All My Blogs

A pair of ring-necked ducks (main image above) with another ring-necked duck (inset) - are they related? Evolutionary biology is based on two main parameters.  These are selection of the fittest and diversity within a population leading to members with more desirable traits.  Mutation plays an important role within this framework as it allows for unique genes to be created within a population to be weeded out through the selection process. Geneticists would tell you that most mutations are either harmful or fatal (99.9%), with many being a recessive trait that is not expressed unless in the homozygous condition.  Some mutations are neutral, meaning that their expression has no impact on an individual's chances of survival. What would happen if numerous genetic traits all came together to produce a bird with the characteristics of Daffy Duck?  In order to analyze this question, we need to break it down into three different categories. #1:  Physical likelyhood of ...

Saying that a bird is a sparrow is like saying a vehicle is a car.  The general title does credit to narrowing its identification, but it still leaves much uncertainty.  In the world, there are 140 different species, of which 47 of them occur in North America.  In British Columbia, where I photographed this guy, there are about 18 different species according to Bird Watching HQ . Savannah sparrows are found throughout North America.  You would think that a sparrow named for flat temperate grasslands wouldn't range as widely as they do, but the irony here is that the name comes from where the bird was first identified.  It turns out that it was discovered in Savannah, Georgia, by a famous ornithologist in the 1800's. There are a lot of savannah sparrow subspecies.  These birds have a strong inclination to return to the area they were raised.  This means that gene pools become somewhat isolated and facilitate diversity within the population.  A good...

As a Lower Mainlander for over 30 years, I never saw redhead ducks on my local photographic expeditions.  I had heard, on occasion, excited birders talking about photographing the odd migrant on Vancouver Island.  As I never saw them, I never took an interest in them.  Then, in the last few years, I have seen them in Alberta around Edmonton. It turns out that redheads are found only as migrants in western BC and do not show up in any numbers until the Okanagan.  However, they are fond of pothole ponds that are distributed throughout the prairies, and this is where I have seen them. You can tell a duck is a male redhead by the bluish bill with the black tip, the red head, golden eye, and gray back.  The females are brown overall and rather bland in colour.  They still have a black tip at the end of their bill, but it is not nearly as obvious given the dark colour of the rest of the bill fitting with the body colour. Female redheads may use brood-parasitism a...

  While hiking Clifford E. Lee park (near Edmonton, Alberta) in early May, I came across a dull-looking brown butterfly that was sunning itself on a log.  I was unsure to its identification as I never saw the ventral wing display.  I photographed the inset some years ago, also in Alberta.  I included the image as a reference how the insect looks when its wings are open. Mourning cloaks belong to the brush-foot butterflies (Nymphalidea).  Notice that the butterfly in the above image is sitting on only four of its six legs.  The hind legs are curled up behind the butterfly.  This is a common trademark of the family.  The term "brush-foot" comes from the fact that they sometimes have brush-like hairs on the forelegs.  You can see just a hint of that in the image. Mourning cloak butterflies are some of the earliest Lepidoptera to be seen in the spring.  Adults may successfully overwinter and be the first on the scene, ready to breed and begi...

A small gathering of rough-winged swallows near a pond in Kelowna. Thanks to a number of helpful bird enthusiasts, I determined yesterday that my unknown flycatcher was actually a type of swallow I had never seen before.  After learning the name, I had to do some research on what the moniker "rough wing" was about.  I know that owls have frilled/soft-edged feathers to allow them to fly silently, so what is going on with this bird's so-called "rough" wings? You can see in the above image that the leading edge of the swallow's primary feathers has a series of hooks or barbs.  This gives the wing the rough feeling that you get when you run your finger across its edge.  This is unlike normal feathers that are smooth all the way along. The fact is that the purpose of these barbs is as of yet unknown.  There is some speculation that it may affect the sound of the bird's flight and may be involved in mating.  Given the dull appearance of the creature, I could s...

Northern Rough Winged Swallow - a new species for me. There are a number of bird groups that I find hard to identify species in.  The ones that immediately spring to mind are gulls and flycatchers. The key to identifying a bird species is to look for morphology clues such as size and colour.  Particular features such as beak and leg form will often help you to identify a bird to at least the family level.  Beyond that, you need specifics such eye rings, breast pattern, wing or tail bars, and so on.  Habitat, behaviour, and location may also play a role in identification. In the example above, my thinking is that the bird is a flycatcher.  It doesn't fit any of the patterns for the swallows we have here.  There is no eye ring, no crest, and the bird is has a buff-coloured breast without a pattern and a brownish-coloured back, sides, and wings.  There are no wing or tail bars.  It is also small in size.  This leads me to believe it is either a ...

Although I have seen violet-green swallows before, I have rarely photographed them.  In fact, the body of the above photo was only the third time I have managed to record an image of one.  The inset I photographed in 2011 with a Nikon D7000 and a 70-200 mm f/2.8 lens sporting a 1.7x teleconverter.   The main photo above was shot with a Nikon D500 with a 500 mm PF lens and a 1.4x teleconverter.  It was a dull day when I was out and the f/8 minimum aperture meant that I had to use an ISO of 1600 in order to pull off a decent shutter speed. Although my D500 performs much better than my D7000 ever could, I find that I can't use focus tracking on it when the minimum aperture is f/8 (probably not enough light for the system).  It works fine when shooting at the lens' native f/5.6 aperture. I have not taken the time yet to uncover the species of bird behind the swallow, but I suspect it may be a flycatcher of some form.  The dead tree was home to quite a grou...

I have always thought of sandpipers as being shore birds, in the literal sense, where they inhabit the shoreline of lakes and streams looking for aquatic morsels.  Needless to say, I was surprised when I found one channelling its inner robin and working tirelessly to yard a worm out of the ground.  The water you see in the above photo was a puddle that appeared after a rainfall in a farmer's field across from where we were camping in Leduc.  It disappeared in a couple of days. I suppose the habitat was familiar enough for the sandpiper that it felt comfortable searching for any suitable fodder that it came across.  Sandpipers use their long bills to probe for invertebrates.  The saturated ground meant that the substrate was soft and easily worked, allowing the bird to find the worm as it searched for food.   Solitary sandpipers are a little different from many of their cousins.  They look for food rather than probing for it.  Often a sandpipe...

  The merlin (sometimes called the pigeon hawk) is a smallish falcon that seems at home in regular neighbourhoods.  This one I photographed yesterday while visiting my son in Leduc, Alberta.  It had found a favourite perch in a large tree about four houses down from where he lives.  It is not the first time I have seen one in the suburbs. There are three birds of prey I have seen Western Canada that have a stripped red and white breast.  These include the Cooper's hawk, the sharp-shinned hawk, and the merlin.  Of the three, only the merlin is a falcon and is the smallest.  Its swept-back wings clearly identify it.  The males (above) have a bluish-grey back while females sport a brown one. I have seen merlins in the Lower Mainland, in Kelowna, and now in Leduc - all of them quite at home amid a busy human population.  I guess that suitably sized birds such as robins, pigeons, bluejays, and the like are in such abundance that there is never a r...

Purple martins are our largest swallow and have been declining in numbers because of the loss of habitat.  They are very finicky when it comes to selecting a nesting site.  They like snags (dead standing trees) in or very close to stagnant or slow moving fresh water.  They are also cavity nesters, meaning they want a hole to nest in.   The lack of available nesting sites is due to a number of compounding factors.  First of all, we destroy wetlands by either draining them or covering them with fill.  Then we take down dead trees because think they are ugly or that they are of no use.  As if that wasn't enough, there are those species that would usurp available nesting sites, such as the house sparrows in the above photo, and render what little there is even rarer (that's our fault too because house sparrows and starlings are introduced species that came here from Europe).   The availability of drones that fly and take pictures is also a n...

I love photographing birds in spring.  They have shed their winter plumage and are now attired in their best dress clothes for mating.  You wouldn't know the species has sky-blue coverts on their wings with green primaries when they are on the water, but in flight, they are quite colourful.  You can see the wing colours below in the image I took a few years ago. Male blue-winged teal in flight. I have only ever photographed blue-winged teals in Alberta, never in BC, the province that I live in.  However, they most definitely reside there, as you can see from the map  provided by the All About Birds website. The teals are not diving ducks, but rather dabblers.  They tend to eat aquatic invertebrates while breeding and vegetative matter when overwintering in their southern ranges.  A close relative, the green-winged teal, is one I have photographed in BC but never in Alberta.  You can see the ones I photographed in Kelowna below. Green-winged teal (...

Although spring boldly declared its presence some weeks ago in Kelowna, BC, where I live, it is just starting to peek through winter's covers here in Leduc, Alberta.  We are staying at a local RV campground that has a small pond at the back.  I saw breeding pairs of numerous ducks - bufflehead, blue-winged teals, mallards, and the ones I photographed above. The male is immediately recognizable with his cinnamon flank and green head, but it is the duck's bill that really gives it away.  The female, although drab in her appearance, shares the male's bill, and can be readily identified with this common feature.  An interesting fact about these birds is that a bonded pair will stay together for long periods of time, longer than most other ducks. The bird's bill has scalloped edges that allow it to filter out larger food particles from the bottom muddy areas of ponds.  On the water, they feed with their tails in the air in a behaviour called dabbling.   The...

Honeybee mid-flight Yesterday I went to Kelowna's Kangaroo Creek Farm with my family.  While they perused the various exhibits and paddocks, I wandered about with my 500 mm lens snapping pictures of anything that captured my interest.  One such place was a patch of dandelions being actively solicited by honeybees. A 500 mm (750 mm relative) is not generally my lens of choice when photographing insects.  The minimum working distance is extreme at almost 10 feet.  I used my TC14 (1.4x teleconverter) to increase the magnification providing a reproduction ratio of 1:4.  The resulting system allowed me to capture some decent images. A few things were working to my advantage.  The midday sun provided ample light and I positioned myself with my back to it to reduce shadows.  A modest ISO (400) allowed me to shoot at f/11 with a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second.  The lens and camera system provided near-instantaneous focusing, as long as I wasn't too ...

My daughter, Leanne, enjoying our hike on Knox Mountain in Kelowna Each of us goes through hills and valleys, sometimes even mountains and canyons, on our sojourn through life.  Joyous moments seem to last but an instant while depressing lows can crawl along at the pace of a handicapped snail.  Fortunately, it seems, that the bulk of life is about maintenance and upkeep, of both self and invested interests.  It is during that metaphoric walk on the plains of life that an abrupt change in topography occurs, often without warning. I love my daughter.  As a parent, I have watched her grow and borne witness to those life events that have both blessed and haunted her.  Where my wife and I could, we have supported her in the difficult times and celebrated with her in the good.  I would like to think that we have made the valleys less daunting and the peaks even higher.   A recent personal setback has left her reeling, yet she still finds moments to enjo...