News
Nose Hill Botany Walk
For more information: https://www.alpenglownaturehikes.ca/index.html
John McFaul is a professional naturalist who has been leading nature walks and hikes for 35 years. A native Calgarian, he received a BSc degree in Environmental Biology from the University of Calgary. From 1986-2003 he worked for City of Calgary Parks as a naturalist for the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. John is an honourary member of the Calgary Field Naturalists’ Society (Nature Calgary) and has been awarded the prestigious Loran L. Goulden Award and the Frank and Alice Harper Memorial Award from the Federation of Alberta Naturalists (Nature Alberta). John is an accredited Professional Interpreter with the Interpretive Guides Association.
Summer Event
From Jim Davis, City of Calgary:We usually have two staff who work with your group, give safety and task demos, bring all required tools, map the event afterwards in our city weed app to track weed removals and then dispose of all listed species at a designated City facility. I coordinate volunteer weed pulls for Parks. I can work with the ecologist for Nosehill to help identify weeds to target, unless you have some that you are specifically interested in.
Weed pull opportunity. ArcGIS information Nose Hill contact
for further info and action. We're set up to do a pair of weed
pulls on the south end of Nose Hill by the winter club for
nodding thistle. They're going to be on July 13th (Sat) and
July 21st (Sun) from 9:00-11:30 a.m.
Jim Davis
Parks Program Coordinator
Activations & Education
City of Calgary
403-993-9438
Spring 2024 Newsletter
Click here for our Spring Newsletter:
A Mural on the Pedestrian Underpass: UPDATE
North Haven’s pedestrian underpass to Nose Hill Park will have a mural installed this summer! In March, a selection panel of North Haven residents, Indigenous advisors, and other experts met to choose an artist for the mural. We’re very excited to announce that Stephanie One Spot, a senior student at Alberta University of the Arts will be creating the artwork and leading the installation this summer.
Stephanie One Spot is an accomplished artist and curator. She has been involved in numerous shows in the Calgary area, including From the Land: Indigenous Ecological Art for a New Era at the ATB Gallery, Our Stories, Our Voices, Our Ways at Fort Calgary, and Forward Together at The Bows. Stephanie grew up on Tsuut’ina reserve, close to the buffalo paddock, where she could always walk out and experience the land. She is inspired by her natural surroundings, gardening with her mother, and the traditional stories told to her by her father. Her painting practice explores time, memory, and space. Her works are primarily mixed media, working with projection, photographs, spray paint, acrylics, and natural materials such as hide, willow, sand, dirt, trees, and bark. Her concept for the mural is based around traditional stories and the animals who roamed the Nose Hill area for many millennia.
This project is a partnership between the North Haven Community Association, the City of Calgary, and Alberta University for the Arts’ Lodgepole Centre. Originally scheduled for the summer of 2022, the project was moved to 2023 after various delays ate up the short window of hot weather needed for outdoor painting. The installation will take place this summer, with the start date determined by the weather. Stephanie will be presenting her sketches for the mural and holding an informal artist’s talk sometime in May. Watch for an announcement of the date and time; we hope to see you there!
For more information, email murals@northhavenyyc.ca.
www.mycalgary.com/Newsletters/Calgary/NW/North_Haven/North_Haven.pdf
No Sculptures on Nose Hill
Since we are asked for stakeholder engagement and consultation, we will post a policy on our website:
Sculptures/statues in Nose Hill Park should not be approved. Any sculpture would set a precedent and there would be more and more.
Public Art is everywhere. Please choose another place/park.
Native Bees
Native bees are unlike those cultivated for honey production (and hive collapse).
Honey bees — which usually live in large colonies — are not native. European settlers brought them here to help with agriculture. Many believe they are invasive.
Native bees are not "homeless." Their own nests are in leaves and lawn litter. What native bees need is habitat for food and wildflowers are plentiful on Nose Hill, as are bees.
This is an interesting article by Joanna Skrajny.... The Buzz About Native Bees - Alberta Wilderness Association
Crowded bee houses attract predators, parasites (including wasps, mites, and others) and diseases.
"Another problem with these houses is that, despite what conventional wisdom tells us,
native bees are actually solitary; while still essential pollinators, they prefer a
more lonely life." --
Erin Biba
Calgary Captured, Update
From Lynette Hiebert, MEDes, Parks Ecologist, The City of Calgary:
"
Calgary Captured,
a Calgary Parks initiative, is happy to announce that season 4 is now
live! We hope that this new batch of images will provide you and yours with some
fun wildlife identifying activities while we practice physical distancing (again).
This season includes 14,369 photos from October 2018 – December 2018. Maybe we will
catch Rudolph and friends training for their busy season.
We have a couple of project updates to share with you:
- During winter 2019/2020 we added additional cameras to the network in two ecological corridors within the City. The data collected from these cameras will help us validate wildlife connectivity models and provide additional information about how wildlife respond to the dynamics of the built environment.
- We are happy to announce that the research team has compiled and analyzed a full year’s worth of data! In year one we detected species on all cameras. And it might not come as a surprise, but next to humans, deer (both whitetail and mule), coyotes and hares show up most frequently on our cameras. Check out the details of year one findings on Zooniverse’s Calgary Captured Results Page .
Calgary Captured is a citywide citizen science program that has installed over 70
wildlife remote cameras in 17 parks across the city. We welcome your continued
participation by:
- Going to Zooniverse.org: and search for Calgary Captured to begin identifying species.
- Join the Conversation: be sure to click the #talk button on the last screen before you submit your observation to let us know if you found something really great!
As always, we couldn’t do this without your help, so THANK-YOU! Your efforts have helped us successfully classify over 1,800,000 images so far, providing data essential to meeting our BiodiverCity Strategy’s commitments to ecological resilience and ecological literacy. Your participation helps ensure that we have the tools and information to effectively conserve and manage biodiversity for present and future Calgarians."
Coyote Awareness Flyer
From the City of Calgary.
Click:
Coyote Awareness Flyer
Coyote Conflict Response Guide
The Glenbow is asking Albertans to submit letters, photos and drawings or illustrations
The Glenbow is asking Albertans to submit letters, photos and drawings or illustrations about this unique time we are living through. For more info : https://www.glenbow.org/art-artifacts/dear-glenbow/
Perhaps interested users of Nose Hill can compose a short piece about their experiences when using the Park. And share it with us. What did you observe during the "lockdown/stay home" period during the latter part of March through late May? Do you have stories about nature, wildlife, people enjoying their time on the hill? How can you transform that into a perspective from the Hill?
Personal testimonies will be a way for us (and future generations) to understand this unprecedented period. Please refer to the Glenbow website above for details, and remember to write your story from the perspective of the hill, or part of the hill. "When you send Glenbow a letter as part of this project, it will be incorporated into Glenbow permanent collection."
Write The Glenbow a letter, a postcard, tell a story. What are the things you have
experienced over the past few months? What is important to you right now? What are
your hopes for the future? Tell us something about your life in 2020. Your letter
can be as long or as short as you need it to be. Send a photo or a drawing if it
adds to your story.
Six New Book Reviews for 2019!
Click here to read the reviews:
A New Parks and Pathways Bylaw
The proposed text for a new Parks and Pathways Bylaw can be found by clicking here:
Community Newsletters
To read the current News from the Friends of Nose Hill in Community Newsletters, just follow this link: http://mycalgary.com/category/Friends-of-Nose-Hill/There is also an archive of some past copies.
Seven New Book Reviews for 2018
Click here to read new reviews:
New Mailing Address
Friends of Nose Hill Society has MOVED.Our New Mailing Address is:
PO Box 45024 Brentwood PO
Calgary AB T2L 1Y4.
Pathway and Bikeway Plan Update (Transportation Planning)
The plan from 2000 is currently being updated to reflect changes to the existing network, updated connections, and approved policies. Prioritization will also be reviewed. Determine new pathways, bikeways and missing connections to improve connectivity city-wide, including to the Genesis Centre currently underway. It is anticipated that the final plan will be presented to Council in 2018 Q3.
Motion-Activated Wildlife Cameras
The City has set up nearly 70 motion-activated wildlife cameras in areas
animals use to get around the Calgary. The cameras are in 12 parks across
Calgary with a focus on the west and north sides of the city. These
cameras don't just show what species are present but also where they
move. Tens of thousands of pictures of passing animals have been captured
by the solar-powered cameras. Pictures of humans are immediately deleted.
There is now photographic evidence of raccoons in Calgary, from Fish Creek
to Panorama. A citizen science initiative has been launched on the
volunteer research website Zooniverse to enlist the help of Calgarians
to "crowdsource" the identification of images.
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/calgary-captured/calgary-captured
Friends of Nose Hill
2017 Amateur Photo Contest Winners
1. Flora and Fauna of Nose Hill Park
First place winner and Best in Show:
Lady Bug on a Flower Jim Walling
Second place winner:
Coyote Dave Simms
Third place winner:
Man with his dog "Kiss Before the Storm" Sharon Carltons
2. Environmental Threats
First place winner:
Dumped tank Brendan McPhail
3. Landscapes and Skyviews of Nose Hill
First place winner:
Buck on the prairie Jim Walling
Second place winner:
Trees and Lake in the fog Brendan McPhail
Third place winner:
Trail on the prairie with clouds and blue sky Alex Zhao
4. Astrophotography
First place winner:
Night sky with stars Brendan McPhail
Second place winner:
Sunset behind the plants Alex Zhao
Congratulations to the winners and thank you to all who entered.
Friends of Nose Hill Society Membership Fee
Our membership fee is $20.00.
The Society
This site is intended to serve the members of the Society. We also welcome visitors and encourage them to contact us and contribute information about the Park.
Nose Hill Park is the largest natural area urban park in Canada, covering approximately 2700 acres in north central Calgary, Alberta. It offers a unique prairie grassland environment and a ready escape from the pressures of the modern city.
The Friends of Nose Hill Society is an incorporated society dedicated to the protection of the Park for the benefit of all Calgarians. The objectives of the Society are:
- to advocate the preservation of Nose Hill Natural Environment Park in its natural state;
- to provide information, awareness and education for the preservation of the Park;
- organize and encourage volunteer participation in the Park;
- to liaise with special interest groups concerned with the Park.
The Friends of Nose Hill Society Annual General Meeting was held last November. Board meetings are held once a month. All members are welcome to attend. Email for information on the time and location of the meeting.