All My Blogs

Water striders eating a fallen bee. Water striders are true bugs, belonging to the order Hemiptera (class Insecta).  All true bugs have piercing mouth parts, kind of like mosquitoes, whose job it is to pierce tissues (either plant or animal) and suck the liquid nourishment from within.   Immediately after piercing the host's tissues, water striders inject a potent saliva cocktail that both paralyzes the organism and facilitates the chemical breakdown of solids.  The fluids are then slurped up and the feeding continues.   I have known about water striders taking on small prey, such as springtails, but wasn't aware that they actually could overpower larger organisms.  This happens only when they are not breeding.  They will cooperatively take on prey larger than themselves.  By working together, they can both incapacitate and kill meals that will feed a community. I photographed this a couple of days ago while visiting one of the ponds on Knox ...

The dark-edged bee fly is one of the earliest bee flies to emerge in the spring. Now there's a strange-looking beast.  I have written blogs about bee flies before ( Black-banded bee fly ) and even about the dark-edged bee fly (click here to see my previous post).  I have documented their behaviours as being nectar-feeders as adults but being parasitoids as larvae.  You can read about their life history in my other blogs. There are two reasons I like this photo.  The first is that it is the best photo of a bee fly that I have ever gotten, and the second reason is that the hairy abdomen and thorax can be clearly seen.  Since these insects emerge so early in the spring, they need to keep their body temperature elevated so they can fly.  When they beat their wings, the muscles release heat.  The heat is insulated because of the hair and allows the bee fly to keep active in cool temperatures. A strange thing about this bee fly is that is is present througho...

Dusky shrew: The long, bicoloured tail helps with identification. Last year, while visiting Edmonton, I found a masked shrew ( blog here ).  Not to be outdone, I found a dusky shrew in Kelowna at a site I commonly visit, Munson Pond. All shrews are insectivores and have an insane metabolism, where they have to eat something like half their body weight each day to stay alive.  They have short lifespans, have several litters a year, and are active throughout the year.  In winter, they live in the subnivian zone, which is the area between the snowpack and the ground.  If insects are not available, they eat seeds, lichen, and fungi, and are known to have food stores (or larders) that they can access.  Dusky shrews are known to eat conifer seeds. The dusky shrew is relatively common.  It lives near water (I found this one 20 meters from the pond), and can be identified by the dark fur dorsally and the light fur ventrally.  The tail is also bicoloured, with ...

Male wood duck at Munson Pond, March 19, 2026. Although I know wood ducks inhabit many of the Lakes and slow streams of southern British Columbia, this is the first one I have seen at Munson Pond in the five years I have lived in Kelowna.  I have many photos of them in the Fraser Valley, where I lived for over 30 years, and have never seen them outside of our province.  They can be found throughout the Pacific Northwest, into southern Alberta, and in the east from the Great Lakes all the way down to Florida.   The male wood duck is known for its brightly coloured plumage, which sets it apart from most other ducks, with the possible exception of the Mandarin.  They look like females when juveniles and have an eclipse plumage when they are not breeding.  The three feather patterns are quite different from each other.  You can have a good look at them here .  (Be sure to scroll to the right to see the male's eclipse state). I photographed a wood duck...

Redhead duck (rear) with three male and two female common goldeneye ducks. I have written blogs on redhead ducks before ( see my 2024 post ), which also have better photos than what I managed to get today at Munson Pond.  However, one of the purposes of today's blog is to indicate that they are present there, certainly at the moment.  Whether they will stay for breeding is another matter. I also saw a male wood duck and a female bufflehead, saw evidence of a mallard having been eaten by a bird of prey, and even got a photo of a shrew (albeit a dead one).  I also talked to two ladies who saw two turtles - the first ones of the year to emerge from their winter slumber.   If you visit the pond, you will also notice where they have put up boundary fences for where the construction will be.  Evidently, they are going ahead with the construction, and anything short of lying down in front of bulldozers will not likely dissuade them.   For what it's worth...

Same bird, photographed from behind (left) and side (right).  Munson Pond, Kelowna. It's hard to go outdoors and not notice the hammering.  Sometimes, it's hard not to be inside and not notice it, especially when they find a piece of tin attached to your fireplace chimney.  I walked around Munson Pond today and heard about a half dozen of them proclaiming their claimed area to be the best around.   Northern Flickers are perhaps the most abundant woodpecker; they are found throughout the US year-round and much of Canada during breeding season.  And, at the beginning of breeding season, you can expect to hear their familiar trill call and their territorial hammering.   I managed to take a video today of the same one, letting all others know what was his.  You can see it below.  You may want to turn up the volume to hear the hammering. As you can probably tell, I did this handheld.  I used my D500 Nikon with my 500 mm and a 1.4x teleco...