Justfolk's photos

The heavy rain was trying hard today to switch to snow and we were threatened with 15 cm of it. But it only slowly was making the change, so tomorrow morning we'll end up with less. A starling came by in the thickening snow to survey what the little birds were at. No suet. Just seeds. So he went on. But not before sitting for a portrait.

Okay, so you didn't ask to see a bunch of waxwing arses this afternoon. Well neither did I. But when they are up above you in the trees, there's not much you can do about getting a different point of view. And they're called "vents" by the way. Not arses. And as well, as it turns out, as points of view go for distinguishing Cedar waxwings from Bohemian waxwings, the ideal view is of the arse. The vent, I mean. Because it shows you the colours of the belly and the undertail feathers. Cinnamon undertail? = Bohemian. So these are Bohemian arses, not Cedar arses. We had about forty of them in the maple trees out front for ten minutes this afternoon, all singing their hissy bell-like song. Then a couple of busses came along and made the loud hissy noise busses make when they are braking, and that startled the birds into flight again.

This winter we in the city have seen very few birds at our feeders. Long-time birders say the birds are too busy eating the good cone crop in the woods. Today, after some freezing rain overnight, a flock of about forty goldfinches showed up at our feeders. The woods food must be depleted or glazed in.

It's just over four weeks since I released this junco from a rat trap I had negligently placed where a bird could investigate it. Sigh. Investigate it this one did, and caught it was. Just by luck I was in the vicinity soon enough afterwards that when I released the trap, the bird flew away. I watched it for several days as it picked at its broken and nearly useless leg. It used it for balance in those first few days but eventually the leg disappeared. And the bird almost seems not to miss it now. It is more cautious about where it takes food to eat, but otherwise, it seems as able as any two-legged bird. In the first days of his handicap, he hopped, and thus we started calling him Hoppy. But he moves on the ground much more smoothly now. And of course he can fly as well as any of his friends. But he's still Hoppy.

In the absence of any juncos this morning, and after a snowfall overnight of more than thirty cm, a pigeon takes on the job of clearing the rail outside our kitchen door.

It was getting dark and the snow was falling. So the tree was turned on. This was a half hour ago and we expect the city to be shut down tomorrow.

We moved into this neighbourhood over twenty years ago and we've had this friendly family as close neighbours ever since. When we met them, J was still a teenager. His parents were working. But they and I are retired now. J has been working long enough for his pension contributions to become "vested." That's what we were talking about when I took the picture -- the beauties of jobs with good pension plans. Many of J's friends work in places where there is none.

This is the pine warbler I finally saw this afternoon.

I am only slowly coming around to the fact that I am a "birder." I've gone a couple of times during the past week or so to a spot behind a local hospital to try and see a Pine warbler that is hanging out there. So have a lot of other birders. (Today, just before I took this picture, I finally saw the bird.)

This was this afternoon in our neighbourhood graveyard. I was watching for birds; there were none. Instead I saw dozens of rat tracks in the snow. There was life, but not as I'd hoped for.

One of the four resident chickadees in our backyard this week.

The sun had not long been up this morning and this is what my window looked like. I checked the temperature a few minutes later; it was minus 15.9 degrees Celsius,

And *outside* our kitchen window, Jupiter can be seen. The camera in this picture was focussed on Jupiter, its moons, and the stars, so the branches of the tree (lit by street lights) are completely out of focus. That is why it looks like you can see stars right in the middle of some branches. You can only see two of Jove's Galilean moons right now: Ganymede and Callisto, both to the lower right of it. Io and Europa are both obscured by Jove.

This is a little plant, preserved from a larger begonia we had outdoors last summer. It sits in the kitchen window. The whole plant now is no more than 12 cm high and each flower is about two cm across. This is its entire crop of flowers, out this week to keep us company in gloomy January.

This morning I went walking in a nearby pine stand hoping to see a pine warbler that's been there for a week or so. I didn't find the bird. But I saw this tarpaulin. It seems to be part of a spot where kids from the adjacent high-school go to smoke cigarettes and hang out.

This evening, this is the view in our dining room window with my wife's amaryllises starting to bloom, and a neighbour's Christmas lights beyond. We too have Christmas lights on outside despite being two weeks out of the official season. It is meet and right so to do in the gloomy stormy weather we get in January. And the amaryllis blooms add to that counter-gloom.

This is the sword that flattened my nearly new snow tire yesterday. It's just over four cm long and was driven in right to the hilt, or actually beyond. It took me ten minutes of wiggling with a big pair of pliers to get it out.

The dingiest months of the year get a little brightness from the blooms of amaryllis in the window.