All My Blogs

Adult blister beetle eats and lays eggs on flowers.  Larvae parasitize ground-nesting solitary bees. Most of us have no idea about the life cycle of an unknown insect - some are relatively simple, but others are far different than what we could imagine.  Blister beetles are one such insect. All beetles undergo complete metamorphosis, meaning that they proceed from egg to a larval stage quite different from the adult.  The larva undergoes several moults (each stage is called an instar) to finally pupate, where it casts off its last moult (called an ecdysis) and emerges as an adult.  The adult goes on to mate and lay eggs.  Nothing too different about that, is there? N. nigripennis , the blister beetle shown in the above photo, eats flowers and pollen as an adult.  It also mates and lays eggs on the flowers themselves.  The larva is very mobile and searches for a ground-nesting solitary bee to visit the flower it is on.  Then, it attaches itself to ...

I found this northern scorpion by looking under a log at a campsite in Northern California. Although there are scorpions in Canada (Milk River Valley, Alberta), the only ones I have ever found were in the States.  One in Arizona (American giant scorpion), and the other is the one I photographed above.  I found both of them under surface structures (log above and a rock for the first one), which is where you will find most scorpions during the day.  The strange thing is that scorpions do not typically come out during the day; they are nocturnal predators and leave their burrows or hiding places only in the dark.  Hollywood often portrays the Scorpiones as desert-dwelling creatures that wander during the heat of midday, looking for some hapless passerby to clumsily fall into their path.   Northern scorpions have stingers that are capable of delivering a painful hit to humans, but little more than what one would get from a bee.  Their weapon is for incapa...

Non-breeding sanderling sandpipers photographed in Galveston State Park, Texas. I love shore birds.  They are a fascinating group, many of which have particular feeding niches due to their particular morphology - long, sometimes curved bills, long legs, and a wide range of behaviours.  One of the smaller species is the sanderling. While visiting Texas a number of years ago, I came across a group of small shore birds darting along the edge of the surf.  They were stopping momentarily to probe the sandy shoreline for any invertebrates unfortunate enough to be discovered by their explorations.  Then, another wave would encroach upon their foraging, and they would run to another area where the water was receding back into the deep from where it came.  With every new wave they would relocate and continue their feeding. Their non-breeding range is unlike most birds in that they are ubiquitous along Pacific and Atlantic shorelines with little presence intercontinentall...

  Masked shrew I found near Leduc, Alberta You've heard of the Masked Avenger, the Masked Marvel, perhaps a pelagic bird called the masked boobie, well, this miniature mammalian marvel outdoes them all - meet "The Masked Shrew".  Although tiny, it possesses a terrific appetite.  Due to its incredible metabolism, it must consume somewhere between one and three times its body weight in food a day.  Imagine a human doing that (besides a teenager).  A 150 pound person eating 450 pounds a day - amazing! The menu is no less incredible (oops - I already used that word) - astonishing.  Insects, slugs, snails, spiders, earthworms, and even small vertebrates such as salamanders, moles, and mice.  A shrew that can attack and overwhelm another mammal larger than itself, kind of like a mink overcoming a rabbit.  Indeed, another superhero trait. If you thought the unbelievable properties are done, imagine such a tiny creature, a mammal at that, having venom....

Kathryn, Nora, Chanelle, and Leanne, making dong. What exactly is dong?  For me, being 0% Chinese, it is a boiled, wrapped leaf containing rice, meat, preserved egg yolk, mung beans, and mushrooms.  But for others, it is much more than that. Google tells me that the name for the wrapped staple is  Zongzi (粽子).  Regardless of what you call it, I'm sure it tastes the same.  I have had it from the store (T&T), made by relatives, and even made by my own hand, with the supervision of my wife (first in the photo above).  They all taste about the same.  The dish itself lacks much in the way of vegetables, but does contain plenty of carbohydrates in the form of rice and protein in the form of meat and mung beans.  Besides that, there is Chinese 5-spice powder, soya sauce, and sesame oil.  You can also add other stuff, depending on what you want or have. The partly cooked rice and soaked beans are combined with the other ingredients and then wrapp...

Red leaves and blue berries in the fall of the Oregon grape plant. During the summer, the dark green foliage of the Oregon grape plant is reminiscent of holly. If you happen to brush against its leaves, the similarity is remarkable.  The berries are a different story, though. Oregon grape berries are edible; I made a jam/jelly from a batch growing in my backyard earlier this year.  They are very bitter and have more seeds than fruit.  The amount of fruit I picked was reduced by more than half after removing the skin and seeds.  I needed a tremendous amount of sugar/sweetner to make up for the bitterness.  The berries are packed with vitamine C and antioxidents and have some value for immunity.  They don't taste like grapes at all, and for a good reason, they don't belong to the grape family. The great thing about Oregon grape is that it doesn't need a lot of light - it is very shade and drought tolerant.  Large plants produce hundreds, if not thousands...

Male polyphemous moth showing its large antennae While butterflies are known for their daytime activity and slender antennae, moths are known for the polar opposite.  With broad, feathery antennae and nocternal behaviours, they stand apart from their Lepidopteran relatives.  However, another difference lies in antennae differences between males and females.  Butterflies show no significant difference, while in moths, the males' antennae are much larger than the females'.  Why? It is all about pheromone detection.   Females release specific chemicals called sex pheromones from abdominal glands whose sole purpose is to aid in attracting males.  The chemicals may be specific to the species or may be a unique combination of several agents.  The pheromones are released into the air and are dispersed through diffusion and air currents.  The tiny filaments (sensilla) composing the male moths' antennae have receptor sites for that/those specific chem...

The Svendsen Clan - Missing are Jennifer, Katie, Josh, and Chanelle The above photo was taken in 2017.  That was eight years ago, and a lot has changed.  My dad passed away three years ago, and my son and his wife now have two children.  That's the thing about families; they change. Everyone is busy.  School, work, just life in general.  As we get older, there seems to be less and less time for family.  The fact that people move away makes getting together even more difficult.  The family we knew as children has changed drastically as we move into adulthood and eventually old age.   The three things affecting that change revolve around the very nature of life.  Birth, death, and health.  While there is life, there is the opportunity to connect, to be involved in the lives of family, and possibly to make a difference.  It's not just about keeping in touch; it's really about loving, supporting, and building up.  Family means...

 ( Enoplognatha ovata - ovata morph) This spider is endemic to Europe, but it has been unintentionally transplanted to North America.  It originally settled on the east and west coasts somewhere around 1900 and, in 125 years, has managed to populate almost every state and province.   There are three varieties or morphs of the candy-striped spider.  The one I photographed above is the ovata morph, which possesses a broad red stripe across the abdomen.  The rest of the abdomen varies from cream to yellow in colour.  It is the least common of the three.  The redimita is similar, except instead of the the single, broad stripe, two thinner stripes parted by the midline are present.  The third variation has a pale green/yellow abdomen with dark spots present. Many spiders have a bit of red on them and are not terribly poisonous.  The candy-striped spider belongs in this category; its bite is mildly annoying at the most, unless you are al...

Common goldeneye ducks, males and females, on Mission Creek in Kelowna.  Video below. My wife of 37 years and I went for a walk down the Mission Creek greenway yesterday.  We saw quite a few birds, including a falcon of some type, although I couldn't identify it.  The best thing we saw was two groups of goldeneye ducks as they lazily floated down the creek, ducking under the surface to feed as they went.  Our presence stopped their foraging habits.  They continued along with the flow; you can see the video below. I have seen Barrow's goldeneyes recently, but not the common variety for about 4 years now.  And I have never seen this many together at once.  Apparently, they are isolationists during breeding season but group together the rest of the year.  Given that it is December, the flocking behaviour was understandable. What was interesting was that a male hooded merganser was present with them.  I saw paired mergansers along the walk, but t...

Fog is notoriously difficult to photograph, and not just due to exposure issues. Fog could be described as wet air.  Technically, it is a colloid, which describes any medium that suspends tiny particles that do not settle out easily.  Other colloids you may be familiar with include mayonnaise, smoke, milk, and paint.  The thing about colloids is that the tiny suspended particles scatter light, which is why you can't see well through them, especially if they are particularly dense.  Shooting in dense fog is challenging due to the lack of clear subjects.  As the density of fog decreases,  there is less scattering of light and elements of a scene begin to emerge.   The thing to realize when photographing in foggy situations is that you will need to overexpose your images by one to two stops, more if it is warranted.  In automatic modes, that means using exposure compensation or exposure lock if you can find nearby objects that are not too washed...

Pitt River Bridge in Maple Ridge, photographed15 minutes before sundown. I love photographing landscapes during the golden hour.  When is that, exactly?  It is the time, an hour before sunset or an hour after sunrise, in your area.  The time varies dramatically depending on the season (tilt of the Earth relative to the sun) and the geographical location.  For example, the above photo was taken at 4:12 pm on January 3, 2014.  Sunset was at 4:27 that day, meaning the shot was taken 15 minutes before the sun would set behind the horizon. Why is the golden hour considered important?  It all comes down to light quality and shadow density.  As the sun gets lower, light must travel through more and more atmosphere.  The atmosphere does three things.  First, it reduces the intensity of the light as the number of particulates increases.  Second, as light passes through the atmosphere, the nitrogen and oxygen molecules scatter the blue wavelengths...

Whistler Valley from near the top of Whistler Mountain.  Photographed August, 2015. Blue.  Green.  Aquamarine.  These are some of the lake colours you see when visiting Whistler.  But what makes these such different colours?   Arguably, we all know water is blue, but it really isn't.  Pure water is clear, and pure water in a shallow lake will also appear clear, revealing the bottom.  As the water gets deeper, that transparency slowly disappears.  That's because water absorbs light, long wavelengths (warm colours) faster than shorter wavelengths (cool colours).  As the water gets deeper, the reds and lower frequencies are absorbed first, leaving the higher frequencies, like blue.  Thus, deep water appears blue. Shallower bodies of water may reflect more of the warmer colours, making them appear greenish.  This tendency is increased with the presence of phytoplankton like diatoms and other pelagic photo- synthesizers.  ...

The lower falls at Canyon Falls Park.  Image produced from fusing3 images together. It was a treat to watch the family crawling around the rocks or, for the dad, watching him jumping into the plunge pool.  He did this several times; I had to change shutter speeds as I otherwise caught only a blur of him descending into the frothing waters below.  The kids, as you may have noticed, are the same ones at the bottom of the falls on the left and right of the image.  In order to produce this photo, I took a couple of dozen photos and blended the desirable ones together. I would not recommend jumping into the plunge pool on any waterfalls as there is a danger of striking the bottom, of undercurrents, or of falling uncontrollably.  I have worked with children who have jumped into shallow areas and sustained severe neck injuries.  I cannot find any information about jumping into the plunge pool at Canyon Falls Park, but I am aware of the risks. I photographed this s...

Service can be anything that helps others, and you don't need to get paid for doing it. My trip to Willow Park Church's Living Nativity was inspiring not only because it was a great show, but also because it reminded me of what it means to serve others, voluntarily.  While it is true that each of us has our own needs, we should also think about making a difference in the lives of others, without being paid for it. I think of a stewardess' instructions before takeoff.  In the event of depressurization, oxygen masks will drop down.  Put yours on first and then help those around you.  We can't be of help to others if we don't look after ourselves.  After our own needs are met, we should try to assist those around us. There is a great quote from Philippians 2:4.  " Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others."  I have strived to live this for all of my adult life.  Look after yourself, and help others al...

Rob, Gail, Kathryn, and Eric at Living Nativity, Willow Park Church, December 5, 2025. I went because it was a Christmassy thing to do.  And because it was with friends.  OK, and because my wife "asked" me.  And it turned out, it was also fun. I was very impressed with all the work that went into both the production and the ancient town of Bethlehem which you could wander through.  Plus there were free cookies, things you could actually buy, and quite a lot going on.  You also had to be careful, otherwise a Roman soldier may toss you in the nearby cell. The production was good, the Living Nativity was good, the the mood was festive.  I took a few photos, as I am driven to do, and you can see some of the images below. Some of the events at Willow Park's Living Nativity. As always, the real reason for the event was to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and to share the amazing story with anyone that would care to partake.  It was a production put on by hundre...

Photos for my grandchildren - memories for later years - a Christmas tradition. I have done it every year since my first grandchild. I make a print, in fact I make a lot of prints.  A total of eight pages on photo paper - standard letter size.  Each page has photos of the kids from the year, generally I have 4 on a page (each photo is 4x5 inches) and so there are 32 images.  Then I put them in a plastic 3-ring binder sleeve, two pages in each sleeve, back to back. This is the fourth year I have done this.  They will have an album now with about 120 photos, and it will grow by another 32 images next year.  I will keep this up until they are in their teens - by that time there will be fewer available photos probably - but time will tell. So, where do I get the shots from?  I have taken some of them.  I also visit their mother's face page (as we are "friends") where I look at her posted images and take the ones I like.  I then use an editor and crop ...

View of Okanagan Lake from the south end of Knox Mountain Park One of the jewels of Kelowna is right behind me.  I live at the base of Knox Mountain Park, on the east side.  Yesterday, my wife, Kathryn and I walked part of the 20 km of trails that crisscross the area.  It was a lovely day and we took our dog, Murphy, for a short tour of the area.  I photographed the map that is at the base of the southern end by the parking lot and included it here.  I will post the entire map at the end of this blog. One thing I found that was strange was the fact that Knox Mountain Drive, number 16 on the map below, is closed.  It opens in May or April, depending on conditions, and closes at the end of October (I think).  Certainly for us, it was closed being the 11th of December.  The fact it was closed wasn't a problem though as we enjoyed our walk to the first lookout.  That's were I shot the inset photo of Kathryn. I have written other blogs on Knox Mou...

Five different colour spaces viewed on screen with similar points compared - an experiment. Purpose:  To view the results of looking at a common image on screen with different colour spaces. Materials:  A jpeg image with widely varying colours and a PC computer running Photoshop CC (26) Method:  Take a jpeg from a raw photo showing a wide variety of intense colours.  Apply different colour spaces to the image and compare swatches from the same area.  Colour spaces used, pallets include as it was originally converted from a raw file, Adobe RGB, sRGB, CMYK, and for the Epson P800 set to premium luster paper. Results:  The 5 images above with labels indicate the selected areas of the common image used to compare colour spaces.  A colour swatch was collected using the eye dropper tool and the resulting colour was then deposited in a rectangular box table seen above.  Looking with the eye, the colours are very similar.  Closer inspection using Pho...

The colour yellow is difficult to print or display on electronic media. I have noticed over the years that yellows don't always come out with the brightness or level of detail that I would expect.  It seemed to me that yellows would hit a wall when it came to how bright they could get.  That never seemed to be a problem with the other colours.  To prove this to myself, I took an image with bright yellows and broke the colours down into their CMYK counterparts and looked at the levels of the colours.  You can see the results below. Yellow-rumped warbler.  Notice cyan and magenta hit the left wall on the histogram and stop, but yellow goes past the wall.  This is because the file is not capable of rendering yellow to that level. Upon researching the concept further, I discovered that there is truth to the concept.  It seems that the ability of the human eye to see yellow extends past the gamuts of print, film, and electronic media.  Another problem ...

Houseboats in Victoria, BC.  Taken in 2020 with my Panasonic FZ2500 bridge camera. How, exactly, do digital cameras capture colour?  We know that the digital sensor is the physical device that receives light in the form of an image from the lens, but how does that translate from photons to pixels?  The answer lies in photo cells arranged in something called a Bayer array.  See the image below. A 20 mp sensor has 20 million pixels, each pixel is made of 4 wells that provide colour data. The Bayer array is the backbone of the digital imaging industry.  Although there are other ways of getting coloured pixel information, this method is by far the most commonly used.  The sensor does not produce an image directly.  Rather, that job belongs to the camera's CPU, where the information is processed into whatever file type is selected.  Jpegs, as mentioned in a previous blog, use 8 bit per channel encoding, where a value from 0-255 is assigned for each of ...

I made a print of this and sold it to the owner.  I used a pigment-based multi-cartridge printer. If you have a photo you want to print, there are numerous options.  You can send it out to be printed or print it at home.  There is the traditional photo print with light-sensitive paper, using a colour laser printer, ink/bubble jet, or the dye-sublimation printer.  Each of these has its own advantages and disadvantages, including cost, quality, colour gamut, and convenience. Light-sensitive print:  With few people doing their own darkroom work, traditional photo printing is now done throughout labs.  You print digital images through web-based photo services such as Nations Photo Lab , or you can take your images directly to a store that allows you to upload to a print service, usually in the building, like London Drugs .  The colour gamut tends to be less than what you can get out of a good home printer.  The advantage is that you don't need any eq...

You can be sure to be met with smiles and helpful salespeople when you walk into The Brick.  Eager to make a sale, the people there will no doubt approach you with all the professionalism and knowledge you would expect from Leon's parent company.  And, once they have convinced you to buy their products, they will offer you an opportunity to purchase an extended warranty. You may hesitate at the expense, until they tell you that, "If you do not use the extended warranty, you may return to our store and put that money towards another product."  Ergo, it ultimately costs you nothing to have an extended warranty.  It sounds like a win-win situation.  Pay for something, then get it back later and put it towards something else.  Like many others have done, we thought it was a good deal, and we fell for it. What they don't tell you is that the day the extended warranty ends, you have 90 days to take them up on their offer.  However, they are not likely to tel...