Justfolk's photos

By the standards of most people, including most of our neighbours, we are slow to take down our Christmas decorations. Here it is, January 21st, and we are still lighting the outdoor tree. The tree was cut over a month ago but the birds like it as much as we do. We'll leave it up until it gets blasty, probably May month, perhaps June. About 20 cm of snow fell overnight and by early evening the temperature had crept up to a half degree above freezing. That was enough for the weightier clumps to start falling. That is what you see on the right-hand side.

I noticed it was quiet at the bird feeder and also that a junco was stock-still in the fir tree on our deck. Methought, "There must be a hawk." And there was: this sharp-shinned hawk, his head turning back and forth as he searched for a bird to take. He waited for over 45 minutes in a tree, attentive to everything, including me. Then he finally gave up the wait. Five minutes after he was gone, the littler birds were out feeding again.

I love a good fog. Twenty years ago, my wife and I were in St Pierre, the area of France that is adjacent to Newfoundland and which sits in the same fog zone as Eastern and Southern Newfoundland. As we walked down a little street to a patisserie for some breakfast, a man stepped out from his door, seemingly straight from his bed, onto the sidewalk in front of us. As we walked around him, he stretched himself upwards and said slowly and in five syllables, "Quelle belle brume!" I smiled in agreement. This picture was yesterday afternoon and is not St Pierre. It's just a kilometre or so from our back door, and it's a pleasant place for a walk, in sun or fog.

Around here, on the island of Newfoundland to call a bird a "pigeon" is ambiguous. In the city, where I live, it is clearly understood to mean this sort -- what used to be offcially called a rock dove but which nowadays is apparently just as officially known as a rock pigeon. All my life they've been a common urban sight in the downtown, and in recent decades, elsewhere through the city. Outside the city, though, the word "pigeon" normally refers to the black guillemot, a bird that would never deign to stand on my deck rail which overlooks no salt water.

In many other parts of North America, this bird is commonplace. But here, on the island of Newfoundland, they are not. I never saw one until ten years ago, and I'm past seventy now. This winter we've had a pair hang out with us, and they have decided that the space under the Christmas tree I put on the deck outside the kitchen door is their preferred spot. This morning the temperature started warm, above 14 C. During the course of the morning, heavy rain started and the temperature started to drop. Now, not four hours after I took the picture, the temperature is just above freezing. We expect freezing rain for the next day or so. With that we expect to lose our electrical power. Fingers crossed.

It was very cold overnight, just below minus fourteen in our neighbourhood, and first thing this morning the flickers got frisky with one another. They were doing this dance for ten minutes while I watched and took pictures from the window. Eventually they disappeared. And later the female came back for peanuts.

These two brothers have been operating an electronics repair shop since 1971. From time to time I bring in things for them to repair. This morning I dropped by to pick up a radio I had asked them to clean up. Roger told me he was thinking of retiring and we chatted about how few small businesses like his have survived the onslaught of big international business. When I asked to take a picture, Walter hesitated but Roger convinced him it was no problem. So they took off their masks and posed. I wasn't paying much attention to the shutter speed, and I should have used a higher ISO to get a sharper picture. But I like the picture anyway.

When the temperature gets down to about five below freezing, the rhododendron's leaves curl and droop. A bit of mild weather brings them back. This was what one of our rhododendrons looked like today while I shovelled a path past it, down to our back yard.

This evening, we visited a trail we have walked many times without electric lights. The authorities have lit about 700 metres of it for the season. Very lovely. They were planning to take down the lights on Old Christmas Day, but because we finally got snow over the weekend, they've left them up for a week longer.

My neighbour, on the street below us and about five houses up that street, was tending, with his children, the bonfire he had in his backyard this evening. I took a picture but didn't think to switch off the auto-exposure, so I got an eight-second shutter speed. I like the picture anyway.

In Jessica Grant's wonderful 2009 novel Come, Thou Tortoise, this factory (whose real name is Purity Factories) became the Piety Factory. I was there this morning because our neighbourhood recycler is across the street. After dropping off bottles, I couldn't resist this view.

Mars has been sneaking up behind the Moon from night to night. Now tonight he's ahead of her, but not very far ahead: maybe the thickness of your finger at arm's-length.

Not very long after sunset, a few minutes ago the clouds started blowing away out of the sky. I went out and took a nice picture of the moon, our moon, that is. Then I turned and saw Jupiter. And he had two moons swinging around like the outer-most partners in a square dance. They are Europa and Callisto. If you look really carefully you might see a little bulge in Jove's belly on the lower left. That bulge is, I think, Io and Ganymede about to swing around behind him.

Breakfast this morning for a couple of visitors in a little dwy of snow.

We've had this one visiting mourning dove for the past month or so. She is easily spooked by my presence, as she was here -- she'd been lying comfortably on the rail in the rain but she saw me, stood up (here) and then flew to the bushes below. I expect she will be back soon.

Our neighbours a few doors up the street always put on a good light show at midnight on New Year's Eve. This was an hour ago, as the entire valley filled with lights and fireworks noise. But no others were as close as these.

The view at sunset yesterday afternoon from our doorstep, looking to the southwest.

Unlike much of mainland North America, we still have had no shovellable snow and few sub-freezing nights. This was a few minutes ago looking up the street from our front door. St John's, Newfoundland.