The World Through Our Lens
A video is a recording of moving visual images made digitally or on videotape.
The Great Horned Owlet that we had been observing was now almost 6 weeks old. Bob and I were keen to see if the family of owls was still occupying the same woodlot in Markham, Ontario. Read more
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
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make this video as part of my wife’s, Jean’s, birthday gift. As you will see, this video highlights our travels to South Africa, and it features Jean.
Hopefully, you all enjoy it, and in a small way, you are able to take a short virtual tour of South Africa with Jean.
For now, because of the pandemic, we remain “Out Of Africa”. Hopefully someday, Jean and I, and all of you, will be able to head back “Into Africa”.
Bob and I had heard that, at a particular cemetery in Burlington, Ontario, there are no less than three Eastern Screech Owls that inhabit nest holes in a couple of different trees. On the morning of our most recent visit, we did find one of the Red Morph Screech Owls, but when directed to a second tree that a pair of Screech Owls calls home, the cavity showed no sign of its occupants. It wasn’t until much later in the afternoon that I spotted this Red Morph when it poked its head out of the dark hollow for a peak at the world. Read more
Well, Bob and I can finally say that we have seen an Eastern Screech Owl in the wild, as opposed to one we visited at the Mountsberg Raptor Centre a couple of years ago. It has taken us two years to finally see the Eastern Screech Owls in Burlington and not for lack of knowing where to look. It was overcast one day last week when Bob and I again ventured west of Toronto in hopes of finding at least one of the known Screech Owls out of its nest hole. Read more
How exciting to find that the pair of Trumpeter Swans at our local park in north Scarborough now have two recently-hatched offspring to care for. As Bob and I looked on, the cygnets kept very close to “mom” on the shore of the pond… Read more
At the peak of bird migration this past spring, Bob and I headed to Ashbridge’s Bay on the Lake Ontario waterfront in the hopes of sighting a variety of bird species all in one go. Reports had been pouring in about the large numbers of warblers and other songbirds seen there over the previous week, fresh from their flight across the wide expanse of the smallest of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario. At its maximum width, the lake is 53 miles (85 km) across. Amongst several bird species that we photographed that day was this Grey Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis). Read more
Bob and I drove out to Hamilton, Ontario, on a recent spring day, and opted to hike a trail system near the Royal Botanical Gardens rather than revisit Cootes Paradise, one of our favorite places to go birdwatching. The Hendrie Valley Sanctuary encompasses a variety of habitats including marshlands, forested slopes, floodplain wetlands and four creeks. It was there, as we walked along a section of Grindstone Creek, that we came upon this Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus) paddling its way upstream. Read more