A bicycle can't stand alone - for Geg

A bicycle can't stand alone; it's just two tired.

I was out paddling Tea Lake - the West arm (lower left central):

 

  when what to my wondering eyes did appear:

Complete with tires!

Tea is good for you - W O B

Where's Waldo?

This is what Waldo looks like:

Vicki has "found" me - can you?

Here is a hint or two:

Too easy, right?

W O B

There is a Kormoran in my cayak

I took nearly 170 images in 17 minutes of a cormoran swimming/fishing around my kayak. It was sometimes only a meter or so away, sometimes up to 20m. It was free to come and go as it pleased. I have never fed any bird other than with a winter bird feeder. The behavior was unusual but did not appear to change over the 20 minutes that it chose my vicinity, I suspect from its trusting nature that it was a young bird with no bad experince - and I wonder whether I have done it a favour by being "nice" when its next experience might be its last. I talked with it in the hope that maybe next year if it returns I will again be tolerated/accepted.

The following is a subset of the images taken toward the end of the encounter showing how close the cormoran swam near the kayak.

The water was very shallow - less than 50cm. No shortage of fish.

W O B

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

Kingfisher from a Kayak - for Doug

On Mon June 8 I took the kayak to stalk our resident kingfisher.

Can you see it? Left of the white spot ar the water's edge, RHS and then up in the greenery above the double reflections.

Surely, you can see it now? Its bluish on the birch slantong upward left.

I could not get close enough to tell whether it was a male or with the rust collar, female. The nest was in the bank below, probably left.

wob