All My Blogs

An Individual American Coot at Munson Pond, Kelowna.  Feb 14, 2026. Inset:  a group of coots I photographed in 2012 (location unknown). American coots are highly social birds.  Whenever I see one, I know there are others nearby.  What I found in this case, though, was that it was alone.  Now, I can't prove that, as others may have been hiding in the nearby clutter of overhanging branches, but it still was, in my mind, unusual. It turns out that coots do migrate in groups, but not necessarily with others of the same species.  Coots may hitch a ride with ducks or geese that are migrating, both to and from their breeding area.  Another possibility is that this individual may not have migrated at all.  Coots are known to stay in the Okanagan Valley throughout the year.  Given the mild winter we have had, this is a very plausible explanation.  They like open water, so the pond where I found them wouldn't have been an option as it was frozen o...

Male common merganser.  A female hooded merganser is in the background.  Munson Pond. I was at Munson Pond yesterday taking photos of birds.  The ice had just recently come off the surface and the entire water body was clear of it.  What was there in its stead were birds; hundreds of them.  The largest collection was Canada geese, but I was amazed at how many hooded mergansers there were too.  And then I saw them; large and colourful - male common mergansers. In all, there were maybe a dozen common mergansers, both males and females.  The common variety were much larger than the hooded ones.  However, they didn't mind hanging out together, and they exhibited a most interesting behaviour.  They all dove at once. Called cooperative fishing, it is a behaviour that increases the chances of any one individual catching a fish.  One bird on its own has to either be very lucky on its dive or has to chase down a fish fleeing for its life.  M...

Canada goose driving off competition.  Munson Pond, Kelowna.  Feb 14, 2026. It's Valentine's Day today, and an excellent time to talk about monogamous birds, such as the Canada goose.  But is it love? Monogamy is the word that describes species that mate more than once in their lifetime, and only with the same partner.  There are a surprising number of bird species that behave this way.  Male and female, they find each other, usually both young and both inexperienced with mating, and they stay together.  For years.  How long? - Canada geese may live up to 25 years in the wild, but often live up to their early twenties.  Imagine staying together with the same partner for that long.  Better than many humans. Canada geese are monogamous.  They mate for life.  If a partner dies, they will eventually find another to mate with, but not right away.  They typically go through a period of mourning.  Yes, they are sad, depressed, mi...

Crabs, lobsters, and crayfish - all members of the decapods You probably know about our equilibrium organs making up the inner ear.  Called the vestibular system, the three loops of tubing (vestibules) give us a sense of balance, each tube corresponding to each of the three dimensions of our reality.  It turns out that balance systems are not unique to life - many other creatures have a similar system. Many aquatic creatures use statocysts, somewhat analogous to our vestibule canals.  However, instead of there being three individual organs, there is a single organ that essentially does the same thing.  The one I want to discuss today in my blog is found in decapods - crabs and their relatives. I copied the image below from this source - it shows the statocyst of a lobster.  It is essentially a round ball of cells, empty in the center - with hair-like (cilia) projections facing the center.  A small, hard object, the statolith, has its position within the sph...

My family in 2010 - Two losses and two additions since then. Tumbler Ridge.  Someone enters a high school with a gun.  What comes next is horrible - life-taking, life-changing, life-destroying.  Families, the school, the community, and even the country will never be the same again. This is why family is important.  Before, during, and after.   Before - I can't speak to who the person with the gun was, but I have to believe that there were deep problems with the family.  That's not always true, of course, but often when there is deep unrest, there is something missing within the family.  Fortunately, most children are somewhat resilient and can thrive in spite of family squabbles.  But, at the end of the day, everyone is usually much better off when a family loves each other and works together. During - I can only imagine the horror of what the people in Tumbler Ridge are going through right now.  Parents losing children, children who hav...

Phainopepla - Left (2016) and right (2008) - Photographed in Arizona  OK - not my best photos of birds - but I have only ever seen them once - for each the male and female.  The female photo was taken with my Nikon D7200 and 80-400 S zoom while the male's was shot with my Nikon D200 and my non "S" 80-400 zoom.  The two systems are worlds apart, but both allowed me to do what I love, which is to get outdoors, see wildlife, and photograph it. The species is fond of berries and often eats them from mistletoe, which is a plant parasite.  The downside to this is that the seeds are widely distributed from their droppings and offer new trees to parasitize.  They also eat the berries of a vast variety of plants and take insects, often on the wing, whenever they can.   The males both build and defend the nest.  Although these birds are rarely found on the ground, they will forage there for nesting materials.  Their defensive behaviours depend greatly ...