The World Through Our Lens
Tommy Thompson Park in Toronto is recognized worldwide as a significant habitat for breeding waterbirds, and during the summer months, when fewer songbirds make the Leslie Street Spit their home, birdwatchers will still be rewarded with glimpses into the lives of the colonial species, one of which includes the Black-crowned Night Heron. Read more
The addition of some vibrant red Canna Lilies in my backyard garden this year has had just the result I’d hoped for. Every day, for several weeks in August and early September, I had a Ruby-throated Hummingbird visit my flowers on its trek south. Read more
How would you like to come face to face with this fierce-looking caterpillar if you were about knee high to a grasshopper? It was about 4 inches long (10 cm), around 1/2 inch in diameter (1 cm), and surprisingly quick at navigating through the tangle of grass. This is the larva of a Modest Sphinx Moth (Pachysphinx modesta) that we saw in the community of Oxtongue Lake, Ontario, near the end of August. Read more
I relocated some Coneflowers in my Toronto garden last fall, and was blessed with the gift of a few more from a friend, and the plants seem to be flourishing in their new location. Bob and I have monitored them closely since they are said to attract butterflies, and late one afternoon, we spotted this beauty, a Black Swallowtail Butterfly tasting the nectar from one particularly tall specimen. Read more
Tommy Thompson Park on the Leslie Street Spit in Toronto, Ontario, is an amazing destination for anyone who is interested in observing birds, especially during spring migration, but a visit in July was also rewarding for Bob and me when we discovered scores of Double-Crested Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) with their young in the nests. Read more
Bob and I spend a lot of time at my childhood home at Oxtongue Lake, in Ontario, because my parents still occupy the same house all these 65 years later. That is where I had my first encounter with a Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis) when I was knee high to a grasshopper. Seldom since then have we seen any snakes on their property, but this beauty slithered across the beach property recently, and I was so pleased to become reacquainted. Read more
On a particularly hot July day, Bob and I decided to seek cooler temperatures along the lakefront here in Toronto, so we loaded our bikes and made for Tommy Thompson Park. There, along the bicycle trail, Bob spotted this dainty Hickory Hairstreak Butterfly. It was a Lifer for us. Read more
On a recent visit to Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario, Bob and I were surprised to spot a White-tailed Deer just inside the Park boundary. It was only recently that I had remarked on not having seen a deer in the Park for years whereas at one time, they were very commonplace. Read more
My dad had been trying for 15 years to woo a pair of Eastern Bluebirds to nest on his property at Oxtongue Lake in Ontario, Canada. Not since the year 2000 had he even seen Eastern Bluebirds in the area. You can imagine how excited he was when a pair showed up in May 2015 and demonstrated interest in one of his homemade nest boxes. Read more