Before we got to the season of pear-trees and turtle-doves, I gave my True Love a new camera for her birthday. For the pro-photographers and serious amateurs among you, it isn’t something you are going to drool over – unless you have a general problem with drooling. But it brought some excitement to our little nest. And a slight bite out of the nest-egg. It is a Canon SX60 HS with 65 times optical zoom.
I thought I’d share a few of Susan’s early images – that also show how quickly the seasons change in these parts. All photos except the first (C) SK Sprange (I may have had a hand in the first)
Full moon at beginning of lunar eclipse with stray Canada Goose
A crisp autumn day on the deck
We took a trip out to the lake to clean up fallen leaves and check the property. However, most of the leaves were still on the trees. Oh well, we just had to go back once more this year.
Autumnal branches
We chose a day when the sun, sky and leaves were working together to create an autumnal symphony of colour.
The path to the beach
The lake glimpsed through the trees before freeze-up
The summer visitors have left – avian and human
We could sense the changing season from fall to winter was not far away.
This visitor to our balcony hunkered down from the effects of the first snow and wintry blast
We were right! Back home in the warmth of the condo we observed our friend taking a break from the wind and the snow. Susan took this shot hand-held, through the patio door glass, from the other side of the living room. I think she intends to keep the SX60.
No, this is not a golf story And if it was a golf story from me it would not include a hole in one. I believe in getting my money’s worth and get more swings per dollar than the average golfer.
This one is about adventures with nature.
We have a nice little cabin in the woods near Lake Winnipeg. One of the decks is screened-in so we can enjoy meals and sitting outside even if mosquitoes decide to invade en masse. There is a screen door into the dining area. It’s a wooden door with a mesh/screen window about four feet by two. The original screen was made of fine wire mesh. Fine enough to keep out the bloodsucking insects, allow a nice view of the woods and allow air to circulate. All the windows in this part of Canada have screens – either metal or nylon mesh.
One day when we arrived at the cabin we were greeted by a young, male, black bear. He was standing on the front deck trying to open the front door. A few honks from the car horn and a few shouts and he ambled off into the bush.
We discovered that he had also been around the back and had tried to enter the dining area as there was a large jagged hole in the middle of the door screen. Big enough for even the Manitoba provincial bird (the mosquito) to enter. It was a very large hole.
In checking with the Department of Natural Resources we learned that there was a young male about. Apparently someone had thought it a fine idea to store a freezer full of food in a screened-in area of their deck. Mr B had smelled it out, found his way in through the screened door and consumed some frozen goodies. He apparently decided that there might be food behind every screened door on a deck. He never tried to get in through any of the other screened areas, just the doors.
I went into the nearest town and bought some screening material, took the mouldings off the door, removed the old screening and installed new. I put the mouldings back. This used up the better part of a morning. But at least the bloodsuckers wouldn’t be getting in through the gaping hole that evening, no offence to the credit-card companies.
We enjoyed our newly screened door for a week or so. Then one day we arrived at the cabin to discover Mr B had returned and made another attempted B and E. This meant another trip to the store and screen-door repair.
When this occurred a third time I stuck some duck-tape over the hole. It didn’t look very nice, and in reality didn’t stick too well. But it was a lot easier to stick on a new patch than do the screen fixing. I was able to absorb the comments and suggestions about ‘doing it right”, and the questions “Why do you have a piece of duck-tape stuck on your door?”.
But eventually, after several weeks (perhaps months) of procrastination (in government I learned the art of creative procrastination, it saved an endless amount of bother), I decided to fix the screen.
After the trip to the store and an hour of removing the old and replacing with new metal screening material. the door looked as good as old again. It was only the screening fabric I changed not the door.
Satisfied, I turned my back, walked about 10 metres onto the grass, when I heard a very loud metallic BANG!. I stopped in my tracks and thought very unkind things about Mr B. There were a few additional B words that came to mind. But when I turned around, I discovered a rather disoriented Pileated Woodpecker staggering around, then it flew off fast. The Pileated woodpecker is the largest of the woodpecker family in this area – the model for Woody-the-Woodpecker. I looked at my screen-door. There was a neat round two-inch diameter hole, dead centre in the middle of the screen. Woody had flown right into the screen and left a giant woodpecker-sized hole in the door.
He had scored a definite hole, in one.
I wan’t too pleased with Mr W, but it was kind of funny to think of this horizontal bird sticking out of a screen door. No birds were injured in this episode.
Here are a couple of photos of the culprit.
Woody’s Prison Profile Shot Notice the striped uniform
Who Me? I was never there! Do I look like I’d fly into a screen door?
Remember that song “Where have all the flowers gone”? Many people have a bee in their bonnets and are asking “Where have all the Honey Bees gone?”
We have seen far fewer this summer at the lake, but here are some bits and pieces, not exactly the bee’s knees, but they may cause a little buzz, along with some floral bookends.
This lovely plant grows extensively along the trail to the lagoon, behind our bay on Lake Winnipeg. I enjoy seeing how the individual flowers bloom, when they are ready, along the central stalk. I was pleased with this little image even though the flower stem is isolated from the rest of the plant in this frame.
Smartweed persicaria bicornis
Below is a closer view of the structure. If you look closely you will see something is hiding behind the flowers
Smartweed persicaria bicornis
Smartweed persicaria bicornis with bee
Aha, Mr B I see. This worker was having a wonderful time collecting nectar for the gang.
Below are some close-up encounters with Honey the Bee not Eric the Half-a-Bee. Unfortunately this is the best I could do with depth of field with the cameras and lenses I have. I used the Sony, hand-held. The lens actually touched the bee a couple of times. It had been cold over night so the bees may be slowing down. It doesn’t, however, seem to have slowed down the wasp families.
(click on an image for a larger view)
Honey Bee
The bee’s knees
Wings and legs
I quite like these bee parts. Did you know bees had Mediterranean style legs and such clear, iridescent wings?
And to finish a close-up of my favourite annual at the lake – the Portulaca. Unfortunately they had all been severely beaten down by a very sudden and violent rain-storm.
It’s time for some summer whine – “summer is over, frost is threatened, the days are drawing in, back to long pants and socks, boo hoo”.
It’s also time to get back to sharing some images. These are from a quiet walk we took one late August evening while at the cabin. Nothing spectacular, but hopefully they give a sense of the calm and beauty of this pleasant evening and special place.
High Bush Cranberry
As we walk along the lane towards the beach we pass these High Bush Cranberry shrubs. They are called High Bush because the bushes are more like small trees and the cranberries are found between four and ten feet off the ground. This year there was a great abundance of all the berry types including these. They have such a rich colour.
A closer look at the cranberries
One of these years we will pick enough for cranberry sauce with the Thanksgiving Turkey. That’s not the turkey giving thanks, but hopefully us. There is such an abundance in creation.
Dusk by the lake
After a short stroll we emerged onto the beach and were treated to this peaceful scene. We are looking North East, and glimpse the sun still colouring the distant sky.
After sunset – the last touch of colour
As we turn to the west we see the last remains of the colour after the sunset. The only sounds, the softly lapping water and the cries of gulls.
On the walk back we were serenaded by frogs and insects. Heady wine indeed.
Is there too much colour in your life? The only vivid colour in winter on the prairies is blue – the amazing crystal clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine. The view of the sky is unblocked by annoying trees and mountains from which so many other locations suffer. But all else is white, grey, or very subtle browns, yellows and reds of dormant branches.
This winter landscape opens the eyes to subtlety of colour; appreciation of horizontal line; sharpness of contrast.
Thank goodness it’s over for another year! The real problem with the prairie winter is its length.
Still a little cool by the lake last Sunday but today Friday it is 30c
As we walk along the beach next to the remaining ice, we hear tinkling sounds. It’s like a room full of crystal chandeliers blowing in a breeze from an open window. As we look we see beautiful shards of ice being knocked over by gusts of wind or gently moving ripples in the lake. It’s a magical sound and a mystical sight with so much ‘crystal clear ice’
As the pack-ice melts it forms into cylindrical crystals which beak into shards
The crystals are strong when pressure is applied straight down, but very flimsy when pressure is applied from the side. The wind knocked these over creating a wonderful tinkling sound.
The ice shards form hundreds of abstract sculptures on the beach.
We look across the lake and see areas of open water and waves still frozen in time.
The crystals reach dramatically towards the sky
They stand out against the clouds
The lake is returning to its liquid state. Notice the bright colours of the stones caught up in the waves then frozen in place
Remains of a frozen wave and deposits of snow. The green patches in the background around the pools of water are tops of ice crystals reflecting colour from the lake bed and sky. When the crystals are moved we find they are actually crystal clear pea ices of ice., as seen in the images above.
These moments of ice sculpture don’t last long, often just a few days then it’s summer again. Today we are wearing shorts and basking in the summer temperatures. I think there is a large red switch somewhere that is turned on to change from winter to summer. Who needs spring? It’s so good to hear and see the birds again. Yesterday there were no leaves, today dozens of trees are burst into leaf. The amazing season of growth has started again.
I need to let off steam! Perhaps I should say more steam, after my storm in a tea-cup post (Not my Cup of Tea).
When I was a little boy – true in terms of age and size, I had an old 78 rpm record that mum would put on the record player. It was an old turntable with brass needles that were kept in a cup at the top of the machine, and which needed changing quite frequently. Dad bought the needles in boxes. I could put my ear next to the 12 inch circular speaker cover and listen to my record of Henny Penny (I think it may be called Chicken Little now…)
This was a children’s story about a chicken called Henny Penny. The storyteller told the beginning of the story this way (cue music):
‘one day, Henny Penny was walking through the woods, when an acorn fell on her head. “Oh, dear” said Henny Penny, “the sky is falling, I must go and tell the king”. And off went Henny Penny to tell the king (cue travelling music). Before long Henny Penny ran into Turkey Lurkey (in a tremulous voice the narrator says) “Where are you going Henny Penny”. (breathless voice) “Oh dear, the sky is falling and I must go and tell the king”. “Then I’ll come with you” replied Turkey Lurkey”‘
To cut a long child’s story short, Henny Penny met up with a number of her farmyard friends and they all decided to go with Henny to tell the king about the falling sky. Then they met up with (cue serious music) Foxy Loxy!
‘(In a slow, deep and sly sounding voice Foxy Loxy says) “Where are you going Henny Penny?” “Oh. Dear. The sky is falling. I must go and tell the king.” and she started off. “Wait”, said Foxy Loxy, “you’re going the wrong way”. (cue ominous music) “Follow me, follow me”. And so Henny Penny, Turkey Lurkey, Ducky Lucky and all the others followed Foxy Loxy” (the music continues and Foxy Loxy sings “follow me” over and over and adds ones about the animals as culinary delights – Goosey Loosey, nice and juicy etc.) Foxy Loxy leads them all straight to his den and Henny Penny and all the rest are never heard from again”.
Today, Henny Penny lives on in the internet.
My rant this time is about my friends – generally a very intelligent, great bunch of people. But it seems many of us are gullible as soon as we start travelling the digital highways. Hence my clumsy messing with Gulliver’s Travels.
This week (and it’s only Tuesday) I have had several examples of handed down gullibility. I hope I’m not insulting some of my friends – it just seems to be a phenomenon that happens on the web to even the most intelligent.
This is what happens. Someone sends someone else an email or they get a post on Facebook that tells something that sounds very important – often with the advice to pass this along to anyone they care about.
The receiver reads the article – watches the clip etc. and then shocked or amazed sends it along to all their friends or shares it on social media. Unfortunately they seem rarely to check out the veracity of the information before hitting send/post/share!
Just stop it!
There are two main types of these acorn falling phenomena (AFP): 1 hoaxes about something incredible that would be exciting if it was only true. 2. Assertions and proof of something frightening with warnings to avoid whatever it is (or go and tell the king if you are well enough connected and happen to have a male monarch handy – not the butterfly type Yvonne). The second set is the more problematic. I see the first as the media equivalent of practical jokes. Annoying practical jokes when passed along, not as jokes but as serious information. The second type can be very upsetting for people, add to the prevalence of societal fear, and potentially cause real harm – physical and economic.
Here are a couple of examples of the first kind.
A planet will be coming closer to the Earth than it ever has before. It will be so close that it will appear in the sky larger than the Moon. We will be able to see it at such and such date and time. Pass this along, so all your friends can see this once-in-a-lifetime event. Well EXCUSE ME, but what a load of ………..bunk! I can’t tell you how many emails I received advising me of this cosmic delight. One quick check with Snopes.com (an online service that looks into urban myths and hoaxes), shows this to be false. It gives a history of the hoax – when it first surfaced and many of the variations on this theme. The whole idea is ludicrous anyway. Thanks for passing it on Henny Penny and friends.
I have shared the Snopes article with my enthusiastic but, dare I say, gullible friends. Then a few weeks later I receive another obvious hoax from many of the same friends!
Another one that makes the rounds every year or so is the appearance of giant icebergs in Lake Winnipeg. This article comes complete with beautiful photographs of the bergs with kayakers for scale. These are obviously real photographs, of real icebergs, but to think these monster 300 foot high bergs could be produced in our large (in area) but shallow lake Winnipeg are preposterous. A quick check with Snopes once more and I discover this hoax has been going around for years. Yes, they are real icebergs – I forget where, but in an ocean where you would expect to find something as wonderful as this. Apparently the variations for this hoax are the locations chosen for the latest sighting. All are noted to have been found on lakes that could never support the development of an iceberg let alone ones of the scale of these monsters.
Once again I passed along the Snopes article to my friends with a suggestion that they may wish, in future, to check out these kinds of articles on Snopes before passing them along to others. It could save them embarrassment I thought. Some do come back with a pink glow to their on-line cheeks.
Annoying as it is to receive silly information that clogs up my email and wastes my time on Facebook, they are not the worst.
The worst are the ones that are aimed at scaring people about something common. One going the rounds at the moment is warning about Gardasil (Snopes says: Gardasil is a vaccine intended for girls and young women between the ages 9 to 26 to protect against human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus which is currently linked to an estimated 70% of known cervical cancer cases. Read more at http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/gardasil.asp#arG5O9RBuJiLlqzd.99)
This could be an important vaccine, or one that someone has taken or had had administered to their daughter. However, the spurious article claims medical evidence of terrible side-effects and deaths caused by this vaccine. If this is passed along without any checking, just think of the worry it can cause.
Another false report (timely one this) is about Mandarin oranges from China. (Pesticide used on mandarin oranges imported from China is causing severe allergic reactions among U.S. consumers because of a pesticide used in growing them. This again is a false report, but could make us decide to avoid these delicious treats. Whether or not we should support a globalized food industry because of ecological impacts is a whole different issue. You can read more about this particular false report by clicking on this link http://www.snopes.com/food/tainted/mandarin.asp#mmBISGsQIk3L9I2F.99
There are many problems with the thoughtless passing on of these types of items. Obviously they can lead to scares and cause people to making decisions based on falsehoods. Secondly they can cause us to disbelieve anything we read. There is already so much doubt in our world, do we really need to be inundated with deliberately misleading information passed along by smart but gullible people.
The solution is simple. If you want to avoid being tied up in the Lilliputian ropes of ignorance and their knots of anxiety – when you get an article that sounds too horrible or too fantastic to be true – or too alarming – it probably is; check it out on Snopes.com or other similar websites and get the facts before passing it on and worrying or annoying your friends and contacts.
OOOh, I feel so much better now!
And now for something completely different and lighthearted I have added this Open University clip on the History of English – very funny. Thanks to Janet who only passes on enjoyable and usually humorous content.
By the way, in case you are worried or have seen something on the web, It’s ok to use your microwave oven! I checked on Snopes.
For a few weeks every summer Lake Winnipeg produces millions of fishflies. If Wikipedia is correct and I am reading it properly the proper name for our fishflies is chauliodes pectinicornis. At first glance these can be rather alarming, especially when they land on you. They are however quite harmless and can be removed by carefully grasping the wings and sending them into the air.
One fishfly on the wall is ok, 10,000 gets a bit annoying
Almost pretty against the purple
They have a short life once they emerge from the larvae stage. Apparently they are in a mid-stage when they arrive at our place overnight and then emerge as adults, shrugging off their old skins.
Over night the fishflies shrug off their old outer bodies and leave the remains behind
At the edge of the lake there are heaps of discarded bodies. They get the name fishfly, not because they are food for fish, but because a mass of the decaying bodies can provide a lovely fishy odour.
There is something magical about this strange creatures.
Not a great photo, but I like the sense of a fantasy world
The dragon flies come out in great numbers during fishfly season – it’s quite amazing to see them snatch a fishfly out of the air and carry it off. Unfortunately they sometimes like to land on a human or near one and start to devour the fish fly – starting with the head. Not a pretty sight.
Posing on driftwood
I hope the season is over shortly, I am tired of having to pick them off the wall – or use the leaf-blower to send them on their way each day.
Next up will be some lovely fungi. It was a good week for a fun guy – ok ok I know – let it go.
There is a large person-made pond (they refer to it as a lake) near our house. It is surrounded on three sides by very large houses. I shall state here, large doesn’t mean grand, or stunning, or beautiful, or ecologically sound or having architectural merit. It just means big. The houses could be all those other things, but sadly, most are not. Can you spell UGLY. However, I just look at the pond and ignore the monstrosities.
Today the ice had receded to a small area in the centre of the pond and the usual Mallards, Canada Geese and Ring-Billed Gulls were enjoying the open water. The surprise was a pair of Horned Grebes (Podiceps auritus – yeah I had to look it up). These are beautiful birds and have the honour of being the first species listed on the second page of Peterson’s field guide to the Birds East of the Rockies. The Loons always get first place, a bit like politics.
Lovely weather for Grebes
These Horned Grebes were a first for me in Winnipeg, so I am posting these photographs even if they are not great. But I do like the colours and the reflections.
If we keep moving it’s harder for him to take our photos – don’t look at him.
I was using the Sony HX200v, so focusing when they went in among the branches was frustrating. They seemed to sense this as they would continually try to keep a few branches between us.
Oh oh, he caught me looking. Don’t use the red-eye tool – they are supposed to look like this!
Just don’t call me ‘ducks’ dear.
It was a lovely sunny day, bright blue sky and water and such a treat to see the birds swimming, especially these Horned Grebes. We are planning to get to the real lake on Tuesday (Lake Winnipeg). With the warm weather arriving I am hoping to get some pictures of the ice chandeliering. I’ll explain that next week.