All My Blogs

American badger seen in Waterton National Park on June 29, 2025.  It was a welcome site, although I was not expecting it.  We were visiting the Buffalo paddock at Waterton National Park yesterday and my wife called out, “What are those?”  My eye caught two burly grayish and very low to the ground mammals scurrying to my left.  “Badgers.”, I said.  Two of them.  And they were making a B-line for their den. Badgers have quite a wide range over North America, but their populations vary radically where there are only a few hundred known to be left in Ontario and they are doing slightly better in British Columbia.   In the prairies it is a different story in that they are doing well and not considered endangered.   The ones I photographed yesterday were in a protected area in western Alberta. Badgers are considered fossorial carnivores, which is another way of saying they eat things that dig in the dirt.   This mostly includes rodents such as ...

Waterton National Park - Buffalo Paddock - Photographed by me this morning (June 29, 2025). You've heard the term buffalo and bison used somewhat interchangeably.  Or maybe you have heard that buffalo is singular and bison plural.  Of course, then there is the idea that bison is both singular and plural (like moose or sheep) and refers to North American Bovidea while buffalo is for Old World ones.  Which is it? Well, it turns out that the last of the three possibilities is the correct one.  Bison are North American bovids and are not naturally occurring elsewhere in the world.  Buffalo are bovids found in Asia and Africa and include water buffalo, cape buffalo, swamp buffalo, and an impressive number of others.  Bison include two living species, the plains bison (above) and the wood bison.  There are other members of the bison family recorded in paleontology, such as the ancient bison, which is substantially bigger than any living member. We visited th...

Above:  Rainbow I photographed today while visiting Waterton National Park - no polarizer used. Below:  The same rainbow, but the polarizer took the polarized light away, making it almost vanish.   We have been at Waterton now for 4 days and have one day left.  I like to get moving early in the morning because the light is usually better and there are less people about to get in the way.  We were heading to Red Rock Canyon to photograph the gorge when a rainbow appeared ahead of us.  It was a pretty good one and I pulled over right away to photograph it. I have shot numerous rainbows, but have never had a polarizer with me and I used it for the second photo.  The rainbow magically disappeared, or nearly, and only a trace of it was left.  This, of course, is something you don't want to do when photographing one, but I was curious what the result would be. It turns out that rainbows are caused by polarized light.  In order to have a rainbow you...

Bear cub looking at a group of us watching safely from a bridge. Yesterday we toured through Waterton National Park and saw five or six brown bears.  I managed to get photos of four of them.  This is one of my favourite shots - I was a long way away and the image is heavily cropped.  The cub, probably starting its second year, was with its mother and a sibling.  I have another photo below. Bear cub and mother.  The second cub is not far away. If you click on the photos, you will see a much larger version - they are posted as high-definition.  I have a half dozen shots that I really like.  Some of them I can make nice prints of. I dedicate these photos to Nancy Marshall.  I watched her memorial today and am very saddened at her passing.  I think she would have liked these. Thanks for reading. Eric Svendsen      www.ericspix.com

Lace bug on the underside of a leaf.  The black spots are excretions. This is the second time I have seen lace bugs.  Lace bugs - almost an oxymoron - these strange little creatures are true bugs (Hemiptera) and not aphids (Aphididea).  However, like aphids, they feed on the juices of plants through leaves.  They typically can be found on the underside of leaves, leaf discolouration may be one of the signs that they are present. The dark spots on the above image are the insect's droppings.  Areas where the creature has fed usually produces stippling - small white or yellow spots discolouring the surface of the leaf.  A light infestation usually is of no importance, but a large infestation can weaken a plant and cause premature leaf drop.  One way to get rid of them is to use a strong spray of water - possibly from a pressure water set to its widest setting and set back far enough from the plant not to tear leaves off. They are very small - The above sh...

Although local populations of western painted turtles tend to be healthy, they are considered a species at risk because they live in places that are also coveted by humans.  A pristine lake is a desirable place to build a cabin or house.  When the entire lake becomes surrounded by development, the endemic turtles have no place to lay their eggs.  The population goes into decline due to natural attrition, but also from losses attributed to the invasion by humans. Education plays a large part in helping maintaining wild populations.  Children should be taught to respect them and adults to foster a respect for all wildlife.  As a teenager, I remember some friends of my cousin who would go into the bush to shoot birds.  Catching snakes was always a fun past time, but such interactions can lead to stress on the animals.  Turtles are no different and need distance and respect in order to continue thriving. Western painted turtles are the only turtle native t...

Red-eyed vireo photographed at the Creston Wildlife Management Center today. One of the best places I have been for seeing wildlife, especially birds, is at the Creston Wildlife Center near Creston, BC.  I don't get here often, in fact, I think this is the third time I have been in this area of BC, but I am always encouraged and excited by what I find.  And this was an additional bonus in that I have never seen one before, at least not one I photographed. And yes, there is a red eye.  I found that the eye needed a bit of enhancement to bring it out, so I played with the image a bit and obtained a cropped shot that you can see below. You can see the red eye of the red-eyed vireo a little better in this cropped version. In their northern breeding grounds, these birds eat a variety of foods including insects, seeds, and fruits.  They travel quite far south and tend to feed primarily on fruit in their South American wintering grounds.  A look at their range map is v...

I was taking photos of any interesting insects I could find today on my walk.  One such discovery was of a ladybug larva.  Finding them is not unusual, but what was strange was the fact that it was black and white with relatively short legs.  There are something like 6000 species of ladybird beetle in the world, with just under 170 being in Canada.  About half of those can be found in BC. I have photographed maybe a dozen different species of ladybug.  I photographed the adult 2-spotted beetle in 2014 and the larva today - about 11 years apart.  I am not certain that the larva I shot is in fact a 2-spotted "grub", although the proper term is probably "ladybird beetle larva".  Sometimes the word "nymph" gets used, but this is also incorrect given that nymph is used to identify the juvenile form of insects undergoing incomplete metamorphosis.   Anyways, all ladybug larvae consume vast numbers of aphids and other garden pests and are welcome sig...

Left:  mature breeding male red-winged blackbird.  Right - non-breeding male, possibly juvenile. I decided this year to get out as many times as possible in the spring to photograph all the nesting, brooding, and fledging behaviours that I could.  I did not find that many nests, but I did come across quite a few juveniles in various stages of development.  Identifying can be tricky as the young often don't share plumage colouration with adults.  When they do, they look like the female or sometimes a non-breeding male.   The dark feathering of the bird suggested a blackbird of some species and I wondered for a bit if maybe it was a rusty blackbird.  However, once I spotted the underdeveloped epaulets, I was pretty sure of the species.  I photographed this on June 18th of this year.  The eggs were probably laid a little more than a month ago in late April or early May.  The eggs are incubated for up to two weeks, where the young chick...

I heard this cicada before I saw it, sitting on a tree trunk about 4 feet off the ground. There are about 3000 species of cicada world wide.  Of those, only 3 species have a 17 year cycle.  There are only 4 species that have a 13 year cycle.  The above is neither.  The Rocky Mountain cicada, O kanagana occidentalis , has a 1 year life cycle.  Of the 9 species of cicada found in BC, this one is the most common.  I actually found a different species three weeks ago, but didn't get a photograph of it. It is not a coincidence that the species has the term Okanagana as its genus name.  It was named after the region because of its common occurrence there and as a nod to its western distribution.   The nymphs and adults have piercing mouthparts and feed on the sap of trees and shrubs.  The adults do eat, but not much, and don't generally harm the plants they feed on.  They can fly, poorly, but well enough to get about.  The males are ...

I edited the image to get an unobstructed view of the yellow-headed blackbird. It's always nice to see yellow-headed blackbirds, especially when you have others with you who have never seen them.  Although Canada has a fair assortment of colourful birds, few of them are as stark as these ones.  The three others I was with were visibly excited getting their first glimpse.  What made it better was the fact that I captured these colourful creatures on camera. We hiked up the back of Knox Mountain in Kelowna and came to a pond I frequently visit.  There were the usual red-wings, coots, and a variety of ducks, but the appearance of the yellow-heads was new to even me.  I have seen the birds before, but never here and never in Kelowna. The best photo I took was of a yellow-headed blackbird with a dragonfly, but there was a reed blocking a good view of it.  In post, I used Photoshop to improve the image, but it is hard when missing important details like the eye....

Photograph of the Malahat on Vancouver Island and the explosive growth of the invasive plant broom. See all that yellow?  That's Scotch broom, often just referred to as broom.  It is not native to North America, nor a lot of other places it grows without mitigation.  In New Zealand, it covers the distant hills, turning them yellow in the spring.  In much the same way, it has an aggressive foothold on the Island where the highways are embraced by mile upon mile of the invasive plant. In the city of Akoara, broom and gorse have taken over the hillsides. New Zealand has been dealing with the explosive growth of broom and its close relative, gorse, for years.  It has gotten so bad that the surrounding hills turn yellow in the spring.  It's not that bad on Vancouver Island, yet, but it is still early.  Soon, it will be everywhere. It has a high oil content, so much so that there is talk of commercializing it to extract the oils from it.  The problem he...

Both images were photographed in the same light, but the camera's meter wasn't the same.  Why? Shooting on the Esquimalt Estuary proved to be an interesting challenge.  The tide was out and there was plenty of exposed intertidal zone.  I was hoping for an abundance of shorebirds but was met with mostly herons.  Still, it provided an excellent opportunity to play with my 1.4x teleconverter. There were several problems to overcome.  Access was one, as the muddy flats were not conducive to walking along.  That meant subjects were a considerable distance away and my 500 mm lens seemed inadequate for the job at hand.  This prompted me to employ my teleconverter.  I prefer not to use it as it does negatively affect image quality, but the extended range counters the magnification in post that is required.  The f/8 minimum aperture and the reduced focusing performance are also somewhat annoying. The sun was not in a great position as I could not posi...

Center:  Pine siskin photographed in Esquimalt, BC.  Insets - Photographed in Maple Ridge, 2019. I recently noticed a group of siskins taking seed from a feeder while visiting friends in Esquimalt.  I hadn't seen pine siskins for about six years.  They used to be a common occurrence when we lived in Maple Ridge, but since moving to Kelowna, they have been absent.  The difference has been not having a bird feeder established. They live across North America (to look at the range map, click here ), yet the only time I see them is if a bird feeder is available on a regular basis.  They seem to like to forage in a place where a regular food supply exists.  Fill one up once in a while and you are not likely to see them, but have a continuous supply of seed and they will show up. The reason they are called "pine" siskins is because of their preference for the seeds of coniferous trees such as pine and spruce.  The birds often forage at the top of trees w...

Three fathers.  The Father's Day gift was not to get, it was to give. The thing about becoming a father is that it is an impetus for change.  As the children grow, so does the momentum of change occur in us.  What we once thought impossible became a certainty, and then we went even beyond that.  That's because life was no longer about what we could get, it became about what we could give. I think of my own dad often, although he has been gone now for almost 3 years to the day.  It's still hard to believe that he is no longer on this earth.  As I grew up, he was constantly there for me.  He was constantly giving of himself.  His time, his energy, his wisdom.  And the thing was that I rarely appreciated it at the time.  It wasn't until I became a father myself that I realized the gifts he had given me.  Not only life, but an example to follow. I have always thought it important to make a difference in the lives of others.  As a w...

A couple visiting from Germany took our photo.  Left:  no fill flash.  Right:  Fill flash was used. I love using flash.  Not the built-in variety you find on consumer DSLR and mirrorless cameras, nor the anemic "flash" found on smartphones.  No, I am talking about the hot-shoe mounted or wireless bringers of light that make all the difference in the world to outdoor portraits.  The difference between the former and latter is power. We had just arrived on Vancouver Island via the Tsawwassen ferry and were travelling to our first waypoint.  We were a bit early and decided to explore a field bursting with ox-eye daisies and buttercups.  As we were concluding our temporary hiatus, we met a couple visiting Canada from Germany.  They actually didn't have any relatives or friends here but made it a point to spend several weeks every year exploring our great land.  They just happened to be visiting Vancouver Island on this particular trip. ...

I photographed this bird in Duncan, BC, on June 5, 2025. Who doesn't love chickadees?  The tiny, energetic birds flit restlessly between trees looking for sources of nourishment that can be anything from bugs to seeds.  On top of their cuteness, they have easily recognizable songs that confirm their presence even if unseen.   There are four species of chickadees found in British Columbia that, along with the above one, include the black-capped, the boreal, and the mountain chickadee.  I saw the chestnut-backed variety occasionally while living in Maple Ridge, but since moving out to Kelowna, their boisterous nature has been absent.  It wasn't until I travelled to Vancouver Island that I once again had the pleasure of their company. Breeding chickadees have a penchant for collecting fur.  They will take what they find lying on the ground, but they will also land on a distracted animal and tug away at a few strands.  They build an insulating layer a...

Leanne graduated from UFV with a B.Ed. and starts teaching in the fall. It's funny how our lives twist and turn.  We start out on a path, being certain of what we will do, and events unfurl as a canvas dropping from the ceiling, revealing a path no one expected.  It was that way with me, and it seems Leanne is experiencing the same thing in much the same way. After high school, Leanne had one plan.  She wanted to serve God and received a scholarship to attend a post-secondary institution.  She did a year there and then transferred to a program at CBC (Columbia Bible College) where she graduated with a Bachelor's in Counselling and Human Resources.  It was her desire to serve her Lord and be involved in the lives of people.  She loved working with and helping others. After earning her first degree, she began working in the community following that passion.  But the jobs she got did not fulfill her as she imagined.  As the years passed, the need to ...

Eric and Kathryn on numerous trips.  Josh and Leanne are our children. As a young man who was about to be married, I really wanted to understand what love was.  How is it possible to be in love, to love somebody, or to fall out of love?  Is the opposite of love hate?  I had been a Christian for about four years and was also trying to understand God's love for me, for all of mankind.  John 15:3 says, "There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." (NLT)  Then there is showing love, making love, loving food or a thing, and feeling love. What is love? I have been married now for 37 years come July 16th of 2025.  I would like to think that I have it sorted out by now, well, enough from the perspective of a 64 year old man with 2 adult children and 2 grandchildren.  My thoughts are based on the years I have been on this earth and the challenges I have faced. The first problem in understanding love is that we use one word to co...

Skutz Falls near Duncan, BC.  I used both an iPhone and a mirrorless camera to photograph them. Making a long exposure with an iPhone's default camera involves using the Live Photo app and converting the 1.5 second video into a long exposure format through software.  The result is often pleasing, but I don't like the fact that I can't do this in iPhone's raw format (DNG) and transferring the emulated image is a pain.  Mirrorless cameras allow you to pick an aperture and shutter speed to create a long exposure image without software intervention. The bright day limited my mirrorless camera to a shutter speed of 1/5th of a second even with a polarizer and an ISO of 64.  The longer exposure, even though simulated, of the iPhone rendered a more attractive image.  However, the fact that wasn't in a raw format limited the dynamic range and ability to extract details from the shadows.  Even if I could have managed to somehow shoot in raw format, the fact is that i...

Which photo is shot without a polarizer, altered in post , or shot with a polarizer? Three photos.  One was taken without a polarizer filter.  That same image was then altered in Photoshop by selecting the sky using AI.  The third was a different photo shot with a polarizer.  Can you tell which one is which? The first one (left) was photographed without a polarizer and the second one was a separate photo using a polarizer filter.  The last image (right) used the original and adjusted it by selecting the sky (AI select) and altering the image using Levels. You can see the differences made using the polarizer.  The bench is a slightly different colour as some of the polarized blue light from the sky was removed.  The tree in the background is he same; the greens are a little truer.  The most glaring change is the reflection off the water as there is less reflection. However, if you don't have a polarizer and want to simulate its affect on the image,...

Juvenile bushtit (left) and adult male (right). I came across a small group of darting birds in Victoria, BC.  They were bushtits, but something was different.  There was a juvenile, one that had just recently fledged.  It wasn't joining the others in their spasmodic ramblings, but rather seemed content perching in place.  I often come across bushtits but have never seen one so young.  The dark eye suggested it was a male, as was the adult I photographed. Bushtits build remarkable hanging nests.  I have never seen one, but they resemble a small, long burlap sack with a hole at the top ( click here to see one ).  It takes them a month or so to build one.  I think it is amazing that a bird so small can construct such a unique and relatively large nest.  The nest is built using spider webs and plant material it finds, including bits from the tree it hangs in.  The same nest is used if a second brood is raised that year. Females have light-c...

Totem pole in Duncan, BC.  I shot these with my iPhone 15 to illustrate perspective. I quite like my iPhone 15 Pro's cameras, all three of them.  Each one (0.5x, 1x, and 3x) offers a different perspective and even a certain amount of ability over the others.   The 0.5x camera has a relative focal length of 14 mm which makes it an ultra wide-angle lens/camera.  It has an increadibly wide field of view and not only takes in a huge amount of scenery, it also causes massive distortions.  You can see that the wings of the totem pole on the left appear much smaller than the two on the right.  The distortion also makes it an undesirable choice as the subject does not have the same presence as in the other two images. The 1.0 camera (middle image) is the default camera for iPhone.  It has a 48 mp sensor and, at full resolution, allows a 48 mp raw image to be taken.  The other two cameras can produce a 12 raw image.  The 1.0x camera has a relativ...

My search to identify this bird came up with numerous false answers. I have to admit, when I see a bird I can't identify, I am always hopeful it is a species I haven't seen before.  Sometimes it is easy identifying the bird, but often checking my books and using the internet proves either faulty or fruitless.  This was the case in this photo.  What bird was this? It was gray, about the size of a robin, and was eating berries.  It seemed to have dark primary feathers, no eye ring, and a dark beak.  I entered those qualities in Google and was rewarded with the answer of a gray catbird.  Except there was no black cap.  I have photographed them before (see below), and that couldn't be it. Grey catbird I photographed in Osoyoos some years ago.  Notice the black cap. So then I pasted the image into the Google search engine and it came back with a juvenile starling.  However, there were also photos of a Clark's nutcracker as other options.  The...

I rotated this counter-clockwise 90 degrees - they climb up a trunk vertically. The brown creeper is a small bird on par with chickadees and nuthatches.  It is similar to them as it often frequents conifers and takes any morsel it finds.  It is also seldom stationary, moving quickly from spot to spot.  The difference, apart from appearance, is that it climbs up the trunk vertically while it forages for food. The three species (creeper, chickadee, and nuthatch) cover the trees completely in their quest.  Nuthatches work from the top downward, chickadees are adept at scrounging through branches, and the creepers go upwards looking for anything the nuthatches may have missed. Admittedly, I have not seen many brown creepers, certainly not in comparison to chickadees and nuthatches, and my photographs of them have never been very good.  The reason for this is threefold.  A low frequency in sightings, the quick and darting movements, and the fact that they always...

Kathryn at Butterfly World in Victoria - The moth is on the screen which Kathryn is behind. My love of insects often clashes with my wife's disdain for them.  However, we could both agree that the butterflies at Butterfly World in Victoria refuted that dichotomy.  One even landed on her and she posed to take a photo with it (see below).  It's not the one in the above photo; the atlas moths had recently emerged from their pupal stage and this one was resting on the screen of its cage. Kathryn posing with a butterfly on her arm. Atlas moths are amongst the largest lepidoptera with wingspans up to 12 inches.  This does not compare to the largest beetles that come in at over 3 ounces or some stick insects that may measure up to 2 feet in length.  Still, few insects can match both the size and beauty of an adult atlas moth. Atlas moth caterpillars are voracious and can quickly denude a plant.  This is why they are often raised in a segregated environment.  ...

I found this while walking along a beach in Victoria, BC.  I thought it was fishing line. There are some things that you see and don't believe, it can't possibly be.  That was my reaction when it came to finding a filamentous mass growing on beach vegetation near Victoria, BC.  And not just one group, there were a couple of them near each other.  I have seen green filamentous algae both in the lab and in the wild, but nothing terrestrial and certainly nothing red in colour.  To say that I was flummoxed by my discovery would be an understatement. A search on the internet led me to uncover some of the secrets of this conjuration.  Red thread, its scientific name is Laetisaria fuciformis, is a foliar (relating to leaves) in nature, leaving the stems, roots, and woody parts of plants alone.  It tends to attach grasses that lack adequate nitrogen, fescue being a prime target.  It is more commonly seen in the spring and fall.   The body of thr...

Leaf-cutter ants at the Victoria Butterfly Gardens The display was amazing.  Really.  A procession of ants, heading in opposing directions, with the sole intention of providing for the colony's needs.  And that is just what you can see.  Beyond the ant-superhighway exists a coordinated effort to cut, harvest, move, process, and feed the fungus that is the food source for the colony.  The leaf-cutter ants take the division of labour to a whole new level. Queen - there is a single queen whose sole job is to lay eggs.  The highest estimates are around 30,000 eggs per day, although the real numbers are  probably in the hundreds or low thousands.  The size of the colony would affect that number as new colonies would not have the workers available to tend such massive numbers. Worker - the ants don't actually eat the leaves that are cut.  Rather, the leaves are brought back to the nest where they are turned into a pulp and then used as a fodder fo...