Justfolk's photos

What I think was a merlin came darting around our yard this morning and all the smaller birds went to ground. The merlin stayed less than five seconds and was gone, looking for better pickings. Our place stayed quiet for a while and slowly the little birds re-appeared. After about a half-hour the chickadees and goldfinches had been out a while and, finally, our nuthatch ventured out. He sat in this bush by the back deck for a few minutes before he went to the feeder.

We've had a lot of dirty, dark, wet weather the past week or two. And this morning was one of those seven-or-eight-stops-down-from-sunny days. The kind that make you turn on all the lights in the house even at eleven a.m. Dark dark. So when, mid-afternoon, the sun burst out and made a brilliant double rainbow across the city, everyone was taken by it. Rapt. I was driving and when we stopped at a traffic light I took a couple of grab shots. I was lucky; it was gone in five minutes. But as we drove home from shopping we saw at least a dozen people pointing, staring, or taking pictures of it. When we got home, I put a picture on my social media page. In a few minutes I saw about fifty more pictures. All hands saying it was the best rainbow they'd ever seen. Small things make us all happier.

Today's special guest in the apple tree, a Purple finch, though not a purple one since the Fringilline Sumptuary Law allows only the adult males to wear the purple.

Our neighbourhood was almost eerily quiet this evening as we walked around it. Lovely. I heard there was some kind of ball-game on the television -- maybe that is the reason it was so quiet outside.

There's not much of a room, but I think the nuthatch likes the board.

Sunny afternoon. Goldfinch at the beach.

The lovely Chickadee, the Tom-tit as it used to be known in Newfoundland (being a close relative to the European tits), gets fairly short shrift from me since I see and hear the neighbourhood ones every day. "Nutten special 'bout the Tom-tits. . . ." So, here: a picture of one of our Tom-tits. Our special Tom-tits. [If you're so inclined, you may now start singing your favourite song from The Mikado, but I've never heard one of our Tom-tits singing for seeming lack of intellect nor apparent wormic indigestion.]

They have a job, and they do it well.

I almost never see cobwebs until I look at the picture I've taken

Here is our new feeder friend, back again today and settling into the neighbourhood, a Red-breasted nuthatch.

It's been six months since I have seen a nuthatch in our yard. But, a few days ago, a friend who lives a km away said she'd seen one in her yard that day. So I have been on the look-out. And this morning he came to visit.

Comet Lemmon was sinking below Ganny Cove Hill at six o'clock yesterday evening when I got a picture of it, certainly the last I will get, and just as certainly not even as good as the one I got early one morning two or three weeks ago. But there it is. Was. Wave good-bye at it. Yeah, I know: you can't see it. It is the bright spot with a smudgey tail, almost low enough to be between two trees, about a third the way across from the bottom right corner. By the way, I can see at least five satellites moving in this picture. They are everywhere.

This was not really at night, but rather within a few minutes of the official sunset which really was an hour later than the last of the sun shining in our little cove because of the hill above the cove, to its west and southwest. Nonetheless, and despite knowing the difference, I think of the moon, you do probably too, as a night-time thing. In any case, here the moon was last night, yesterday evening, when it had just cleared the tall birches and the like in our neighbours' back garden, and floated above them in the eastern sky.

This hawkweed was growing out of the metal parts of an old railway trestle bridge in Bowring Park, at the west end of downtown St. John's, today. We've had no killing frosts yet, so there are plenty of the like about.

This was this afternoon looking across Branscombe's Pond, a small local pond with a circumference of about a kilometre. We like walking in the area.

Picker leant right into pickee. Up in the European white poplar tree. Over my head. Preening, or bullying, or conspiring. Can't really tell with crows, can you?

I never pass by an alley when I see one. Tiny well-polished bits of glass, they are often beautiful little lenses and I enjoy looking into them. And here is a view of me, behind my camera, and in front of my computer screen, in my busy little work-room.

The view this afternoon looking SW from Luke's Brook over the downtown arterial road, and out to Mount Pearl during a light rain.