Andrew Trundlewagon's photos

A northern leopard frog.

Pink flamingo, Hong Kong Botanical Gardens.

Tenryu-ji is a very large temple complex and garden near Arashiyama, Japan. Among the artworks on display is this hanging scroll depicting the rather severe looking Daruma, or Bodhidharma, a 5th century Indian monk who is credited with bringing Zen Buddhism to China, painted by the abbot, Seiko Hirata (1924-2007). From the Website for Tenryu-ju temple “Tenryu-ji was established in 1339 by the shogun Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358) in memory of Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339), with the eminent Zen master Muso Soseki (1275-1351) appointed as founding abbot. Landed estates were donated to the new temple to help fund its construction, but as the resulting revenues proved insufficient Muso Soseki and Ashikaga Tadayoshi devised a plan to send two trading ships to China and use the resulting profits to complete Tenryu-ji's construction. This plan was a great success, and the temple was officially consecrated in 1345. It was designated first among Kyoto's Five Mountains (the city's five major Zen temples), a ranking it maintains to the present day” (About Tenryu-ji : The official home page of Tenryu-ji, a UNESCO World Heritage site)

Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus), a plant of marshy woods. It is one of only a few plants that can generate its own heat allowing it to melt the surrounding snow and is the first to emerge through the snow in early Spring. The flowers are hidden inside the mottled reddish-brown spathe and are hard to see. As the name suggests, it smells bad, which attracts the early flies. Not beautiful, but a guarantee that Spring is coming.

Puis j’ai commencé à écrire”, then I began to write: A frame from a 1929 interview with Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle explaining the origin of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Taken at the recent exhibition, “Sherlock Homes: Cracking the Case,-Sherlock Holmes, menez l'enquête” at the Musée Pointe-à-Callière, a museum of archaeology and history, in Old Montréal.

Deer sheltering from the heat in Nara, Japan. The deer in Nara are wild but have been considered sacred for over a thousand years and have no fear of people (or traffic).

A circle of antique crockery from the Archeological Museum, Montreal.

The male flowers of a maple tree, bearing pollen. A sign that Spring is on its way.

White-tailed deer in the woods.

Trams, Hong Kong. The largest fleet of double-decker trams in the world, operating since 1904.

A gray catbird, so called because if its cat-like call.

Dog walkers in the snow.

A polished slice of agate that has been chemically stained blue. I inherited it from my late father-in-law.

Shopping in Hong Kong

Patterns in the snow. This is at the shore of a small lake where it meets a stream. The combination of slightly warmer water flowing beneath the ice and the strong winds above has carved these shapes in the overlaying snow. This was taken about a week after the first photo and from the same place. www.ipernity.com/doc/319515/53247814

.A Northern gannet, Île Bonaventure, Gaspé, Québec.

A pine grosbeak in the hills behind Perce, Quebec.

A row of stone lanterns along the path to the Kasuga Taisha Shrine in Nara, Japan. The shrine is in the ancient Kasugayama Primeval Forest where hunting and logging has been forbidden since 841 A.D. Nara is famous for its deer which are unafraid of humans and wander freely. It was very spooky at dusk. As the sun set the deer began to make a peculiar, high-pitched bellow, accompanied by monkeys screeching in the trees and birds roosting. I have never heard anything like it.