Sunday, May 8, 2022

The Bowmanville Valley Trail roughly follows the winding course of Bowmanville Creek through the floodplain on the west side of the creek. To explore the section between King Street and Baseline Road I found free parking in the lot on Baseline Road. Beware because it is full of deep holes, so be careful as you drive in. There’s a second parking lot off of King Street which is paved and might make a better choice next time. I hadn’t got out of the parking lot when an American Goldfinch landed in a tree near me. The male is bright yellow in the spring when it is in the mating season. The females are duller in colour, as are the males in the winter.

Bowmanville Creek has its headwaters in the Oak Ridges Moraine and drains about 170 square kilometers in its watershed. The creek was clear and low on this visit but the erosion that brought this tree down suggests that it can be pretty wild at times.

The main trail is paved and fully accessible as it runs for 1.8 kilometers between the Baseline Road and King Street parking lots.

The first tent caterpillars are starting to make their nests in some of the trees along the trail. They start with a small nest and as they grow they will expand it. Tent caterpillars tend to come in cycles with every 9-16 years seeing a larger amount of them. Although they can strip a tree of its leaves they seldom do any permanent damage to the trees. Where they cause significant damage is with pregnant horses. When a horse ingests too many of them while feeding on grass they can spontaneously abort their fetuses. in the year 2001 there was a large infestation in Kentucky and horse owners reported that about one third of all foal fetuses were lost to mare reproductive loss syndrome (MRLS).

Side trails can be found throughout the area and tend to provide glimpses of wildlife that stays clear of the busier main trail.

There was a large Belted Kingfisher, or perhaps two of them, which refused to sit still long enough to get his picture taken. Great Blue Herons are also attracted to the creek as are sports fishermen. There is a fishing ban within 120 metres of the old dam but they’ve also provided a place where people in wheel chairs can access a good fishing hole allowing them to enjoy the sport as well.

The woods along the trail were full of Trout Lilies. These plants actually have three common names which also include Dogtooth Violet and Adder’s Tongue. The name trout lily is given because the mottled colouring on the leaves is said to resemble to speckles on a brook trout. They bloom in the spring and are one of the first green plants to form a carpet on the forest floor. When they first come up, before the leaves uncurl the bulbs can be eaten raw. They have a sweet flavour but after the leaves form the bulbs lose most of their nutrients to the growing leaves which can also be eaten raw.

In the 1920s a dam was built across Bowmanville Creek by the Goodyear plant to provide water for cooling their equipment as well as for fire suppression. The dam remains in place in spite of the plant closure in 2016 because it provides a barrier to keep lamprey eels from getting upstream. The original fish ladder provided a way for trout to get upstream to spawn but when salmon were reintroduced into the Great Lakes it proved to be restrictive to them and many of them died at the dam. The solution was to build a new fish ladder but while this was going through three levels of bureaucracy volunteers lifted fish over the dam. Finally, on December 16, 2013 the 36-metre Fish By-Pass channel was opened to allow the fish to get past the dam and reach their spawning grounds. It can be seen on the left side of the dam in the picture below.

The Goodyear plant operated form 1910 until it closed and now stands idle on the east bank of the creek. We’ve featured the plant in our recent post called Goodyear Plant Bowmanville.

An old pumphouse stands just to the north of the plant and after being vacant for a few years it has recently been turned into a private residence.

This trail is very popular in the spring and fall when the trout and salmon are going upstream to spawn because the fish ladder makes a great place for viewing them.

Related Stories: Goodyear Bowmanville

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Google Maps Link: Bowmanville Creek Southern Parking Lot

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