Temperatures a bit above 10C in the past couple of days and some warm sunshine produced the emergence of a number of tiny bees busily investigating leaf litter and Sanguinaria and crocus flowers near the garden waterfall this afternoon ... the camera and I went outside to meet them. These bees are a [...]
20+ years ago when we were new here, I would come home from work each day in late summer and spend an hour digging a hole for a pond in the garden and heaping up the excavated spoil into a hill for the eventual creation of a waterfall. I had not realised [...]
The first shoots of Sanguinaria (Bloodroot) have appeared in the last 24 hours. Very soon the flowers will open and after that the Cigar" will unfurl to reveal the leaves.
We were visited by a couple of raccoons in the garden, one barely being impeded by next door's fence which it scaled without effort. The other passed through to investigate what we had, digging several holes with its busy little paws as it went. The sludge on the bottom of the only partially [...]
Now we are in the middle of April the days, and most nights, are above freezing - albeit not by much today. There is up to 15cm of snow currently forecast for next Tuesday, but if it arrives it won't stick around long as the forecast is for somewhat warmer days afterwards. [...]
People who know us know that we like to spend time with birds. This video (NOT made by me note) is the first in a series intended to educate Elementary School children from grades 3 to 6 about the important work that is done at the McGill Bird Observatory (MBO) in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec. [...]
I have mentioned before that I am writing a Natural History of the town I live in, and a few nearby places within a short distance. A friend who we met ten years ago on a wildlifing trip of north-western Newfoundland and Labrador pointed out from some early draft pages that I don’t [...]
The fellow was clearing an ice skating track on the river ice while some serious cloud loomed menacingly overhead. If you peer closely there's a plane below the clouds coming down to land at the airport. Two ways of moving about.
One of the must do tasks for New Year's Day around here is to total up the number of species of birds that we have heard or seen in or from our garden during the preceding year. The garden list for 2021 topped off at a gratifying 76 different species of birds. [...]
THE SHORTEST DAY So the shortest day came, and the year died, And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world Came people singing, dancing, To drive the dark away. They lighted candles in the winter trees; They hung their homes with evergreen; They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep [...]