All My Blogs

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...

It snowed last night.  This was the scene along Mission Creek this morning. It's only 4 km, sometimes around 6 if we are ambitious.  We meet three times a week, at 8:30 am, and walk along the well-worn path known as the Mission Creek Greenway.  There are over 16 km of trails so far, and that will be expanded to about 26 km in the near future.  The section we do is somewhere between 2-4 km, depending on whether it is the short or long version. The trees were thick with the snow from the preceding evening's weather event.  They were shedding their snowy crowns as we hiked; we both got pelted by tree-launched snowballs, one of them landing square on my neck, which then had the audacity to trickle along my spine.  It was warming up.  The temperature had risen to a balmy 1° C, and the absence of wind made the whole experience rather magical.  It was really rather special. I photographed my friend and Garibaldi Teacher acquaintance, Tom, on the path wit...

Paulina Falls are located at Newberry National Volcanic Monument in Oregon. When it comes to landscapes, few things excite me more than waterfalls.  While exploring them from a safe distance, often with a safety fence and possible platform installed, which has my wife's approval, I love climbing around in the lower falls area, photographing the surging waters upstream.  And few places are as exciting to explore as the waterfalls found at Newberry National Volcanic Monument. It is often not possible to get to the lower falls areas without breaking local laws and safety guidelines, but fortunately, the falls here are relatively easy to explore.  Steep cliffs, friable and unstable rock surfaces, and hazardous slopes all spell potential doom for those who disregard posted warnings.  However, with caution and sure-footedness, one can move easily among the boulders.   I needed my ultra-wide-angle lens to capture the scene before me.  The above image does not...

Tree swallow feeding a chick in a nest box in Maple Ridge, 2006. If you plan on putting up a bird house, the time to do it is now.  Well, for where I live, which is in the Okanagan in British Columbia.  It is the middle of March and I have noticed that a lot of birds have started nesting.  Not all of them, of course, as the swallows haven't come back yet, but many Passerine bird species have begun claiming territory.   Nest boxes should have a hole the size for the birds you want - or more specifically, too small for the birds you don't want.  Larger holes will be sure to get starlings, while slightly smaller holes will suit house sparrows fine.  To keep both of these species out, make your hole no bigger than 1-1/8 inches across.  This will allow chickadees, swallows, and house wrens access.  Even if you have larger holes and one of the desirable species takes up residency, they are at risk of being killed by larger birds such as the aforeme...

Thirty second exposure on slide film using flash and second curtain sync. Second curtain sync, also called rear curtain sync, is a flash-related feature found on many SLR, DSLR, and mirrorless cameras.  It allows the user to fire a connected flash unit at the end of the exposure, rather than at the beginning, as is the norm.  It is useful in certain situations as it produces a more natural-looking exposure when timing is an issue. So, what's with this 1st-curtain/2nd-curtain stuff anyway?  This doesn't apply to global shutters, leaf shutters, or electronic shutters, but only the good, old-fashioned focal-plane shutters so many of us are familiar with.  I've created a diagram for the process of how 1st and 2nd shutters work that is posted below. Movement of 1st and 2nd curtain shutters for focal-plane shutter cameras. There are two shutters in cameras equipped with focal-plane shutters.  The first one, called the first-curtain shutter, blocks light from reaching ...

The Point Atkinson Lighthouse as photographed in 2011.  There was still a caretaker there at the time. I have been going back through my old files, and I found a photo of the above lighthouse I took almost 15 years ago.  I keep all my old files that came straight from the camera.  This image was shot as a raw file and I opened it with my modern 2026 edition of Photoshop.  Digital imaging has come a long way since then. Originally built out of wood in 1875, a lighthouse has stood guard at the entrance of Burrard Inlet.  The wooden structure was replaced with a concrete one in 1912 and stands today as it did 114 years ago.  The original lighthouse was built as part of the agreement to bring British Columbia into federation.  It's interesting to think of Canada as it was back then. The lighthouse has had someone living there from its inception until 2020, when it underwent full automation.  The lands around the lighthouse have been saved as a park; L...

There were six of us at the demonstration on Tuesday (March 10, 2026) this week.   I decided to park some distance away from City Hall, where we would be demonstrating the road development through Munson Pond Park.  After all, it was important, and I understand there are about 6,000 signatures on the petition regarding the same thing.  As I rounded the corner, I detected a large group of about 100 people carrying placards with a news reporter and video cameraman setting up.  I thought to myself, "What a great turnout!" As I got closer and the signs began revealing what was written on them, the name of Munson did not appear at all.  The demonstration was about saving a golf course that was up for partitioning.  There were 200 people there.  I didn't know much about their cause, but where were those in support of my cause?  It was a moment later when I found my group; four people huddled around a tree in the center of the golf course protest....

Sericomyia militaris - The narrow banded pond fly - its larvae are rat-tailed maggots Well, I learned something new today.  I have known about a fly larva called a rat-tailed maggot and I knew about hover flies, but I did not know that rat-tailed maggots were the larvae of hover flies, also called flower flies.  Now, not all flower flies have this kind of larvae, but those that belong to the group of syphids (family Syphidae) in the tribe  Eristalini do.  If you want to see a photo of a rat-tailed maggot, click here . The interesting thing about rat-tailed maggots is that they can thrive in polluted water.  And we're not talking about mildly polluted water, but heavily polluted, stinks to high heaven, filthy, disgusting water.  That's because they don't get their oxygen from the water, but rather from their "rat tail," which is a breathing tube that extends above the waterline.   The water itself, which can actually be more of a mire, contains org...

Alberta wolf spider.  There are 50 species of wolf spider in Alberta alone. What has eight legs, eight eyes, and runs like the wind?  A wolf spider.  Although their venom is not poisonous to humans (outside of mild irritation), their bite is fatal to the prey they catch.  Eating insects about their size or smaller, their method of attack is to run the organism down.  Wolf spiders do not spin webs to assist in catching prey.  Rather, their nimble bodies and good eyesight allow them to track and kill would-be meals.   Most spiders have eight eyes, including wolf spiders.  They have two large eyes facing forward. These are used to track prey and are used at night when light is low.  Wolf spiders' eyes glow in the dark when a light is shone on them.  There is a cool photo here that you can see the effect (if you dare!).  They have another four beneath the large pair that help with picking up motion.  The last pair, located lat...

Male lesser scaup and female (inset).  Notice the bluish beak and golden eye. Scaups are a kind of duck.  Sometimes they are called bluebills, although I have never heard them called that.  They are a medium-sized diving duck, like bufflehead ducks, not dabblers, like mallards.  They eat mostly invertebrates, including mollusks, and will take some vegetation.  They are also highly gregarious and will form large rafts on lakes or oceans, depending upon the species. There are two kinds of scaups found in North America (a third species is found in New Zealand).  Greater scaups prefer saltwater and are typically found along marine ecosystems where they can dive for food, although they may be found inland in places.  Lesser scaups prefer fresh water and can be found in western Canada during the breeding season and in the southern US in winter. Distinguishing between the two species is very difficult, as the feathering is very similar.  Greater scaups a...

Spiders don't swim or fly, so how did they get to New Zealand originally? New Zealand is famous for its endemic wildlife.  Kiwis, tuataras, keas, and many more.  There are also various endemic spiders and insects.  The above photo is of a New Zealand flower crab spider, similar to the ones I have photographed and written blogs on before ( click here for an example ). New Zealand is a remote island that is over 1500 km away from Australia.  Some islands, like Hawaii, formed from volcanic activity and have never been attached to other continental masses.  New Zealand, however, used to be part of the supercontinent of Gondwanaland and was specifically attached to Australia and Antarctica.  However, they separated about 85 million years ago.   It turns out that the flower crab spiders of New Zealand are closely related to the ones in Australia.  Over the last 85 million years, New Zealand has been slowly moving away from its larger relative....

Members of the Corvidea that I have photographed over the years. The chances are that you are familiar with three or four of these birds, if you live in North America, that is.  If you are a birder, you may have seen them all.  There are a few I haven't included here, like the yellow-billed magpie, green jay, and pinion jay, as I have never photographed them (one day!).  Many of them are very comfortable around humans and are often found in urban areas or where people hang out.   The behaviours they have in common is that they tend to be very vocal, they are gregarious, and they have opportunistic eating habits - they will eat just about anything they can catch, steal, or find.  They are also relatively smart, capable of problem-solving, have good memories, and can recognize human faces.  They all tend to be relatively large birds, with the raven being the biggest of the bunch.   As a group, they can be found over most of North America, with ...

Munson Pond has a healthy western turtle population.  That may change if the road goes through. A thesis, written by Jessica D. Derksen, states that "Road development threatens freshwater turtles globally."  In her paper, titled " The impact of roadway mortality on a long-lived freshwater turtle ", she states that even small changes in mortality can have "a significant impact on western painted turtle populations." Those for the road construction would argue that the pond has a significantly sizeable area of land for breeding.  Their position relies on the existing land area surrounding the pond, as shown in the above photograph.  Not all of it is suitable for turtles to lay their eggs, however.  There are ditches (to the north), swamps (to the south), and a school field (to the west).  Each of these may have additional barriers, such as fences, that prevent turtles from accessing nesting sites.   While barriers can be constructed to prevent turtl...

This young man found that no cattail could stand up to his mighty swing with a stick. Boys and sticks.  They're like peanut butter and jam, Tom and Jerry, or flowers and honeybees.  The pairing is inevitable, guaranteed, a certainty upon which you could bet wildly.  Not all sticks qualify as the eminent rapier or throttling club, for twigs break easily and logs are too hefty to lift.  But, when found, the perfect stick can be wielded with force, cunning, and charisma.  And it just so happened that  I was there when I witnessed the event in person. It was destiny.  There, on the ground, in front of the blue-clad boy, was a stick.  And not just any stick, it was the perfect stick.  About as long as his arm, strong but not too heavy, and smooth.  The bark had all but gone and the wood grain was clearly visible.  It made a very satisfying whoosh when it was swung with vigour.  His hand gripped it well, almost as if it had been made...

It takes three years for a male red-winged blackbird to fully develop its characteristic red epaulettes. I used to wonder why the epaulettes on some red-winged blackbird males were less spectacular than on others.  It turns out that it takes a few years for the familiar patches to develop. In first-year males, the shoulder feathers are brownish or somewhat yellowed.  Very little red appears.  In the following year, the males show a transitional phase.  A significant red patch is present, unlike in the first year males, but it is not the fully developed spectacle present in the mature adult.  It takes another year before the epaulettes have blossomed to their full potential. The bird's feathering also changes over time, with there being a brownish hue to them in the first and second year.  By the third year, the somatic feathers are fully black.  You can see the tinge of brown on the first three images above. The strong, fully developed shoulder patches...

Photograph I took of the Bow River in Calgary. What colour is snow?  We know from experience that it is white.  And yet, the above photo would seem to indicate that it may sometimes be blue.  On the same day.  In the same photo.  In fact, snow can be both blue or white and be right beside each other.  And if all that wasn't enough, the shade of blue can also differ depending on the situation. So, what sort of devilry is going on here?  You may already know the answer to that, and it isn't some tweak of Photoshop that has created it.  This is Nature herself and the wonderful world of white balance. Snow reflects all the wavelengths of visible light.  The light falling upon the snow is called incident light, and it is the spectral makeup of that light causing the would-be colour change.  On a cloudy, gray day, you may find that the snow is pretty much the same colour.  Yet, on this day in April of 2017, there was an open blue sky. Dir...