Justfolk's photos

When I opened our door this morning, this robin flew from our garden to the next one to wait for me to go back in.

I don't think we've had any pine siskins at our feeder yet this winter. Well, not until this morning when a couple showed up.

Well, the *last* peak: we've had pretty spectacular blooms for five or six weeks. But this is the last one for the year.

I'll give up documenting this amaryllis soon enough, but I can't help myself. When it yawned at me earlier this morning, I was compelled to take its picture. St Augustine was supposed to have asked his god to give him chastity, but not just yet. That's a little how I feel.

This was the view of our dining-room window at lunchtime today. Our last amaryllis bloom is slowly opening up.

This guy has been popping in for a couple of minutes now and again the past few days. This morning he showed up with another male Purple finch (one without the pompadour), and a drab female. He then led them off to what must have been a better-feed garden. I call him after the 1980s bubblegum-rockstar Corey Hart for his hair-do.

Robin, yes: American robin, of course, not the original robin of Europe. And the waxballs you may know as snowberries for their white colour when new. Five months after ripening, they are looking like snow on a city street after a month or two of grime falling around it: yellowish and russet. Still tasty enough to the birds, especially when the ground is covered in a metre of snow right now, and more falling today. But, whatever, he picked out the whitest ones to eat. Robins often spend the whole winter in this city, so it's no big surprise to see one in mid-February But it was a surprise to see one right outside our dining-room window this morning.

The last amaryllis bloom, of about a dozen we had this year from three or four bulbs in our dining-room window, is nearly open this morning.

This was the view, at least for a while, this morning, looking out the dining-room window.

In our dining-room window today, this is the last of the season's amaryllis blooms, getting around to opening.

I was halfway out to the street with a path wide enough to put the garbage out in the morning when I leant on my shovel to rest. And then I rested the camera on the shovel to take a picture out to the street. We had about 45 cm of snow in the past 36 hours but it seems to be turning to rain right now.

We've had more than a month of Amaryllis exuberance on our dining-room windowsill. After this one fades there is at least one more to ready to open.

The sun was low and the birds were probably getting their last bites to eat before night when my wife spotted this one sitting there. "He's waiting for his picture to be taken," she said to me. Never one to turn down a chance to take a picture, I upped camera (it was already in hand) and got this. The chickadee was apparently grateful and left for the night.

This guy was wondering where the peanuts were. I showed him and there was no trouble.

House sparrows are, to some people, common as dirt. "Feathered rat," I've heard them called. Not too many decades ago, before I started looking at birds, apparently they were so common that you couldn't really look at a flock of birds in a city and expect the birds to likely be anything but house sparrows. Not so today. And I almost never see them. When I do see them, I don't expect them, thus I never recognise them at the time. It takes me getting a few pictures to examine later, and then some searching in my guide books to figure out what they were. So it was yesterday when, as I walked back and forth, along a short stretch of a brook in another part of town, looking at couple of actual rarities at this time of year (both warblers), I heard five dozen of these beauties singing out their hearts in this winter-dead tree and the evergreen next to it. Beautiful things, are house sparrows. But I didn't know what they were until I got home. Poor house sparrows -- they are implicated in a metaphor apparently used long ago in arguing what people now disparage as the "horseshit trickle-down theory" of economics -- using some of the same metaphor. As it went, if you feed the horses plenty of oats, they will shit out enough undigested protein for the house sparrows to get their fill. Look after the horses and you'll look after the poor street birds. Nice metaphor; poor economics. In my city, there are fewer horses than a hundred years ago; those that are around still get fed well enough, but they don't even shit where the sparrows are. If you overfeed the modern horses, the city sparrows don't, can't, get any trickle-down benefit. Trickle-down is poor economics; but "horseshit" is a good metaphor for neo-liberalism.

It has been five weeks since this junco lost his leg in a rat trap (due my negligence!). He seems to be doing quite well, all things considered. Having only one foot, it is more difficult than before for him to hang on when he takes a seed from the feeder. But he is diligent and he seems to get better at it from day to day.

The heavy rain was trying hard today to switch to snow and we were threatened with 15 cm of it. But it only slowly was making the change, so tomorrow morning we'll end up with less. A starling came by in the thickening snow to survey what the little birds were at. No suet. Just seeds. So he went on. But not before sitting for a portrait.

Okay, so you didn't ask to see a bunch of waxwing arses this afternoon. Well neither did I. But when they are up above you in the trees, there's not much you can do about getting a different point of view. And they're called "vents" by the way. Not arses. And as well, as it turns out, as points of view go for distinguishing Cedar waxwings from Bohemian waxwings, the ideal view is of the arse. The vent, I mean. Because it shows you the colours of the belly and the undertail feathers. Cinnamon undertail? = Bohemian. So these are Bohemian arses, not Cedar arses. We had about forty of them in the maple trees out front for ten minutes this afternoon, all singing their hissy bell-like song. Then a couple of busses came along and made the loud hissy noise busses make when they are braking, and that startled the birds into flight again.