tamzooka – Rainwater Rambling

Backyard Visitors

June 11, 2017 richardt

Rainwater

It was a hot weekend, Claudia was at her year-end camp with Rangers at Rockwood Conservation Area. When Susan and I dropped her off Friday evening, the campsites were packed. Claudia is finished Rangers for the year, she is going back for her final year in the fall. We figured we have been driving the girls to Guiding events for the past 18 years. I had the camera out this morning before it got too hot. A couple of butterflies were hanging around the yard.

A female House Finch in the trees.

The bees were hanging out on the lilac bush.

Backyard Bird Traffic

May 22, 2017 richardt

Rainwater

backyard birds tamzooka

The backyard was busy with birds this weekend.

My third suet feeder, the first two were stolen by the raccoons last year, unless they have tools and posable thumbs, they aren’t getting this one.

Cardinals and finches.

A woodpecker dropped by.

The cardinal’s mate.

And off he goes.

Downy Woodpecker

July 2, 2016 richardt

Rainwater

backyard birds tamzooka

It was a relaxing afternoon, sitting in the backyard watching the bird feeders. Today we had a female Downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) feeding from our suet feeder.

The girls bought me a new feeder for Father’s Day, it is made of metal (i.e. squirrels can’t chew it) and it contains the seeds better (when the squirrels hang off of it) and therefore the seeds last longer and not as much growing in the garden. I don’t think I have taken a photo of the new feeder yet.

The downy woodpecker is the smallest North American woodpecker.

Happy Father’s Day

June 19, 2016 richardt

Rainwater

backyard birds tamzooka

Happy Father’s Day to all the Dad’s. I had a nice relaxing day with Susan and the girls. Showed Gillian how to replace a burnt out brake light. Here is Chloe trying to get at whatever is living under the neighbour’s deck, hopefully it isn’t a skunk. I put rocks down to stop her from digging.

Let me know when you’re tired of the bird photos, eventually the novelty will wear off. This was early this morning when a pair of Cardinals came by.

A Goldfinch having a drink.

The male cardinal.

Noticed that he has a Josh Donaldson haircut.

Gillian set her camera up on a tripod attached to a branch, she is able to control it from her phone. I added the leaves to camouflage the camera.

New Neighbourhood Feeder

June 8, 2016 richardt

Rainwater

backyard birds tamzooka

This past weekend I put up a new bird feeder in the back maple tree. It has been slow trying to attract the birds away from the neighbours many feeders. We didn’t see a single bird on the weekend, even the squirrels were ignoring it. Finally on Monday while I was bbq’ing a cardinal stopped by, yesterday were some finches and today I had my camera out.

Look over here.

It was so good she brought her mate back with her.

Bear Country

May 20, 2016 richardt

Work Posts

birds nwt tamzooka wildlife

After arriving home at 3:30am on Sunday morning from Jamaica, I was back at the airport on Monday morning heading to Fort Smith, NWT, spending the week at Wood Buffalo National Park. The first day on the way to the site we saw 12 black bears (Ursus americanus).

The one bear was grazing at the side of the road and when the truck stopped it came a little closer and sat down and watched us.

We only saw one bison the whole day.

When we arrived at the site a bear came wandering into the clearing.

It spent a couple of hours grazing around the site.

We saw about 4 bears on the way back to town.

One evening we headed down to the Rapids of the Drown to see the American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos).

I had brought my big zoom lens.

They have the second largest average wingspan of any North American bird, after the California condor.

One of the air quality techs from from the Government of the Northwest Territories Environment was down from Yellowknife for the week. He is an avid bird and wildlife photographer.

Sunset over the Slave River. The weather the first two days were sunny and hot, the temperature in Fort Smith when we landed on Monday was 24 degrees C. By Wednesday morning it dropped to 5 degrees C.

There were just as many bears each day we headed out to the site.

We saw a few “brown” black bears or cinnamon bears. That was something to see, it was the first time seeing one.

This one was a darker brown colour.

We even saw a bear up in a tree.

WE stopped at Little Buffalo Falls on the Thursday.

In the spring it is always an impressive waterfall.

It was a good week in Fort Smith, even got some work done. My colleague and I both had our luggage bumped on the flight from Edmonton to Fort Smith on the Monday. The plane was 200 lb over its weight. After they took our names and numbers, I asked if there was any compensation for us, since we didn’t have our bags. The girl came back out with $40 cash each. It bought our beer. Our bags didn’t end up coming until Tuesday afternoon. Looking into the cockpit on the return flight to Edmonton.

We Need a Bird Feeder

April 17, 2016 richardt

Rainwater

backyard birds tamzooka

Chloe keeping watch in the backyard from intruding birds and squirrels.

Despite Chloe’s patrols the neighbours tree still gets Cardinals. I was out with my big zoom lens.

And American Red Squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus).

He was in the tree after Chloe chased it from the fence.

The Cardinal’s mate.

The squirrel back on the fence post.

An American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis).

Blue Jays Hoodie Day

September 27, 2015 richardt

Rainwater

baseball blue jays tamzooka

It was the final Blue Jays home game today and it was Fan Appreciation Weekend. They were giving Blue Jay hoodies to the first 20,000 fans. We made our usual trek down to the Rogers Centre to get in line. Claudia chowing down on our pre-game ritual hot dog.

We arrived at 9:30 am and the lines were already longer than usual. We were at Gate 4 and there might have been 200-300 people ahead of us.

We all got a hoodie and everybody entering was given a rally towel.

Today’s starter was Mark Buehrle.

He gave a up a triple on the first pitch of the game, and it was a collective, oh no, here we go again.

Josh Donaldson.

Jose Bautista.

We were sitting in section 214 and with my big lens I was able to get some close-up shots.

Donaldson crossing the plate after Justin Smoak’s double.

Smoke with a lead-off of second.

Kevin Pillar.

Ryan Goins.

Some of the bench players watching the Jays fall behind 4-1.

Buehrle ended up going 6.0 innings, giving up 5 hits and 4 runs.

The Jays were able to tie the game in the eighth inning, which allowed Josh Donaldson to come to the plate in the bottom of the ninth, with 2 out and walk off home run to left field for the victory. Here he is in the red sunglasses coming to the plate.

It was a terrific finish to a good game.

Nobody left their seats for a good 10-15 minutes after he hit the home run.

Silver Elvis at his usual location just up the bridge from Batman.

The girls showing off their new Blue Jays hoodies.

And one with Chloe who wanted to get in the picture.

Day 14: Points East Lighthouses

September 4, 2015 richardt

PEI2015

beach big things birds lighthouse pei tamzooka

On our penultimate day on Prince Edward Island, we wanted to see two more lighthouses to fill in our map. I’ll post that later. We stopped at The General Store in Murray River, the lady at the store told us about a beach and lighthouse close to where we were headed.

We arrived at Cape Bear, it is in the southeast part of the island. This lighthouse was built in 1881. It went electric and was de-staffed in 1960. It was decommissioned in 2011.

Cape Bear is open to the public. Unfortunately the Marconi museum wasn’t open. The first distress signal from the Titanic was received at Cape Bear.

The girls in the glow of the light.

A view from the top, the clouds look a little ominous here, but it turned out to be a great day.

Coming back down the hatch.

Even though all the lighthouses could use a coat of paint, the weathered look gives them character.

At the end of the cape.

Avoiding the edge of cliffs with our car.

This the Beach Point beach.

Sisters on a stump.

The Beach Point Front Range Light. It was built in 1878.

Claudia holding the lighthouse in Gillian’s photo.

The next stop on our list was Panmure Head Lighthouse.

This one was open to the public as well.

The light a top the lighthouse.

Everytime we went up a lighthouse, we said afterwards that I should have run down and taken a picture of them at the top. Finally on our last lighthouse I remembered.

I took few pictures of this to get the horses in the foreground, in the end the best photo was this one with the wider view.

We headed into Georgetown for some Lupper or Linner.

We finally stopped at the big cow at Cows. We waited for Gillian to come before taking a photo.

The last sunset,

The heron.

This was taken with the telephoto zoom lens, it looks like a painting.

We had one last fire. The night sky was the clearest in two weeks. There were lots of stars out. If you look closely you can see the Big Dipper.

Day 10: North Shore and Fisherman’s Wharf

August 31, 2015 richardt

PEI2015

beach birds lighthouse pei tamzooka

We headed up to the north shore today to visit the PEI National Park beaches. We had a lazy morning before heading out, here is Claudia relaxing on the deck.

We started at Stanhope Beach.

It was pretty empty.

The girls playing monkey in the middle.

Claudia mermaid.

It was windy and the fine sand on the beach was blowing around. We packed up after a couple of hours and headed to another beach. We stopped at the Covehead Harbour Lighthouse. It was built in 1975 and was never manned. It is also one of the smallest lighthouses on the island.

Not drifting snow, but drifting sand.

After the lighthouse we headed to Brackley Beach, however it was even windier there and we didn’t last very long with the blowing sand.

Tonight’s dinner was at the Fisherman’s Wharf in North Rustico. It is an all you can eat salad bar, which includes seafood chowder and steamed mussels.

We all ordered the lobster add-on to the meal. The seafood chowder was very good and I ate probably a few pounds of mussels.

We needed to walk around a bit after dinner so we went out to the North Rustico Harbour lighthouse.

It was built in 1876 and was electrified in 1960. It is one of the few lighthouses that didn’t have the dwelling removed when it was de-staffed.

Some of the sights around the harbour.

We started back for the cottage via Cavendish. We stopped at Orby Head. There were lots of Great Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo) in trees and flying around.

I was able to get some close up shots with my telephoto lens.

This is close up of Orby Head, a trade off when using a telephoto lens. There were a few idiots hitting golf balls into the ocean from the top of the cliff. Have they not seen Seinfeld?

It started to rain as we left Cavendish, it was quite the lightening show as we drove back, just after we got into the cottage, it poured down rain. Most of the rain has occurred in the evening, overnight or early morning.

Rainwater Rambling

Tag: tamzooka

Backyard Visitors

Backyard Bird Traffic

Downy Woodpecker

Happy Father’s Day

New Neighbourhood Feeder

Bear Country

We Need a Bird Feeder

Blue Jays Hoodie Day

Day 14: Points East Lighthouses

Day 10: North Shore and Fisherman’s Wharf

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Rainwater Rambling

Tag: tamzooka

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