Justfolk's photos

This afternoon's sunset sky and skinny sliver moon, just two and a half days after the New Moon.

The tree was fully decorated tonight, after which we cracked open a bottle of some tawny port that has been sitting around unopened for a couple of years, and we toasted the tree. The short days are lengthening.

An American goldfinch sitting in the soon-to-be-Christmas tree outside the kitchen window. These goldfinches are the most numerous species hanging about at our feeders right now. Probably 80% of what we see are goldfinches

It is very dark and very wet this morning. That doesn't stop the finches from flooding our feeders. And among them this male purple finch. He tends to be less aggressive than his goldy cousins, and indeed than his two purple-not-purple consorts (uhh, immatures or females: I can't tell the difference). So he sits well for portraits.

This flicker sat there for ten minutes, just groovin on the vibe, before she flew the two or three metres to the suet.

I had to drop by one of the convents the other day, not this one, but the other which is now mostly a public resource centre for the local homeless. And my eye was taken by this building and its signs. Of course I hardly ever hold my camera straight, even a camera like this one which has an easy-to-use level. So I turnt the picture a bit.

I don't think Ezra Pound would much mind me twisting his famous poem. After all, his poem was a twist anyway. Today our first two pine siskins showed up. In a few weeks we'll probably have hundreds of them at our feeders.

This is our neighbour cat, named with the same name as our late cat, Minnie, but of a very different disposition. This Minnie is two or three years old and has never crossed into our garden -- until today. As part of the disposition of Our Minnie's estate, we've been feeding the crows with her leftover cat food. They like it and it is apparently as nutritious for birds as for cats. This morning I opened a tub of cat treats for the crows, put some out, and went off to my reading. Twenty minutes later I heard the crows mobbing and cawing in the trees. Looking out and expecting a hawk or a raven to be what they were mobbing, I saw Next-Door Minnie face-and-eyes into the crow food. For a couple of minutes I took pictures; she ate and looked up at me over and over, worried I might scold her. I didn't. Finished, she turned around and started to walk away. But first she turned her head back at me, licked her chops -- a thank-you? -- and then finally went on her way. The crows never stopped their chorus of caws at her. Or maybe at me. I think they may feel cheated.

An old picture I am posting because I just saw a friend's picture of the same thing but taken twenty years after mine. Nothing had changed; well, except that in his colour picture you could see much new rust.

This fellow is Number Forty-Two on our Kitchen Window List. (Yes: we have a "List." We didn't used to but it just gradually came into being. Now I feel a competition with myself.) It's not a very sharp picture but enough to identify him: a Yellow-throated warbler. He showed up for some suet early this morning. I was half-expecting him. He had been visiting a suet feeder a couple of hundred metres away from us a few days ago. And one of the flickers had chopped up lotsa suet for him from the suet holder above. Those flickers are pigs but the other birds appreciate it. Even though it is mid-December, the weather's been mild and there are a half-dozen warblers who have apparently decided to try their luck to spend the winter around this town, St. John's, Newfoundland, when all their relatives decamped a couple of months ago for more southern climes.

My wife and I had to visit a downtown office building the other day. Before we left there, I took a picture of us from one of the windows. If you can zoom in you can barely see me with my camera up to my face, and two images of my wife with her mask covering her face.

At the bottom of our street the neighbourhood changes. The houses are bigger and more modern than immediately around our house. Their lots are larger. And the houses are set way back off the road. Walk a few steps and it's like a different town. This was the view down there a few minutes ago in the fog. A friend of mine calls this "generic weather" -- a few degrees above freezing, socked in with fog and a light drizzle falling. It's "generic" because we can have it almost any day of the year.

It was gleaming outside the window today with purples and golds.

I walked across the bridge between a local office building and its parking garage today. This is what I saw.

Now that the leaves have all been blown off the trees above our back yard, the wider sky-view has returned. And Luna has been putting on shows of haze, a different colour each evening. Last night it was orange; tonight a bluey theme.

After a hard night of wind and cold rain, Sharpie makes her appearance at the back door. "Excuse me, sir. Sorry for interrupting your breakfast. You wouldn't happen to have any little birdies you wouldn't be needing? Fine little birdies. Heh."

My better birding buddies tell me that this bird, one in a crowd of a hundred juncos hanging out at our feeder the past couple of days, is not the usual sort of junco for these parts, but a 'white-winged dark-eyed junco' better known a few thousand kilometres west of here.

I put up a hummingbird feeder six months ago and dutifully emptied, washed, and refilled it every few days ever since. But, although there were a few hummingbirds in town and even in my neighbourhood for weeks on end, I saw none at my feeder. This morning when I got up, it had frozen overnight. So I have taken it down until next spring. This is what it looked like before I brought it in.