Justfolk's photos

Blue jay in the cherry tree, in b&w.

At suppertime yesterday after these three came through our cove. The two adults are easily seen with their white heads. Their fledgling is sorta halfway below them and sorta halfway up the hill.after a while the adults decided they had sat long enough and left. The young one waited and then lazily drifted across the Arm, a few hundred metres over the water, hardly more than a couple of metres off the surface.

I promised myself I would mow some of the meadow. But I found myself chasing butterflies. Here a Common ringlet, or so I think.

A view from our deck after supper last night.

There is pair of Yellow warblers hanging around our place. This, I think, is the female, sitting in the cherry tree.

This pretty little thing showed herself to us through our deck door and then busied herself stalking voles. Or so I imagine since she went to where I've been seeing voles this week. It was duckish and I imagine too that the crepuscular light was an advantage to her. She was sitting at the edge of our driveway when she realised I was looking at her through the screened window upstairs. And she looked up. The combination of dusk and the screen makes for some visual artefacts. We don't know her, but I expect she belongs to one of our near neighbours. She is not the top predator in the neighbourhood — we have seen foxes in recent weeks, and neighbours have seen coyotes.

Scying A week or two ago, a friend and I were discussing scythes, how much you can cut, how often you sharpen, and so on. That word was pronounced scye (“sigh”) in my house growing up. My father had both a scye and a sickle and although he would usually have us use the sickle, even as a ten-year-old, I loved to use the scye. Used well, it is like some kind of slow dance movement when you're mowing with it. I don't know what happened to Dad's scye, but nowadays I own two scyes, or three if the extra blade with one is counted. One was a gift ten or twelve years ago from an old friend, Fred, now sadly dead. It belonged to his father in their Bonavista Bay home and it shows a lot of signs of having been built or rebuilt by hand. The other (and the extra blade) was a gift from another friend who was not using it. He thinks it may have had a left-handed blade on it because it cut so poorly. Maybe, but I think if I were as handy as Fred's father I'd probably figure out how to reset the blade on the ferrule so that it hung and cut better. This morning I used Fred's father's old scye and cut I figured about 500 sq ft (uhh, like 50 sq m) in about an hour. If the grass wasn't so wet and lying so flat from age and rain, I probably would have done more. And if my technique was as good as my father's was sixty years ago, I probably would have done more again. Here is Fred's father's scye, lying in the patch of grass I started with this morning. It's not as good a job as the later patches. And, by the way, I was sharpening about every five minutes. Also by the way, my aunt Rose would launch into One Man Went To Mow when Dad was out with his scye. I can't keep that song out of my head when I use it.

There are two fledgling starlings here -- one is almost completely hidden behind the parent who is putting a peanut in the nearest fledgling's mouth. I was sitting outside having a beer between checks at the stove inside, cooking supper, when four of them, two adults and two fledglings, showed up for a lesson in getting the human to bring out peanuts, and in eating them. After a few rounds of the second part of the lesson, they left.

The past couple of days the parents of this young starling have been introducing it to the pleasures to be found on our back deck (peanuts) and to the fact that they need not be afraid of the human purveyor of the peanuts (me). So I've been getting some close views of the family. Next to their child, the adults look almost tiny. Probably just fluffy baby feathers, I suppose.

While I was cooking supper this evening, a good three hours before sunset, this Mourning cloak butterfly settled in for the night on our clothesline. I don't blame him -- long late-June days fluttering about make for early bedtimes. I know the feeling.

A picture from a misty morning spent on Western Brook Pond earlier this month. I wish I could blame the picture's lack of plumb on the heaving boat I was standing on deck of. But I cannot. The boat was steady.

The view from my kitchen door earlier today.

Most summers we get a few days of what people sometimes call a Boston Smog -- hazy hot weather that is partly composed of industrial pollution from the neighbouring country to our South. Sometimes we get smoky haze from big forest fires. For the past couple of weeks we've been getting that from Canada, our neighbour to the West. (Oh, yes: I forget sometimes -- we're part of that country!) And the sun and the moon have been varying shades of orange and red. This is what I see out the window right now, an hour after sunset.

I saw this Yellow warbler and his buddy fly through the backyard earlier today. So I was ready for them when they came back at lunch-time, feeding in the apple tree which is in bloom.

A few days ago I was at The Arches Provincial Park in Portland Creek. Among other things, there are these arches.

The sun was thinly shining through clouds, and low in the sky, but it was indeed there, lighting things chiaroscuro-like.

My friends who live near this pile of salt refer to it as Coley's Point's own Mount Fuji. And until yesterday it even had a white peak.

This is our eighteenth spring in Ganny Cove and yesterday was the first visit we have had from whiskyjacks, a.k.a. grey jays. Two arrived, a parent and child, methinks, since the smaller of the two would sometimes turn to the bigger with gaping maw, expecting food to be dropped in. The food was some broken-up nuts we got for them from inside. Although they haven't visited us before, we have seen them in the area, and they are always interested in people. These guys had no trouble jumping on my hand. Pleasant visitors. And much more subdued, not to mention quieter, than their garish cousins the blue jays.