Tag: spring

Devil’s club and skunk cabbage

There’s beauty in the forests of the Kitimat Valley, even if you’re a plant with the Latin name horridus. It’s also called the Devil’s Club and has very nasty spines on both the stem and the leaves. It’s related to the ginseng family and was used by coastal First Nations as a medicine for arthritis […]

Male pine grosbeak in a tree

Splish, splash, the pine grosbeak are taking a bath

On my morning walk, there are lots of small birds flying around and they’re often hard to catch with a camera. Today, walking down Haisla Hill in Kitimat, the birds settled into a muddy drainage ditch. Here you see a female, left, and male, right with the bright red feathers, enjoying the flow of water […]

Gulls feed for oolichan on the Skeena

The Skeena, the oolichan and the frenzy of the gulls

The oolichan, the tiny oil rich fish that sustained the First Nations of British Columbia for millenia come up the rivers in the early spring. At least they come up those rivers where oolichan (Thaleichthys pacificus) still survive. Like the salmon, the oolichan live their adult lives in the ocean and then return to their […]

A spring walk in the woods with an Android camera II Retrocam B&W

Another selection of images from my Android Galaxy camera phone. These were taken at the same time as the Vignette photos in the last blog but using the black and white setting for the Retrocam. My favourites for black and white are the Fudgecan (circa 1961 when I was growing up in Kitimat.) which have […]