Around 90 years ago, my grandfather would travel to pre-war Germany "doing business" and on one of his trips he brought back a bear. A very fine bear that as a rather small child I used to admire immensely. As is the way of these things, it eventually came to live with me [...]
Mid-morning I was down by the river taking photographs of the Fritz Farm community building in beautiful bright sunlight ... as I stood there a hush descended over the bay and dark clouds covered the sun. Suddenly a beam of light broke through and illuminated the building. A small green creature descended [...]
Sixty-some years ago I had inherited a black-and-white roll-film Box Brownie camera and was the envy of my friends ... sometimes I even had enough pocket money saved to put a 12-shot roll of film in it and sometimes my parents paid to have it developed. This was high technology on the opening [...]
Winnie Minion - A Flapper This young lady was a well-liked cousin of my aunts who were born in 1906 and 1910 respectively … judging by her clothing this photograph was taken in the twenties. Let’s say 1925 and that she was more or less contemporaneous with the aunts making her what, [...]
Over a long lifetime I have gathered (moss and rolling stone etc) odd items from aged relatives. Now I am an aged relative myself, I have looked out a couple of old photograph albums that came to me from relatives in Leeds and which have gathered dust and been unopened for maybe [...]
Just a brief post today ... Alongside this website, for several years I also ran a second site that was just for my "best" photographs. While I was working on my book, "1001 Species: A Natural History of a Small Town" (https://1001species.ca), I let it languish unattended and unloved. The time has come [...]
Along one stretch of shoreline in the Iles-de-la-Madeleine last month the sandy shoreline was being eroded and fallen trees had been washed by the saltwater. Interesting shapes.
Nine years ago we were birding and botanising in Austria and the Czech Republic with a pause for history and culture in Prague. I was especially struck by the interplay of light on the stone columns in this medieval cathedral.
New ventures in neighbour-watching ... four footed, furry neighbours. A member of an on-line naturalist group from Ontario recently posted some splendid trail-cam images of deer and other wildlife at a vernal pool. Inspiration was sparked. A few years ago, ten perhaps, we had purchased a trail-cam to watch birds visiting our garden [...]
This will be the third year we have not travelled abroad and next year it will be four when (we hope) a safe visit to chums and relatives in England might just be possible ... sorting out old photographs I happened on a few nostalgic images from (relatively) recent visits. [...]