All My Blogs

How do you holiday?  When it comes down to it, it's really all about the people. People love to go on holiday.  Different places, sights, experiences, and all that goes with it.  The two great barriers to trips are money and time.  Many of us travel to see relatives or friends.  I applaud that, as it often addresses issues with money, and time with loved ones is never poorly spent.  But if free room and board is not available, what do you do? Young people often go camping.  Of the three, it is far less expensive.  The destinations are usually close to home, within a few hours by car anyway, and the number of people you can have at one site usually isn't a factor.  I used to be able to sleep anywhere, with or without any kind of mattress, and the great outdoors was stimulation enough.  It was really all about the friends and family with you anyway; where wasn't as important. Of course camping isn't limited to just tents, and the world of ...

Murphy camping, biking, kayaking, and in the pet hospital today. I can normally separate what my brain wants from what my heart wants.  Logic, reason, and experience against feelings, desire, and hope.  The impassioned voice and the passionate voice.  Most of us will have these notions occurring simultaneously, a flood of sentiments that may seem overwhelming.  The risk and intensity are low when the situation is of little consequence, but enormous when it comes down to life-altering decisions.   Most of the time, the outcome will have little impact on our lives.  "Should I buy the roast or the chicken?"  This will not impact your life in a big way.  Either decision would be acceptable.  On the other hand, "Should my dog have surgery or should I put him down?" is on another level entirely.  Cost, pain, rehab, quality of life, time, future risk, and more all become part of the equation.  And try as hard as you like, keeping them...

White ibis hunting on grass.  Top inset:  Juvenile.  Bottom inset:  Hunting in water. White ibises have become very comfortable around humans, and as such, you can find them on or near beaches, lawns, and in parks.  I photographed the above ones in Florida (main) and Texas along the Gulf Coast.  I don't remember where I shot the juvenile, but it was probably in one of the two locations mentioned.  They are found year-round along the coastal waters of Mexico, Texas, and Florida, as well as the other Gulf Coast states.  Rarely, they have been found in eastern Canada.  There is a Facebook post about one found this year in Cape Breton in Nova Scotia ( click here ). They feed primarily on insects or crustaceans, although small vertebrates such as frogs, newts, and even small rodents may be taken if available.  They prefer their food clean, so anything caked in mud gets a good washing before being swallowed.  For the most part, the food i...

Main:  Wood stork flying near Fort Lauderdale.  Inset:  Sydney, Australia (zoo). You know the image - a bundle of joy, wrapped in a white cloth with a knot, being carried by a stork.  The wood stork is the only stork native to North America, so it would be this one showing up at the expectant couple's door with the crying infant here.  That would be quite a sight.   With a bald head, a five foot wingspan, and a long, recurved bill, the wood stork is an image from prehistoric times.  Although it is not a carrion feeder like other bald-headed birds (vultures), it certainly presents that way in mind.  I can imagine a terrified mother attempting to retrieve her newly-delivered baby from the maw of this foreboding creature.  "No thanks", she says.  "I think I'll have my baby the other way."  That's how maternity wards were invented. In all seriousness, wood storks are not carrion feeders, but rather eat invertebrates and small verte...

Frangipani Caterpillar, also called tetrio sphinx hornworm or rasta caterpillar. When looking at this caterpillar, what's the first thing you think about?  Probably its unusual colour, which often acts as a warning sign.  It signals DANGER, meaning that you risk possible death should you mess with it.  Sometimes colours are used as a faint, a ruse, a trick - where no danger really exists, but even the thought may prevent an attack.  That's not the case here.  The danger is real.  You can, however, pick them up.  Large ones are longer and bigger around than your middle finger ( click here for image).  Impressive. The caterpillars can grow very large, and they are voracious.  They feed on members of the dogbane family, poisonous plants that carry the same poisons as found in milkweed plants - cardiac glycosides.  These are highly poisonous to many vertebrates and may cause death or severe illness.  There is an exception to this, thou...

The Dominican ground lizard lives on the ground and forages for insects and fruit. I photographed this  Pholidoscelis fuscatus , more commonly called the Dominican ground lizard, while visiting the the island of Dominica on a cruise to the Caribbean in 2016.  These lizards are aptly named, as they spend all of their life on the ground searching through leaf litter and ground debris for sustenance.  They eat insects and some vegetable matter, being fond of fruits.  They can grow to modest sizes, having a snout-to-vent (nose to cloaca) length of 20 cm (males), slightly smaller for females.  Including their tail, they could be up to 40 cm. I found this one trudging through the bush, on the ground, surrounded by forest debris and rocks.  I couldn't get a good photo of it, as there was plenty of foreground foliage to prevent me from getting a clear photo.  If I had time, I could have patiently waited it out, but I was part of a group, and there was no desir...

Nature, when left alone, will amaze us.  Inset:  original photo. The island of Hispaniola is the second-largest island in the Caribbean.  At just over 75,000 square km, it is about 2 ½ times larger than Vancouver Island.  The Dominican Republic has the eastern two-thirds of the Island, the western third being occupied by the nation of Haiti. If you ever want to see a contrast in how politics and choice affect the land, you need to look no further than Hispaniola.  The western half is an impoverished nation with a fractured economy, largely run by criminal gangs, and whose ecology has been decimated by foraging for firewood.  Only 4% of Haiti's original forests remain, and none of them are protected.  The eastern half is a tropical paradise where almost 40% of the original forests remain.  The difference is because of foresight, planning, and education. To compare the socioeconomic status of both nations, click here .  It turns out that it isn...

Leach's Anole ( Anolis leachii ), photographed on Antigua in 2016. Also called the panther anole, Leach's anole is a common lizard native to the island of Antigua in the Caribbean.  The interesting thing about endemic island life is that the various species didn't just magically appear; they would have travelled there on some flotsam from some distant point of origin, most likely the nearest continent. We don't know when the first anoles showed up, but the chances are very good that they didn't look anything like they do today, other than that they were anoles.  Separated from the original gene pool, the now-isolated lizards would breed and lay eggs, producing new generations.  If they survived, the population would grow. Two things would happen over the millennia that would produce the new species of anole.  Natural selection, where the environment would weed out less well-adapted individuals, and random mutation, where existing genes would experience small changes...

Antillean crested hummingbird, male.  Photographed in 2016 on Antigua. I wonder, is the raised crest and pointy beak an attempt by this fellow to blend in with his surroundings?  Probably not, but it's a funny thought. The Antillean crested hummingbird is one of three hummingbird species on Antigua, one of the smaller islands in the Caribbean (the archipelago is called the Lesser Antilles).  Like the green-throated carib (yesterday's blog, found here ), it is endemic to the Lesser Antilles.  The third species, which I have never seen, is the purple-throated carib. The female (click here for image) looks stunningly different from the male and reminds me of the Anna's hummingbird females I used to see on BC's coast. This photo was taken in 2016 when my wife and I took a cruise of the Caribbean.  We didn't see a ton of birds, but I did manage to get half a dozen good photos on the island of Antigua.  I was using my D500 camera and my 80-400 mm S-series Nikon l...

Male green-throated Carib hummingbird, photographed in 2016, on the island of Antigua. Islands are hard for organisms to colonize without help from humans.  Hawaii, for example, only had two endemic mammals on it before humans showed up, a bat and a seal.  Birds are much more common on islands since they can fly.  Hawaii and the Galapagos have many endemic bird species, although humans have caused the extinction of over half of them on the Hawaiian Islands.  The creatures on these remote islands rarely exist elsewhere. The Caribbean Islands are much closer to continents, and so there is a greater number of bird species.  Even so, these islands typically have their own native bird populations.  In the case of Antigua, there are three species of hummingbird that are present.  I have photographed two of them.  I will do a blog on the Antilles crested hummingbird tomorrow.  The one above, the green-throated carib hummingbird, can be found on many...

St Barnabas Church - the green stone is locally sourced stone. One of the great things about visiting places is to find history, interesting buildings, and culture that is different from what you are used to.  Our 2016 cruise to the Caribbean certainly provided all of that and more.  The historic church in Liberta was built in 1824, originally as a school, but became a church when an earthquake leveled the nearest church, which was in Falmouth (St. Paul's). I recognized the red brick bastions right away as being fortifications to give structural support should another earthquake occur.  It surprised me that earthquakes were something that Caribbean nations had to contend with; dozens of them have been recorded over the years with magnitudes greater than 6.5.   While many Caribbean nations have limestone, there is often a base of igneous rock making up the islands.  In Antigua, the basaltic rocks contain chlorite and celadonite.  Chlorite has shimmering...

Photographed in 2016 with my D500, 80-400 mm S Nikkor lens.  @ 400 mm 1/250 f/7.1 ISO 400 The crop-sensor D500 renders the 400 mm focal length of my lens to 600 mm relative.  In the original shot, the bird filled 1/3 of the frame vertically, so the amount of cropping that was required was minimal.   This is the first bird I looked up in my Howell and Webb bird book ( see yesterday's blog ).  Unfortunately, there were no images of the bird, not too surprising given that the bird inhabits a very narrow strip of Mexico's east coast and some islands of the Caribbean.   The grey kingbird belongs to the tyrant flycatcher family, it is closely related to the western and eastern kingbirds we have locally.  It has similar behaviours; it perches on a branch that presents a clear field of view and waits for a flying insect to present itself.   I will be looking at other birds I have photographed in tropical settings over the next few weeks, partly ...

The new bird book I got on the left and my trusty one I use locally. We are going on a cruise in a couple of weeks, down the West Coast to the Panama Canal and up to Fort Lauderdale.  There, we disembark and fly home.  The three week trip includes stops in Mexico and Central America.  And so I thought I would bring along a bird book covering the area.  I was surprised by what I got. The first thing I noticed was the size of the book, about three times the weight of my field guide.  I can't call the new one a field guide unless I happened to have a sherpa with me, as it's not what I would call a convenient pocket size.  When I opened it up, I got another surprise.  There are a lot of bird species south of the US.  Many more than we have here in Canada. Looking at the hummingbirds alone, I found that all of North America (not including Mexico) has about 14 species.  Mexico and Central America have closer to 60 species.  To give you an idea...

Killdeer I photographed in Esquimalt Lagoon, 2025 Canadian winters are not for the faint of heart.  Many of us northern folk head south to warmer latitudes, which used to be the United States, but it seems that the killdeer had the right idea all along; skip the US and head further south to Mexico or Central America.  I noticed some migrate to the tip of Florida and stay there, believing that the end of the road has come.  They could be forgiven for not realizing that, should they proceed further south, another landmass awaits. Killdeer range map, from the website Allaboutbirds.org Migrating means flying long distances with few breaks and being exposed to more risk.  Natural threats include harsh weather, predators, exhaustion, and getting lost where no water or food is available.  Add to that all the human vectors of death, such as cruise ships, wind turbines, city lights, tall buildings, and all the chemical threats that exist, and you have a true obstacle cou...

A walking stick, belonging to the order Phasmatodea, photographed at Victory Butterfly Gardens. When I was a boy growing up in Ontario, I spent a lot of time outdoors.  It's where my love of animals and invertebrates began. Sometimes I would find walking sticks.  They were not very large, less than four inches, which is negligible when it comes to walking sticks (see image here ).  The record holder is from China at a whopping 30 inches ( see video here ). I love the Pixar movie A Bug's Life , as there are a lot of insect puns.  Some of the best ones are about the walking stick.  If you want a chuckle, click here to see an excerpt. We had a terrarium at school with a population of walking sticks indigenous to India, but we were told to get rid of them as they represented a dangerous invasive threat should they escape.  Given the fact that a single female can, without a male present, lay eggs parthenogenetically, even a single escapee could represent a...

Time to paint the fascia, windows, and even the basketball backboard. I don't mind heights, but my 24 foot ladder was feeling a little shaky when I climbed to the top of the roofline.  So, if I was going to paint the fascia, I was going to do it safely, which meant renting scaffolding. I have used scaffolding before, but always with someone's help.  I was on my own.  Yesterday I went to the equipment rental place and grabbed enough of it to do the job.  Putting it together was a little hard, but nothing I couldn't manage.  I can also climb it, although I find that my body can't move around scaffolding the way it used to. I am slower, have tender spots where weight-bearing is a bad idea, and don't have the range of motion or strength of a guy in his 30s.  And yet I seem to be making progress. The good news is that I should be done in a few days.  My goal is to get one section done each day; there are 5 sections in all.  I use a wire brush and sande...

  Our dog, Murphy, dressed to kill, in a tux. Admit it, you've probably done it, or wished you had.  Dressing your dog up.  There's an entire industry geared to this exact purpose.  Halloween, of course, is standard, but then there are special events (weddings), important holidays (Christmas), and just because.   A lot of dogs wear bandanas.  You know, kerchiefs - those triangular fabric pieces that are wrapped around a dog's neck.  Then there is the clothing with a purpose - rain gear, cold weather gear, and even little booties to keep our precious pets' feet dry and safe.  You can even get cooling vests and anxiety jackets for dogs that need them. Of course, there is bling too.  Yes, bling.  Why wear an ordinary collar when a special, sparkly stud-infused harness could be flaunted?  Attached to these showy pieces may be fancy name tags, lights, or even location devices.  The collar has become a canine charm bracelet. Not...

American robin photographed with my iPhone - cropped and sharpened. I wish I had my camera and long lens with me.  I knew something was going on with the robin right away.  It was at least 30 feet away, could fly, and seemed to be foraging in the usual way.  But when it turned its head, there was a pinkish mass surrounding the eye.  I had never seen anything like it. The lack of detail hasn't helped, but it has at least provided evidence that something was wrong.  I looked up what it could be.  The most prominent theory was avian pox, although other possibilities included mites, finch eye disease, and cancer.  Of the four, avian pox was most likely the culprit, although most of the images from the search I did were different.  Below, I have included similar images I have found. An image search turned up these birds with avian pox. Avian pox is a viral disease that affects only birds.  There seem to be two types: a wet variety and a dry variet...

A yellow-legged flower fly on a sunflower in my garden here in Kelowna. Syrphus rectus , more commonly known as the yellow-legged flower fly, was seen visiting one of my sunflowers a couple of days ago.  I photographed this with my iPhone 15 Pro, and instead of using the macro function, I shot it as a 48 mp raw image, which produces better images when enlarged.  I wrote a blog on this technique here . This is an unusual flower fly in that it is active later on in the year rather than in the spring or early summer as many other flower flies are.  Its location here is also unusual in that it is more common in eastern North America.  The information I looked at says that its western limit is the Rocky Mountains.  The fact it is here seems strangely odd. The larvae (maggots) eat aphids; the fly not only is harmless (it looks like a wasp), it is beneficial.  The adults are apparently attracted to sunflowers, which is where I photographed this individual. ...

The view from Dilworth Mountain Park in Kelowna on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026. My last few trips to Dilworth Mountain Park have been nothing exceptional, as the smoke-filled skies have rendered an otherwise awesome view mundane.  Yesterday, however, the clear skies yielded the views that I have come to expect, with the added bonus of half a dozen pygmy nuthatches flitting about in the pine trees.  I didn't have my wildlife camera with me, so you can see a photo I took earlier of a pygmy nuthatch below. Pygmy nuthatch I photographed two years ago. The rain has been welcome on so many fronts.  Aside from the air being cleansed of so many suspended solids, the fires in the Okanagan have been contained, lake levels are on the rise, and the drought conditions have eased.  I turned off my garden sprinkler systems as there is plenty of moisture in the ground at the moment. As I look up this morning, I see blue skies and the coming of warm weather, but not too warm.  It's ...

Larva, pupa, and adult forms of 7- spotted ladybird beetle. The scene is a familiar one that we have either seen in movies or read about in books as children.  The Tyrannosaur, a large, predatory dinosaur wading through a herd of gentle hadrosaurs, picking them off at will.  The carnage and chaos are unprecedented.    Now, take that scene and shrink it in size about a million times, and you have a ladybug meandering through a colony of aphids.  The predator may seem like a villain, dismembering the helpless herbivores, but really it is a benevolent carnivore, removing harmful insects before they can cause too much damage to the plants they have invaded. The seven-spotted ladybird beetle is now a common find in much of North America, although 28 years ago its presence was unknown on this continent.  It was first seen in New Jersey in 1973; since then it has spread far and wide.   They are considered invasive, meaning harmful to native populations....

Jen Myhre posing with one of her amazing works of art.  Kelowna, Canada Day. While exploring the waterfront of Kelowna during the Canada Day celebration, we came across some of the work done by a local artist.  My wife and I were struck by the quality and veracity of what we saw.  Beautiful.  Stunning.  Even those words do not do justice to what our eyes were drinking in.   Jen is a self-taught artist who produces "hyper-realistic" art.  Hyperrealism is defined as " paintings or sculptures that match or beat the detail of a high-resolution photograph. Artists use this style to show tiny elements like skin pores, water drops, or individual hair strands." ( Wikipedia).  The term perfectly matches her work - intense detail on a scale no photographer could capture. Jen's career came about through hard work and determination.  Her story is worth a read; I hope that you will be as impressed as I was.  Forged through fire as though shaped ...

Left:  A single egg laid by a female Polyphemus moth.  Right:  Female Polyphemus moth. Insects represent about 75% of all known creatures of the Kingdom Animalia.  They have incredibly diverse life histories, and all of them lay eggs.  The number, manner of laying, and size of those eggs vary as much as the species do.  Whenever I come across insect eggs, I am always in awe of this. I found a single egg this spring while camping in Clearwater, BC.  While some insects lay their eggs in groups, this one was clearly laid by itself.  It was also quite large, easily seen by the eye, and not terribly well hidden.  It was glued to a leaf that would be the food for the hatched larva. It was, I think, the egg of a large silkworm moth, likely Polyphemus.  The females emerge from their cocoons gravid, ready to mate.  She will mate as soon as possible, male moths detecting her pheromones and flying to her.  After mating, she will live only...

A male hooded merganser at rest but aware of my presence. Our brains are wired to look at eyes.  We tend to look at mouths when someone is speaking, but our first glance at someone always goes to the eyes.  That is not accidental.  If a dog doesn't know you, looking into its eyes may make it feel threatened.  Eyes give away intent.  They say, "If you are looking at me, I might be in danger." In photography, the eyes help define a person's face, show emotion and intent, and help to center our gaze.  In the above photo, it's the eye that you first notice, even though there are bold white lines present to direct your vision elsewhere.  Below, I have other similar images I have taken, each using the eye of a bird to draw your attention. Wood duck, Eclectus parrot, Blue-and-gold macaw I am always paying attention to eyes when shooting.  I often place them in a thirds position, use them to gauge if my presence is disturbing my subjects, and often taking...

Top:  White-faced heron, Little blue heron, Green heron Bottom:  Reddish egret, Black-crowned night heron, Yellow-crowned night heron, Great blue heron The three species of heron I have seen in Canada are the green heron, black-crowned night heron, and great blue heron.  The white-faced heron I photographed in New Zealand, and the other three were taken in southern Texas near the Gulf of (Ahem) Mexico.  And, if you didn't notice, there is an egret in the group. The body shape of herons and egrets appears to be the same, which isn't a coincidence.  Egrets are really just a type of heron.  They both belong to the Ardeidea.  The term egret typically applies to white heron-like birds or heron-like birds with a glossy coat.  Below are photos of some egrets. Snowy egret, Great egret, Cattle egret The only North-American member of the Ardeidea that I haven't seen or photographed is the tri-coloured heron.  Cattle egrets are an old-world species foun...