All My Blogs

Black-crowned night herons at the Leduc Reservoir.  Inset:  BCNH photographed in Hawaii. I have seen black-crowned night herons in Alberta at least two times that I can remember, and once in British Columbia.  The last time I saw any was while visiting Leduc this summer, where my son lives.  I saw a breeding pair there on June 19 at the Leduc Reservoir.  I did manage to get a few shots off before they moved on.  You can see a group of images below. Black-crowned night heron launching from a branch at the Leduc Reservoir. If you want to see crowned night herons, go to Hawaii.  They can be found just about anywhere there is water, fresh, salt, or brackish.  Although I have photographed them a few times in Alberta, the best photos have been obtained when visiting Hawaii.  See two more images below.  The left image was photographed in Edmonton in 2016 and the right image in Hawaii in 2024. Black-crowned night heron adult (left) and juvenile ...

Male carpenter ant (drone) photographed in Clearwater, BC, 2026 Some insects, such as aphids, can reproduce parthenogenically, that is, to make clones of themselves.  Most insects, however, require a male and female to reproduce.  All Hymenoptera (ants, wasps, and bees) are this way.  You probably know that male wasps and ants are rare; most of the brood are female.  However, the queen can choose to produce a male (if only King Henry VIII had such a bride!). Here's the weird part.  An unfertilized queen mates with a male ant and stores the sperm in an organ called the spermatheca, which stores the genetic material and keeps it viable for a long time.  The length of time can be impressive, with some queens mating only once and keeping the gametes for up to 10 years.  The queen produces an egg and allows a stored sperm to join with it, eventually producing a worker, always a female.  However, if a queen lays an unfertilized egg, it becomes a drone....

My special-needs program at Garibladi, the ILP - ran from 1991 to 2012.  This was 2007. I remember the day I retired from teaching.  It was 2018, and the big question on my mind was, "Had I made a difference?"  It has been 8 years since then, and I think I finally have an answer. Each of us makes an impact on those around us.  It is our actions, or lack of them, that impact others in our lives.  Although the job itself has a bearing, the difference that is made comes from the relationships you form with others and the example that you set. I used to think in a grandiose way - what important things have I done, what legacies have I left, that will make a difference tomorrow on the planet?  My name will never be written in the history books.  Others will not tell stories of my victories, accomplishments, or legacies.  I am but a drop of water in a bucket, and when the bucket is empty, the memory of my existence will be gone just as the water. But th...

Franklin's ground squirrel at Wabamun Provincial Park, Alberta I thought I was familiar with most of the squirrels in Canada.  It turns out that I have never seen or heard about one called Franklin's ground squirrel.   It is not that common, appearing in a narrow swath across central Alberta, across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and down into the prairie regions of the central states.  I saw this one near the extent of its western range in Wabamun Provincial Park.   Franklin's ground squirrels used to be fairly common in Alberta.  However, their numbers have been steadily declining due to habitat loss and population fracturing.  The prairie that it once thrived in has been converted to farms, towns, and roadways.  Most sightings now occur in protected areas, which is exactly where I saw this one.  As the areas where it lives constrict, there will be less and less genetic variation and the fewer numbers will likely produce inbreeding, a situ...

Canadian tiger swallowtail (and one pale swallowtail) butterflies near Dutch Lake, Clearwater, BC. I have seen this before, in fact, many times.  I wrote a similar blog on this subject here .  Butterflies on dirt, proboscis extended, probing the substrate for something.  But what? It turns out that many butterflies do this.  The soil they are on is usually damp.  The tiny tube, called a proboscis, has an internal diameter of less than 0.04 mm (about 40 microns).  To give you an idea how narrow this is, you couldn't insert a human hair into it; it's too narrow.   One advantage of the extremely narrow gauge of the proboscis is that fluids will naturally climb it through a process known as capillary action.  There is also a small muscular organ called the cibarial pump.  This is found in many sucking insects; it creates a low-pressure area at the end of the tube that facilitates fluid motion.  The combination of the two pulls liquids t...

Judolia instabilis , the unstable longhorn beetle, photographed in Clearwater, BC. The word "unstable" can be taken several ways.  If you have over-indulged with alcohol, you may be unstable in your walking or driving.  If your emotions get the better of you and you become a ranting machine, some may call you unstable.  I suppose the term could be used if a stable in a barn was converted into another purpose - as in, the chicken coop is an unstable, versus being unstable because of shoddy construction.  I don't think any of these terms apply to the fellow in the photo. The term unstable is used to describe the varied patterns found on this species of beetle.  It turns out that the colouration and mottling vary wildly.  The beetle may be completely black, be a pale cream colour with black spots, be black with pale cream spots, and the spots are different sizes, shapes, and locations. I did an image search for the beetle and took a screenshot of the result; y...

Danielle and Trish - two of the students in my special needs program at Garibaldi, 2006 Trisha Parsons, a student of mine while I was teaching at Garibaldi Secondary School in Maple Ridge, has passed away.  I got the news yesterday, and my heart sank.  It's still hard to believe, her face, so clear in my mind, and her lively spirit, are gone.  Not the memories, mind you, but the hope for her future now lies in pieces.   That hope is what drives teachers.  Each child we engage with represents a future, a life, that we have been given to shape as best we can.  Trisha was no exception to that, although she had CP (cerebral palsy), which limited her physically.  In spite of her immediate challenges, she made every effort to be the best she could.  She loved others, was loved, and had a great deal of potential we were all meant to unlock. I cannot speak to what her life looked like after high school.  I have not been in contact with her for o...

Flamingo, great egret, oyster catcher, American robin.  All photos taken by me. You've seen it.  A bird, perching on a single leg.  But why are they doing it?  It's not something we do, or any other bipedal organisms for that matter.  Ever see a kangaroo standing on one leg?  What about primates, pangolins, certain rodents (kangaroo rat), or even dinosaurs (many theropods were bipedal, not that we have evidence that they ever stood on one leg)? There are two main reasons that birds stand on one leg.  The first has to do with maintaining body heat.  Legs have no feathering (mostly, there are a few species that do have feathery legs), and the bare skin will experience significant heat loss.  By tucking a leg up into the lower breast feathers, a bird can cut the heat loss from the legs by half. The second reason has to do with resting.  It takes energy to stand.  The birds can rest one leg while the other does the work.  They will...

  It's been a busy week.  We have gone through boxes of stuff we haven't looked at since we moved (5 years ago) and pulled out things that weren't going to be missed, which was most of it.  If you haven't used it in five years, you probably don't need it. The problem is that maybe nobody else needs it either.  Such is the nature of a garage sale.  Maybe you'll find treasure, or maybe you'll find mostly trash.  And people want what you're selling cheap.  However, we managed to sell about 20% of what we had; the rest will either go into storage or be donated to a thrift store.   This is probably my 20th garage sale.  I used to have one every year, then it slowly changed to once every couple of years.  Now it has been half a decade since my last one.  The upside is that I now have some room to create some space.  I will be listing some of the stuff, like the cameras, on Marketplace.  It's more of a pain, but it will also...

Chalk-fronted corporal dragonflies.  Left: Male  Right: Female.  Dutch Lake, Clearwater, BC. I have always loved dragonflies.  As a child, I used to throw small rocks near them and watch them chase the falling stones as if they were a potential meal.  I learned that they have a favoured perch and would approach it when they left; eventually I could place my finger there and get them to land on it.  I have photographed over a dozen species I have identified and many more I have not.   While visiting Clearwater, BC, this summer, I managed to photograph a male and female chalk-fronted corporal dragonfly.  The term "corporal" comes from the pair of stripes found on the top of their thorax (just in front of the wings - you can see it in the above images.  The male I have is young and has not "earned" its stripes yet - click here to see a mature adult).  A corporal in the army has two stripes, as opposed to a private (one stripe) or a ser...

A flower fly, skipper butterfly, and flower beetle all visit a dandelion at the same time. On average, how many insects visit a flower in one day?  Five?  Ten?  A hundred?  Perhaps a thousand?  The value is highly dependent upon so many factors.  Temperature is an important one, especially in the morning, when many insects are waiting for the warmth of the day to enable flight.  Then there is the nature of the bloom itself:  colour, scent, build, and even location.  Time of year, availability of other flowers, perhaps more enticing or numerous, and so on. It turns out that there is a way to figure this out.  A FIT count (flower-insect timed count) is a way to track pollinators on flower interactions.  The essence of the count is to pay attention to a small area of one species of flower for a period of 10 minutes and record all the insects that land on the blooms.  It was a system of observation that started in the UK but has be...

Main:  A blow fly feeding on a dead Steller's jay chick.  Inset:  Maggot showing a pair of mouth hooks. Blow flies - if you watch forensic shows like Bones , you are probably familiar with the idea that the flies' larvae are used to help determine how long someone has been dead for.  The TOD (time of death) is determined in days, not hours, as the corpse has to be old enough that blow flies would find the body, lay eggs on it, and the maggots would hatch, grow, and moult.  The time between moults is an instar; each instar (3 in all) takes a certain length of time, with growth occurring along the way.  You can tell how long a body has been in place by the presence of blow fly maggots and how big they are. However, it is a bit more difficult than that.  There are different varieties of blow fly, each of them reproduces at specific rates relative to that species.  Another factor is the temperature associated with the body.  Flies develop more sl...

Four different insects that are important detritivores. What's a detritivore?  An organism that feeds on dead matter, plant or animal.  There is a long list of detritivores, including most fungi, bacteria, and a plethora of invertebrates.  I came across a dead Steller's jay chick a few weeks ago and discovered quite a population of scavenging insects.   Nothing in nature goes to waste.  Every atom in every living thing has been used before, again and again and again.  Plants extract nutrients from air, water, and soil.  Animals eat plants and other animals.  And all of them, when they die and their remains are left to the elements, are consumed by detritivores. Every.     Last.    Atom. The food web wouldn't be complete without detritivores.  Nutrients would make a one-way trip and not return to the environment.  Even fecal and metabolic waste is recycled.  Although we may feel gross or get a bad case o...

Does the bright yellow colour of goldfinch males make them easier prey for predators? The phrase "Sticking out like a sore thumb" could be applied to male goldfinches.  Not only are they a bright dandelion yellow, but they have dark, black contrasting feathers that make them stand out even more.  What evolutionary pressures would shape such a creature? Birds of prey and predatory mammals such as cats have colour vision and sharp eyes that pick up not only the colour of the male goldfinch birds but their strong contrast too.  Female goldfinches (see below) have more subdued yellows, less black, and do not have a stark black cap.  Of the two birds, the male is more likely to be seen and hunted.  This gives the female a better chance at incubating the eggs and rearing the young. Male (left) and female (right) American goldfinches. The bright yellow of the male also acts as a signal to females of his fitness for breeding.  The bright yellow colour comes from pi...

 Left:  Western conifer seed bug on the siding of my house in Kelowna. Right:  Box elder bug. The western conifer seed bug is a member of the leaf-footed bugs. Leaf-footed bugs can be identified by the widened tibia seen on their hind legs.  It is common to find them around your home in the fall as they will gather by the hundreds looking for a warm place to overwinter.  Another insect that you may find with a similar MO is the box elder bug.   Western conifer seed bugs are mild pests to Douglas fir trees, although they may also feed on other conifers such as pine, hemlock, and spruce.  They do not eat cedars.  The bugs are specifically interested in the young cones and their developing seeds, although they will also feed on the needles and flowers of conifer trees.   I commonly find both species of insects at home.  They start to arrive in the fall.  It is not uncommon to find several of them each day scampering about the...

Top:  Common goldeneye ducks.        Bottom:  Barrow's goldeneye ducks. I have taken the above images from photos I have shot over the years, some taken this year (the female common goldeneye) and some taken years ago (the male common goldeneye).  I used to wonder what I was going to do with the mass of photos I have collected; it seems now that they have been useful in my blogs. There are only two species of goldeneye ducks.  Common goldeneyes are found throughout North America and Eurasia.  In the Western Hemisphere, they breed in Canada and reside throughout most of the US and some of Mexico in the winter.  They also winter in parts of southern Canada; I have seen them overwinter here in Kelowna.  Barrow's goldeneye, on the other hand, has a very narrow range along the western coast of North America with some populations around the St. Lawrence River.  Barrow's goldeneyes overwinter along the Pacific coast and parts of south...

I photographed this in Leduc, Alberta, after a day of heavy rain. At the ripe old age of 66, I can say that I have seen some odd things in my time.  But I was unprepared for the truly strange sight of a coot walking along a flooded sidewalk, eating drowning worms as it went. It has been a wet summer in Alberta this year.  Rain, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail the size of baseballs have plagued the province.  And as each of us knows, worms come out of the soil when it gets saturated in order to breathe.  That's because an earthworm gets its oxygen directly through the skin, and water tends not to hold much oxygen.   And so, as I was walking around the Leduc reservoir, I noted a plethora of earthworms.  They were on the sidewalk, they were on the lawn, in dirt, underfoot, and in puddles.  There was a group of boys, armed with a tin can and fishing gear, collecting the largest ones they could find. The excitement in their raised voices was proport...

Producers (left) gain energy from the sun and fix it as living matter.  Herbivores eat plant matter and convert it to a source of food rich in protein and devoid of cellulose. Carnivores, many of them insects, consume creatures at a lower trophic level and  produce sizable larvae which, when adults, leave the aquatic environment and to on to feed many of the birds that inhabit the area for miles around the water. How aquatic ecosystems supply food to terrestrial species such as birds. They say diversity is the spice of life.  It turns out it is also necessary for a healthy ecosystem.  The number of living things, both in diversity and count, in freshwater is stunning.  Fill a glass jar with water from a healthy pond, and you will see what I mean.  And that's just the stuff you can see.  On the microscopic level, it's even more impressive. There are few creatures above the waterline that can benefit from this microfauna directly.  However, as the e...

Black Tern, Red Deer, Alberta - the difference is how far the subject was away from the camera 3D image tracking is very handy when trying to photograph flying birds, although there are a lot of issues with it working well all the time.  Some of them I have already discussed in a previous blog .  While tracking black terns in Red Deer, I noticed a relationship between proximity to the camera, ability to get a focus lock, and the usability of any resulting image.   The further away your subject is, the easier it is to lock focus and track it.  The exception is when there is a lot of background clutter.  The greater distance makes the bird appear to travel slower, the same way that a plane can travel at 400 km/hr but seem to only crawl across the sky.  As the bird gets closer, it can dart across the field of view in no time at all.  Your motion of following the subject has to be that much faster so as to keep the subject somewhat centered.  So,...

American Avocet at Slacks Slough in Red Deer, Alberta. I remember seeing my first avocet.  It was in Bonnyville, Alberta, and I was down at the beach.  It was a late afternoon in early summer.  Before me was a bird I had not seen before.  It had long legs, a long bill, a long neck, and was beautifully coloured.  Everything about it seemed wrong.  But it could do something other shorebirds could not. It could wade out into the water, deeper than most other shorebirds, and probe the mud with its long, upcurved bill.  The bill would plunge into the water, just to the point where the bird could still breathe.  The nares (nostrils) are located high up on the bill so that the avocet can continuously hunt for food without raising its head.  The long neck keeps the bill some distance from the feet so that potential prey are not alerted to its presence.  Its feet, equipped with long toes, prevent the bird from sinking into the mud.  The long...

Which grebe is which?  Can you tell?  Bottom right image from this source. I have photographed both eared and horned grebes, but was under the mistaken assumption that they were all eared grebes.  Little did I know that I had confused two species as one, and that most of them were in fact horned grebes.  The red eye and dark plumage were each factors, and their non-breeding plumages look relatively similar.  Imagine my surprise when my Google Lens search for an image (top center) told me it was a horned grebe and not the eared variety, as I suspected. It turns out that the four images on the left are all of horned grebes, and the only photo I have of an eared grebe is the one top right.  How is it possible that I mixed these species up?  I somehow don't think I am alone in this. Below is a photo I took a few weeks ago in Red Deer, Alberta, of a horned grebe on a nest (top, center) and a horned grebe swimming in the water (top left).  The other thr...

Left:  four different jumping spider species.  Right:  Bronze jumping spider (Sassacus vitis) With over 6000 species of jumping spiders worldwide, and more than 300 in the US and Canada, chances are that you have seen more than just one or two species. The most common ones, here in BC anyway, are the Zebra jumping spider and Johnson's jumping spider (the first and second insets on the left).  The third one is a species I photographed in Alberta and the fourth one is a jumping spider I photographed in New Zealand.  The bronze jumper was photographed a few weeks ago when I was in Clearwater, BC. I wrote a blog on the zebra jumping spider about 4 years ago ( click here ).  There are some interesting facts there that I won't repeat.  Jumping spiders have become popular pets, are easy to keep, and can form surprising bonds with their owners/feeders.  I watched a good video on one fellow's spider, it is worth a watch.  Click here if you want to se...