Justfolk's photos

Molly dropt by to introduce two of the people filling in this summer as custodians in the building we work in: Jamie, Molly and Shannon. They all have blue eyes. So I got their pictures. :)

Last summer I was surprised to find a leopard marsh orchid (a.k.a. European marsh orchid & southern marsh orchid) here in the city, and wildly blooming. I talked with various botanists and natural historians who said the species was -- until a decade or two ago -- more or less unknown here, but that it was found in the 1990s and has been spreading. So this year I've been on the look-out for it. I've seen several plants and now, early July, they have started blooming. This was this afternoon on a weedy patch of lawn on the university campus.

At the Memorial Day ceremonies yesterday, I heard my name quietly called and I turned to see my friend K operating a camera. K works in the same building that I do, primarily now as a TV producer for the university. "Just a hobble," he said. The CBC had to cover a lot of sites that day and it no longer has enough in-house staff to do it without hiring outside people. K was glad to do it; he's done camera work for decades. The Dictionary of Newfoundland English has "hobble": [ www.heritage.nf.ca/dictionary/index.php#2257 ]

I have lived all my life in a part of Canada where Canada's national day, July first, is Memorial Day, in sad memory of the horribly disastrous battle 100 years ago today at Beaumont-Hamel, a part of the larger battle of the Somme. In a country where only a quarter of a million people lived in 1916, the hundreds of losses that day were so great that, even now, four generations later, thousands of people come out each year on its anniversary to remember. I was there today amid the crowd, so I'm not one to be able to judge numbers, but a neighbour told me there were ten thousand people there. It's a dual-personality day. This evening, the city goes into Canada Day mode and the federal government sponsors fireworks.

It was getting duckish as we walked by this lovely bit of graffiti. I hope she/he got the chance. Interesting handwriting, too.

Pine grosbeak between feeds of pisstabed seeds in Ganny Cove yesterday. She was jumping on the stalks of the, okay, dandelion flowers, bringing them to the ground, and then, holding the flower stalk down, picking at the seeds. You can see the remains of a lot of seeds on the ground, bottom left. Her male buddy was around but he wasn't as interested in the dandelions. He was bright orange.

When I was a kid, I thought colourful birds were all in other places, that all our birds were a kind of duckedimud colour. Nowaday I see colourful birds all the time. Nothing has changed except my sight. ("None so blind...," hey?) We spent the weekend out of town and noticed lots of high-saturation birds, including this yellow warbler in the apple tree. This is about a thirtieth of the entire frame.

Fledgling starling

I was going through a nearby, newly mown graveyard and saw a bunch of starlings feeding in the cuttings with their fledglings. This one was particularly pretty until finally I startled him and he flew. This is substantially cropt . . . and, yes, I did desaturate the bright green background. But his eye really did show blue (sky reflection?).

About thirty years ago I noticed how often in this town houses were marketed with the phrase "View of Signal Hill" as a positive point. And it *is* a positive point. I started taking pictures, whenever I could, of street views that included Signal Hill in the street's line of vision. I never really finished that project. Really-really, I never really got it going enough to call it a project. But I still startle a little when I see good views of Signal Hill. And today, walking back from the supermarket with supper in my knapsack (or my rucksack? :) ), I saw this view tumbling down from the graveyard I was walking through.

Nowadays everyone seems to call these birds "juncos." But when I was a boy fifty or sixty years ago, my father always said "snowbird," a name that seems to predate the use of "junco" for this North American bird. But, although I took university courses in etymology and lexicography, I never took one in ornithology. When I was younger, the snowbird struck me as the most boring of all birds but I've come to like them now. I like the sounds they make, buzzing and clicking and cellphone-ringing.

After almost forty years of teaching, Jerry is retiring in a few weeks, so our department got together today to celebrate him and to wish him well. I took dozens of pictures. This picture was late in the afternoon: him and C, one of his PhD students. Despite retirement, he plans to continue supervising his students.

K promised us a young beech that had started in her garden, so I dropt by today. It was only seven degrees and spitting rain. But she and F were putting in their new peas, potatoes, and other stuff. I came away with a beech, a horse chestnut, a forsythia, and a volunteer garlic.

I took this picture yesterday afternoon when there was no frost warning. But tonight there is such a warning from the Weather Office. Ahhh, it is only June yet. . . . This was taken from the car window at about 60 km/hr. Not exactly as sharp as some might want. :)

This was about three weeks ago.

I can't remember which oil rig has thrown in its towel after months of low oil prices, but this is it. And it happened to be outside Bay Bulls when a little bergy bit, a mere clumper or perhaps better, a growler, was sitting near the wash on the south side. There are many much bigger icebergs around here right now. You can just barely see the bergy bit on the right, behind the bushes. We were driving by and I was lucky enough to be in the passenger seat.

This is a small crop from a shot in my E-P2 with an old Pentax-mount Tokina zoom attached. I was trying to take pictures of this bird while he was eating every bug or worm he could find in the apple tree a couple of hours ago. I wasn't focussing very well, and this particular lens does not produce really detailed pictures in this particular camera. But I like the picture anyway.

I took this nearly three years ago. I don't remember what I did but I suppose it involved movement. It might have been my kitchen floor.