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Exploring Natural Cape Breton. Walking the Wild Side Nature Tours offers guided, interpreted natural history tours. Explore magical woodlands, vibrant wetlands and coastal trails with legendary views. Birding a specialty, botany and geology.
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Join me, Bethsheila Kent, for a one-of-a-kind, up-close and personal introduction to Cape Breton's natural history!
Being a birder with more than 30 years experience and a self-taught naturalist with a formal background in botany and geology, I can guide you on an exciting and informative tour of the abundant natural wonders of Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, including the world-famous Cabot Trail and the biologically significant Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Just bring along a camera, binoculars and favourite field guide books and you're ready for an extraordinary Cape Breton adventure! Birders can choose from a variety of habitats in all seasons - what's on your wish list? Amateur botanists will marvel at the biodiversity our Island has to offer - wild flowering plants, ferns and their allies, mosses, lichens, mushrooms and related fungi and trees, trees, trees! Week-end geologists can test their skills at identifying some of the oldest rocks in the Province! And the bonus? The breathtaking views and magnificent vistas for which our Island is famous.
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Spring and early summer wildflowers or, as I like to call them 'ditch beauties and other roadside attractions', begin to dot the landscape often when snow is still on the ground – trailing arbutus, coltsfoot, nodding trillium, swaths of bunchberry, starflower and bluebead lily, blue flag iris and forget-me-not, lupins and coastal roses. The list is large and the visual delights are, well... delightful! Bring your camera and take home memories that will last a lifetime.
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When the forest floor explodes into a palette of greens...ferns, mosses, club mosses, lichens and liverworts... And then, of course, there are the early fungi... Bring along a lens to examine spore dots, mushrooms, gilled or not, and of course, a camera to capture those late bloomers such as spotted jewel weeds. |
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Fabulous fall fungi - Cape Breton Island is home to an astonishing variety of fungi, some edible, some not so much. Regardless if a species is for the pot...think chanterelle or oyster mushrooms, or not...banded corts or spindle coral - their form and colour is guaranteed to intrigue and impress... That handy lens and equally handy camera will get a real workout at this time of year.
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It's all about the birds... Really! Birding is a specialty and is offered all season long. The residents - black-capped and boreal chickadee, grey and blue jay, just to name a few... The inbound migrants in May and June – wood warblers, vireos, thrushes and so much more.
Autumn is the time to shine with migrating shorebirds and waders staging here in Cape Breton at several significant locations – willet, semi-palmated sandpiper, sanderling, black-bellied plover and so much more.
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All Walking the Wildside tours are individually designed to suit your interests and all tours are restricted to no more than 8 curious minds. Outings, on average, are 4 hours in length but, if you have more time, so do I!
My goal is to provide you with a one-of-a-kind, natural history experience to make your holiday a memorable one. I look forward to working with you to design a day to remember!
"My wife and I recently had Beth take us on a half-day hike up a beautiful wooded stream valley that culminated in our arrival at a majestic old-growth hemlock grove. Beth's depth of knowledge was spectacular - she filled us in on everything from the region's ancient geology to its most recent snow storms and their impacts on the plants and animals. She knows her birds super-completely. Her knowledge of the flowers and plants was huge. Her enthusiasm and love of Nature are great. She is funny, smart, and generous (loaned me her husband's cargo pants when I arrived in shorts, and delivered our binocs to us after we left them in her truck). If you want to learn about the environment you are enjoying in Cape Breton, take a walk with her.
Rick W.
Takoma Park, MD
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