All My Blogs

Wasps belong to the insect order Hymenoptera. Many people associate painful stings with this group. Wasps are not all bad insects. They don't all sting or bite, and many of them are tremendously beneficial. There are over 17,000 species of wasp worldwide; most of them do not produce mud or paper nests and do not have complicated social hierarchies. In fact, most wasp species are solitary, won't or can't sting, and are harmless. The trouble I have with them is in identification. Have a look at the insect shown in the above photo. It is a wasp, but what kind? In the US and Canada there are over 4,000 species. There are the social insects such as wasps and hornets. There are solitary wasps that feed on nectar and pollen as adults and parasitize insects as larvae. Then there are the horntails and sawflies that add to the challenge of identification. I first thought the wasp was a type of Odontocolon, but the ovipositor (the long, curved end projecting off...

My post yesterday was about photographing owls and it hit a nerve with some people. The text below is an excerpt from that blog. "People feed birds at local feeding stations, hummingbirds take sugar from feeders, and many a duck and pigeon have benefitted from the hand of man. Feeding owls falls into the same category ...." It seems that "feeding owls" for the purposes of obtaining photographs is called baiting. I read the comments made by a number of contributors and have changed my mind on the subject. Baiting is a bad practice with negative consequences for the birds. Research I have done on the process has turned up the following points. All vertebrate species in BC are protected as part of the wildlife ac t. Of those species, some are considered at risk or endangered. In BC, there are 5 raptors on that list which you can find at this website . Endangered organisms have another whole level of protection that involves fines and imprisonment. ...

I photographed this barred owl back in 2008 while visiting a wildlife rehabilitation sanctuary in Bend, Oregon. We were there early and fortunate enough to find the animals being fed. I captured this shot of the owl as it held the forthcoming meal. The rescue organization rehabilitates injured birds and animals and releases them when they are healed. Those organisms that are too severely injured to be returned to the wild are kept on for educational purposes. They treat the animals well. This is one of the best owl photographs I have ever taken. Some of my noteworthy shots have been captured in the wild, but the truth is that most of them come from owls in captivity. Some are from zoos and others are from falconers that keep a variety of predatory birds. Owls have always interested me and I find it fascinating when I see photos of them taken by others taken in nature. Some of the more amazing ones involve one of these majestic creatures carrying off some recently acquire...

One of the great things about the District of Maple Ridge is that there are many natural areas, most of them containing numerous walking paths and accessible bodies of water. This in itself creates tremendous allure for the community, but it goes beyond that. It turns out it is all good for your health. A Global News broadcast cited that doctors are beginning to prescribe getting outdoors as a way to improve health and reduce stress ( click here to see video). I can validate many of the assertations; my love for the outdoors happens to have a positive impact on my general sense of well-being. Getting outdoors for the sake of being outside is reason enough to be there, but there is more to it than that for me. I can think of a dozen ways that I benefit from seeking the great outdoors, but I will keep to the main four. Exercise - putting one foot in front of another and repeat ad infinitum will get your blood moving, keep your heart strong, and help prevent or ...

Nothing on Earth can survive the physical and chemical power of water. As a liquid, it dissolves solids, suspends minerals, and both weathers and erodes all rocks regardless of size or durability. As a solid, it forces cracks apart, plucks boulders from bedrock, and scours its way across the land as if it were a sanding block held by the hand of God. There are many examples of its destructive capabilities. The famous statue of David created by the genius Michaelangelo was created from a single block of marble. He created the sculpture by removing pieces of the rock and leaving behind what people would be in awe of. Water works in much the same way, although the genius behind it is physics and chemistry. Starting with a cliff face against a sea, rolling waves are dashed against its surface. With each strike, the water removes tiny particles of the substrate, some as solute and others as sand. When a pocket is formed trapped air is compressed as a wave strikes and the ...

It always amazes me that such small birds not only overwinter here in Southwestern BC but raise a family in the cold. It wasn't that long ago that snow was on the ground; some mornings still show evidence of frost. How is it possible that these tiny creatures can not only endure the cold, but thrive in it? Anna's hummers have two speeds. There is the full-throttle speed and the barely-breathing speed. When functioning at full-throttle, the bird's internal temperature sits at a toasty 105°F (that's 6° above our own core temperature). When flying its heart is beating over 1000 times a minute to supply nutrients and oxygen to those flight muscles. They burn about 8 Calories (8000 calories) a day to survive. To put that in perspective, if a human was to eat the same proportion of food in a day needed to sustain a hummingbird, about 300 hamburgers would have to be consumed. When resting it may go into its barely-breathing mode. It enters a state of torp...

The biggest insect that I have ever found in nature was a female polyphemus moth. Males are smaller than females; a large female can have a wingspan of up to six inches. Polyphemus moths belong to the silk moth family. The largest moth in North America is the cecropia moth, a close relative of the polyphemus moth, and has a wingspan of up to seven inches. The silkworm moth Bombyx is grown commercially in China and used for the production of silk fabric. Even though male polyphemus moths are smaller than females by a large margin they make up for it in the size of their antennae. All insects use their antennae for gathering chemical information about the world around them. Moths do the same thing, but the males of some species take this to an entirely new level. They use their large and impressive array of chemical-receptors to find females. Female polyphemus moths, like many of their kind, secrete a chemical agent called a pheromone. They are active at night and wi...