The World Through Our Lens
Ontario is one of the ten provinces of Canada, located in east-central Canada.
Bob and I refrained from visiting the Great Horned Owls in Markham, Ontario, Canada, for a few days. From another person in the know about the owls’ location, we learned that the Great Horned owlet was becoming increasingly difficult to find. Read more
On May 12, Bob and I went to check on the Great Horned Owls’ nest previously observed in a Markham park in Ontario, Canada. We found the 3-week old Great Horned owlet hunkered down out of sight. After a few minutes, the owlet appeared over the lip of the nest and looked in our direction. We were there and gone after 15 minutes. Read more
In early spring, 2021, Bob and I were contacted by a friend who had been tipped off to the location of a Great Horned Owl in our midst. It turned out that there was a pair of these owls raising a newly-hatched chick near the urban area of Markham, Ontario. Read more
Northern Hawk Owls are denizens of boreal forests and rarely leave their breeding grounds. Some winters, however, for lack of food in their normal habitat, Northern Hawk Owls will venture into southern Canada and even the northern United States. In 2019, nature enthusiasts like ourselves were thrilled to have a Northern Hawk Owl show up in the village of Schomberg in southern Ontario. Read more
Bob and I had been seeing reports of a Varied Thrush sighted in Central Ontario in early December 2019. A denizen of forests in the Pacific Northwest of Canada and continental U.S.A., the visitor was far from home and seemed to be enduring Ontario’s cold winter quite well. Read more
We were really struck by the beauty of the Baltimore Checkerspot Butterflies that we observed in Toronto. This is a species that we had never seen before. Read more
Mandarin Ducks breed in Eastern Siberia as far south as North Korea, and they winter by choice in southern China and Japan. So, when a Mandarin Duck like Eddie shows up in a small town in Ontario, Canada, it creates a lot of excitement. Read more
On a late summer afternoon, on his way to a local farmer’s market, Bob made a brief stop at North Reesor Pond in Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His intention was to look for shorebirds, but with none presenting, he began to scour the reeds and bushes for insects. That is when he happened upon this most unusual caterpillar, a Cecropia Moth Larva. Read more
Owing to the covid-19 pandemic, Markham Fair, like so many other events, was canceled for 2020. We thought it fitting, then, to look back in time at Markham Fair as we have experienced it with our family over the past 40 years. Read more