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My handy bird book did it again.  I was unsure what this bird was and decided it was possibly a sparrow or finch because of the thick bill associated with them.  The sparrow section didn't have it, and neither did the finch section, so I thumbed through the book starting at the perching birds that had conical bills.  And there it was, an Albert's towhee.  Not exactly like the image in my book, but close enough.  An internet search verified the identification. Like the spotted towhees I am familiar with, they are fond of bushy understory areas and tend to keep hidden.  The fact that this one was bold enough to be out on a rock speaks to the fact that it was no doubt used to the presence of people.  It makes sense, given the fact that I photographed it in a wooded area inside the Palm Springs Zoo.   Also like the towhees common in southern British Columbia, they eat insects they find in leaf litter and detritus on the forest floor.  They also will take certain seeds.  This one ju

Norway rat enjoying the sun and a few garden scraps. If you have a garden, you probably have rats.  In fact, if you don't have a garden, you may have them anyways.  Well, unless you live in Alberta.  Then you just have to put up with infestations of mice. This sumer I noticed that some of my garden veggies were being mysteriously knawed on.  Beets, cantalope, corn, sunflowers, beans, and even carrots were the target of some organisms' menacing incisors.  I set out rat traps using peanut butter - always a good bait, but was thwarted by the fact that the ants swarmed and took it all before any pest found it. Using strips of meat, I replaced the traps and soon had four rodent carcasses, two rats and two mice.  Even with that dent in the population, the problem persisted.  I found a cantelope sitting on top of my retaining wall later on, apparently a resident squirrel had carted it away.  The rodents were clearly winning, but I refused to put out poison because of the risk to other

Painting baseboards - getting ready for installation. We have been in this house now for about 2-1/2 years.  It took a  year and a half to get the inside to a place where we could live comfortably.  It took about a year to get the outside to the same place.  And yet there is still lots to do. A good example is the baseboards.  They have been sitting downstairs in the unfinished basement - another project for another day - since I bought them long ago, waiting patiently for my attention.  The opportunity has come and so now I have got my first 5 painted.  They await another coat, then the next five will be done.  Then I will install those ten.  Repeat this process three more times.  Forty 10' boards - 400 feet to be painted, cut, and installed. Kathryn is away visiting her mom, our daughter, and her dear friends back in the Lower Mainland.  And so, it has fallen to me (insert big sigh for me here please), to go at it again.  I worked outside for the last two days and, although it is

Nikon D7100 camera with Loawa macro lens SD card left:  uncropped image    middle:  modest crop     right:  severe crop If you have followed any of my blogging, you would know that I enjoy photographing very small things.  My macro equipment lets me get fairly close, but it is very time consuming to set up and there are so many variables to consider.  I have been wanting to set up a stationary system that will let me photograph something with little setup.  Today I finished a system that I hope will help. I had a Kreg channel mount sitting about and it occurred to me that I could mount a rail system and tripod head to it.  The heads of the bolts had to be made thinner in two dimensions so they would fit into the channel and the bolt itself needed serious thinning so it could fit through the groove.  I then used 9/16th inch lock nuts to secure them and fit other tripod heads onto them.  I can use them for subject placement, light placement, and backlighting.  I also have a very handy fl

  Photographed in central Washington state, June 30, 2013. Now that the temperatures have dipped and the invertebrates have either died or gone into hibernation, it's time to pull up some files from the past.  I photographed this jewel beetle while vacationing in the Leavenworth area.  I have to say it is one of the most colourful insects I have ever come across. Jewel beetles are also known as buprestid beetles or metallic wood-boring beetles.  If those names aren't enough, we can add the term flat-head borers to the collection in reference to the larvae that have unusually large heads for the size of their bodies.  The larvae bore into softwood trees such as pine, fir, and spruce and create tunnels as they move.  Some species, such as the emerald ash borer, are invasive and cause a great deal of damage to the trees.   The golden jewel beetle lays their eggs in dead or dying trees and as such do not represent a significant threat to the logging industry.  An interesting fact a

What makes a spider a spider?  First off, they have to have something called chelicera.  These mouth appendages are present in all arachnids but also are found in horseshoe crabs and sea-spiders, which are not spiders at all.  In spiders, including tarantulas, the chelicera is a pair of scissor-like appendages that open and close sideways.  The tips of the chelicera are equipped with fangs that can (for most species) deliver venom.  Spiders have more flexible chelicera than tarantulas and can open them from side to side when ready to strike.  Tarantulas tend to fold their fangs underneath. A second characteristic of all spiders is that they have two body segments (a cephalothorax and head) and eight legs.  The pedipalps, the leg-like segments just behind the chelicera, are used in feeding, mating, and web construction.  You can see these in the front of the above image, they look like short legs.  Tarantulas also have these in common with spiders. You can see a diagram below showing th

Pyralid,  Anania hortulata  After photographing a species, I like to know what it is.  This one stumped me; all the searching I did on the internet and books were to no avail.  After spending hours (yes, hours - I know, I have no life) trying to figure it out, I sent the photo and a request to Karen Needham who is the curator of the Spencer Entomological Collection at UBC.  She didn't know what it was either, but she passed it onto some of her colleagues who solved the mystery. It turns out that the moth is a pyralid which is also called a snout or grass moth.  There are about 6000 species, some of which are serious pests.  The larvae of this one feed on nettles, mint, and something called bindweed.  It does not present a problem to us in North America. They have been showing up in patches throughout southern Canada for at least the last 20 years; I photographed the one above in Nanaimo in 2016.  They also occur in a number of States.   It seems that the longer we travel and pursue

I have mixed feelings about zoos, but I think that, in general, they are onto something.  Many places are now keeping animals for one of three reasons.  The animals are injured or rescued and cannot be returned to the wild, the animals are at risk and they are running a breeding program to repopulate the group, or the animals are neither injured or at risk but add significantly to the zoo's ability to keep the doors open to help those that are. It is a far cry from the old days when we caught anything that could turn a buck simply by encasing it in a glass cubicle.  As a rule of thumb, I believe in leaving wild things wild.  I have delivered a number of injured birds to rescue facilities that were strictly interested in returning a healthy bird to the environment.  Admittedly, it is not an easy thing to rescue a creature that is injured; they don't want to be caught and there is a risk to them and us if we are successful.  But, I believe it is the right thing to do. When photog

As many of you know, I have been teaching photography courses for many years now.  I started out of my house in the 90's with film and even did some darkroom courses.  Over the years I have transitioned to digital and have written about a dozen course books, some that I have sold to bookstores.   We moved to Kelowna two years ago, waiting for the dust to settle in the wake of COVID-19.  I started teaching again last year and put together a course on cell-phone photography.  It started slowly but now I have a full class to teach soon and a full waiting list to boot.  Other courses I have offered have not been run as there were not enough students registered - until now. I found out last night that my course on situational photography - how to take pictures in certain situations - is full and starts tonight.  I haven't had anything prepared because this is the first time it has actually had enough students to warrant running.  So, last night I put together chapter 1 - how to phot