Category: birds

Remembering my visit to Florence, Oregon, which inspired the novel Dune

It was forty years ago, in August, 1980, that a friend and I drove from Vancouver, BC, where I was living at the time, to spend a weekend at Florence, Oregon, which inspired Frank Herbert to write the famous novel Dune. Like many at the time, I was entranced by Dune as soon as I […]

Birds in a blizzard

The decade of the 2020s came in like a mountain lion on January 3, 2020 here in Kitimat, with (up until now) 75 centimetres or 30 inches of snow. I came inside after digging out the first time (I would dig out twice more today) and sat down for lunch only to see at least […]

Kitimat Christmas Bird Count 2019

For the Christmas Bird Count in Kitimat, there’s usually a lot of ground to cover in a very short period of time–that’s because here in the northwest daylight hours are limited as we get closer to the Winter Solstice. So we started before dawn, which is OK for those who are counting but not so […]

Birds in the nearby forest

I usually take a morning walk through a forest park near my house. We had the first major frost this morning, and so the resident birds, steller’s jays, American robins and juncos were very active.

“Get off my perch,” crow tells bald eagle

A crow mobs a bald eagle at the mouth of Wahtl Creek, MK Bay marina, Kitimat, BC. I was out shooting for fun along the Kitimat/Kitamaat Village waterfront when I captured the story of a fiesty crow that demanded a bald eagle get off an old log in the Wahtl Creek estuary. The crow apparently […]

Beyond reach

Today is the first day the snow has melted enough that I could go for a walk in the play bush near my home. An American robin was  on a tree branch and kept stretching its neck to try to get berries that were just beyond reach.   After numerous tries, it finally realized it was […]