Lets talk about the weather

Sunday was wet.
Monday cleared off and was 24C - here - in the afternoon.

However, this was cold for Canada ! 40C in places out west and dry.

Tuesday started well at 5am:

Did you see the early bird flying just above               here?

OK, let us return to Monday. We visited the Severn River - first Big Chute:

An elevating experience.

After that we went to Lock 45 at Port Severn

And lunch at "The Dam Grill"

Beautiful day

wob

Another day: wet, wet, wet

So here is the setting:

willow on the left, "double tree" oak on the right. And just a few minutes before I took this photo the osprey plunged into the water behind the little tree just in front of the flag pole, The water is quite rough/choppy and so I did not see the splash. And the osprey appeared to come up empty footed.

Both of us are getting better - just need to mount a "canon" on the balcony.

W O B

From our balcony

I did not intend to write again until I had Knossos ready.

However, after lunch, this beeg bird flew around and landed in our "double tree", an oak; I have shown the tree before in a blog. (It actually is in the background to this blog on the right hand side, and for the record, the "willow", is on the left side of the blog background, the scene straight out from our balcony.)  I was fairly sure the bird was an osprey and I wanted to show off to Doug so I went and fetched my Pentax - I do not have a bird dog so I had to do this myself - and I waited.

Now around here if you look like a dead former/ex-runner you will attract attention!

                                                                   TV Ontario! (Turkey vulture)
I was in manual with shutter speed and F/ratio set to expose osprey nearly correctly in the presence of a very bright cloudy/overcast sky - which appears thus white.

So back to osprey:

There are lots of fish - still!
And lots of breeding osprey.

Cheers,

W O B

Carden Alvar Nature Festival Wrap-Up

The Couchiching Conservancy posted this photo album  of the sunny June 6 this morning - and it too covers just a tiny number of the wonderful activities then and there. I would have enjoyed studying " know your trees".   For Ontario? A compulsary subject if ever there was one. Check out the Couchiching Conservancy
for their "summer-fall passport" to this wonderful heritage we have.

wob

A so-so day

Al saw a fantastic display of aurora during the night. I saw cloud. Al stayed up to watch the sunrise and I slept in until 9am! Holidays or retired or lazy?

That is over - now it is lunch time!

Someday I will do an entry on "Seen from the Kayak" - for Doug who missed going out back in May. Maybe I'll get around to it when Bill arrives end of July.

Yesterday was very pleasant, relaxing, rocking gently on the waves. Had a pleasant chat with one of the home-owners on the Narrows side of Couchiching Point. He knows many of our neighbours here in the condo. I must be on my best behavior ALL time - glad that that is easy even if it isn't so much fun(?).

One Osprey. It wanted so much to dive and catch a bass in the spawning grounds.

OK?
I watched the kingfisher dive but did not shoot until it was in a distant tree:

The rest of the time was spent "wool-gathering" a lovely phrase:

Dragons and heros

There might be some aurora tonight but the baseball field is still flood lit and the moon is up. So I am going to post 2 topics from this afternoon's kayak outing toward the narrows . I was diverted by the hero, a heron.
But first the dragons, difficult to shoot from a boat.

And now to the heron.
I have never seen a heron dive head-first off a dock into the water and catch a fish.

try to imagine the splash - and then flutter back with a fish!

We'll look at flowers, osprey and kingfishers together tomorrow

wob