stand five feet or more at the shoulder. When he stands upright, he may be 11-plus feet.
The female is about half that size.