Long Point - July 2024
This past weekend I went on the first dedicated shoot I’d been on in months - to Long Point, Ontario, a 40 kilometre sand spit and cradle of wetlands on the north shore of Lake Erie.
I was there to gather material for a long-form video on the history of Trumpeter Swans in Canada. Long Point plays a brief, tragic role in that history. But the larger story of the place is inspirational. Once upon a time it was lawless, dangerous and being stripped of every natural resource it had, animal and plant, until a wealthy group got together and bought out most of the land. That was the start of Long Point’s transition to where it is today, a bastion of conservation.
I hiked a few of the birding trails and artificial wetlands in the area, and stayed in Long Point Provincial Park, which is dominated by a gorgeous 2 kilometre beach and rolling sand dunes, also carefully managed and protected. Like its more famous Lake Erie neighbour Point Pelee far to the west, Long Point is a hub for migrating birds but it’s a solid birding destination any time of year. Some highlights of my trip:
horse flies swarming me and, weirdly, my camera, on one (and only one) trail - are they attracted to heat? They really seemed to like the camera more than me, which suited me fine.
Trying to hike some of the grassland trails in the provincial park with a sign at the entrances cautioning that ‘deer ticks have been encountered in this area’. This turned out to mean that, after about 5 minutes on the trail, I had about 50 ticks crawling up my shoes and legs. I spent about an hour making sure there were none left on me or hiding in my shoes when I got back to my camp site. Like the horseflies, this was the one place on the whole trip I had any problem with them.
I realized how pervasive Chinese Mysterysnails are in the lake. I actually did a video that touched on banded mysterysnails in the Rideau Canal, but these guys are way more impressive - huge (for snails) and packed into every inlet.
Kayaking around a swampy inlet and running aground on sand every few minutes made me feel like a historical re-enactor. The area is notorious for shipwrecks because of the shallow water and unpredictable sandy bottom. More than 400 wrecks are documented in our very own Bermuda Triangle, the ‘Lake Erie Quadrangle’
I also stopped in at The Chip Ship for some of their dill pickle fries - worth the hype.
Finally, behold the signage of Old Cut:
#10 really took this one in a different direction.