Snowbirds out my window

Well,

I discovered one good thing about living in the city, Snowbird practice. For the labour day weekend at the CNE the Snowbirds are doing an airshow, and this morning they were practicing above the city, so I got out the long lens to play. Watching them was very cool, but made me feel kinda sick.

I like the twists in the clouds

This was completely by accident, on my part, not the Snowbirds Im sure.

This is my favorite one, you can see the clouds in the upper part of the photo where they had done the same maneuver a few minutes ago (giving me time to get the camera)

Tough Parenting

Hey all,

Here is a nice little sequence of photos I captured of a Chipping Sparrow fledgling and a parent. It was on the ground chipping away, begging for food

The female parent returned with a small moth, which was guzzled quickly, and of course the fledgling still wanted more.

When it realized it wasnt going to get anything else with this trip

It did a nice wrestling move on its mother. Parenting is difficult for birds apparently

a decent shot of the gaping maw

Return to nature

Hello all,

I'm sorry that I have not recently updated this blog, sitting in my apartment looking at the classifieds does not help my creativity. But, I spent a few days up in Bracebridge so I was able to wander around getting a few photos. Its always nice to get back to the nature that Toronto doesn't provide (unless by nature you mean the very interesting crazies that live here).

Heres a pretty good one of a toad I found in the woods. After the fact, I was pretty angry at myself for not seeing the leaf in the foreground that gives the right hand corner a greenish blur. But hey, Im learning, and maybe you wouldn't have even noticed had I not pointed it out.

Similar to the Chipmunk photo posted earlier, I think this is a text book picture of a Red Squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus). It froze in terror for a few minutes, which allowed me to play with the settings on my camera

A damselfly, I wish I could have brought out the colours in the eyes a little more, they are bright blue (if you cant tell in the photo)

Tomorrow I will post a nice sequence of a sparrow fledgling I found that was putting its mom to work.

Ultimate Frisbee Nationals

Yesterday, My husband and I headed to the Ultimate frisbee National Champs at Sunnybrook Park in Toronto. My two cousins from Vancouver were on two teams from BC, so we came out to show some family support. I had fun playing with my 70-300 lense and catching some of the action on the field. Enjoy

My cousin Julie's team was called Backbone, here they are in the first game we watched

Pretty serious stuff

My cousin Julie, waiting for the kick(flick?)-off.

My cousin Jordan, team "Vortex", in her game

A sliding catch

We also got to watch some of the other games going on, some of the mens teams were pretty crazy

I took some time to watch "Furious George", a very impressive mens team

Julie in the semifinals

Backbone lines up

Backbone won their semifinal game, to play in the finals against "Dirt", a team from Toronto. It was a awesome game (despite all the foul calls).

Those frisbee shorts give bad wedgies apparently

The game was awesome! It was 9-13, Dirt only had to score one more goal to win, I was down on the field and they were totally sure they were going to win. But Backbone fought back, made some awesome plays and scored 5 points in a row to win the game! The best comeback ever! Congratulations on a great game Backbone!

Hot in this apartment?

The past few weeks after Gaspe have been nothing but job searches (if any of you know anyone that needs 1) A PhD student to work on vector-borne diseases or 2) A vector biologist, please..let me know :) ) . I haven't had the camera out much (nothing but smog in Toronto anyway!) but I busted it out today to convey the stuffy hotness that is our apartment, as demonstrated by my cat, Sphingidae. She's still alive, I promise.