Went down to the park with Tanka again today, good thing I brought my camera. Several pairs of geese were wound up and fussing at each other, bullying a small flock of ring-necked ducks, and getting looks of annoyance from a pair of tundra swans.

One pair got just a little too close to another pair's territory, and a fight broke out.

A lot of pushing and shoving and biting until one of them finally gave it up and took off.

The maples are in bloom. A close examination shows a pretty frilly blossom. Didn't have my tripod with me, but managed to steady my arm using the "firewood hook" I keep in the truck to get a focused shot with the macro lens.

Bath time

Took the dog down to his favourite park this afternoon for a walk and some sniffs. We were entertained by the antics of the Canada geese. They've paired off and have staked their territories, hanging close to their nest sites to ward off intruders. One pair was revelling in the warm sunshine, splashing, rolling, flapping, preening and just enjoying a good bath.

Along the trail we saw our first mourning cloak butterfly, and in another small pond we spotted our first turtle of the season, a painted turtle, who was basking in the sun at the edge of the cattails.

Elk

There have been elk sightings in our area the past couple of years, but so far I hadn't seen them. My neighbour has been telling me of one that has shown up just down the road, it comes out at about sunset and munches on the leftover corn that was harvested in a farm field this winter. This evening I finally got the chance to see it, and managed to get a few pictures of it. These are about as sharp as they get, it was getting dark and I had the camera set at IS0 1600. Even then the speed was very slow. There were about 50 geese in the field around the elk, apparently the corn leftovers are good pickin'. In spite of about 20 cars pulled over and people standing at the fence, the elk seemed undisturbed, in fact came over closer to get a look at us, then went back to eating.

Garter Snake

'Tis December 2nd, and a mild overcast day. Took Dad and The Beastie for a walk at the Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area, fed the chickadees, and headed for home. When we came back past the Outdoor Center I dawdled along looking for late-season blooming plants in their flower garden, and spotted a garter snake lying on one of the edging stones.

Moon and Jupiter

Just when I was getting back into photographing the night sky, along came the rains. And clouds. This is putting me into withdrawal. This morning just before 2:00 a.m. I woke up, went to stoke up the woodstove, and saw the moon shining in the window. Spaceweather.com told me that the moon and Jupiter would be in close conjuction, so I got dressed, grabbed the camera and headed down to the beach to take a few shots before the thick clouds came rolling back in.

Odd effect with Jupiter

I was out taking some star trail shots, with Jupiter in the picture, and when I downloaded the pics I got odd dots and arcs. I've not had this happen before, if there was some vibration in the camera, ALL of the stars in the pictures would be affected. I've cropped and enlarged the sections with Jupiter.

Encounters of the prickly kind

My latest thing to try to photograph at night is the ISS (International Space Station). Caught it tonight cutting across the Big Dipper.












Ater the ISS had passed by, I headed over to another spot to see what the stars were doing where there was a thin film of clouds, thought maybe Jupiter would be over the pines. Good thing I had my flashlight, or I might have tripped over this porcupine.

At first he (she?) took off into the cattails at the shore, and I headed over to another part of the lawn to set up the camera and tripod. After a few minutes I heard noises, it was coming towards me, making a "hmmmm hmmmm" strange nasally kind of call. It came over and sniffed the tripod leg, and when I said "Well??" it took off again. I moved about 30 feet to another spot, and saw the porkie way off in the flashlight beam. I started to imitate the noise it was making, and it came trotting over to investigate. When I snapped pictures the flash made it move back, but I kept making the noise and it kept sniffing around. You can see by the picture of porkie sniffing at my shoe how close it came.