Jan 2014

This winter I have been fairly busy and haven't been out to shoot as much as I would like. But, this past week I was able to do a little birding in some of my usual spots. I made a trip up to Algonquin Provincial Park last weekend in hopes to find an Evening Grosbeak. These birds haven't been around much this winter but they are pretty regular at the visitor center bird feeders. I stopped in there in the morning and there were maybe 30 of these birds but by the afternoon on my way by again there were none. But there were a few purple finches the second time around...

Evening Grosbeak

Purple Finch

The next day I was able to make it down to Lake Ontario in Newcastle. The shores were frozen solid and there wasn't much around, but in bond head there were a few ducks that had found some open water and were very cooperative because they didn't have any were to go.

Common Goldeneye

The bird I most want to see this winter is a Snowy Owl. There are many juvenile snowy owls around the south this year because a boom in the lemming population allowed for a very successful breeding season for snowy owl. I have not been able to see any snowies closer to home so I decided to go down to Presqu'ile Provincial Park where I have seen a snowy owls are much more common in the winter. Sure enough the first place I looked from Owen Point there was a snowy!... on my way back I also found some freezing looking mute swans...

 click here to see more photos

Ice Storm

Though the recent ice storm created quite a mess in the cities and on the roads, it sure made things look nice! I did my best to capture some of the scenes:

Norwood Fair Entry

It is that time of year again, the Norwood Fair is just around the corner which means it is time to get some photos together to enter in the Photography contest. These are my entries this year with their categories:

Photographers Choice

Spider Web

Wildlife

Winter Scene

Close Up

Barn

Water in Motion

Travel

Dead Tree

Egan Chutes

I spent some time in Bancroft and Egan Chutes this past weekend and the fall colours were beautiful. Egan Chutes is a very nice waterfall and I will definitely be visiting there again. It was a bit of a difficult place to find as there is no real sign directing you to Egan Chutes Provincial Park. But we found it and after hiking along the side of the river for a bit we came to the waterfall.

Fall Colours: Algonquin Park

I spent the day in Algonquin last week Friday, I wasn't expecting the fall colours to be all that great yet but when I got there the Western half of highway 60 was pretty well 100% changed! But most of the highway was under construction and made it difficult to just stop to take some photos. Here are a couple I could manage though.

Tea lake

Opeongo Road

Look out trail - first light

Across the road from Ragged Falls PP

Costello Lake

Lake of Two Rivers

 As you can see I had some fun with Panoramic Photos as well.
I also hiked into wolf howl pond via arowhon road, didn't find a whole lot there but I did spend some time stalking this Wood Duck, and had a Pine Marten run in front of me on the way out. The weather was perfect and it was a pretty great day to be out.

Norway Lake Algonquin Park

 For labour day weekend this year we  headed to Fork Lake in Algonquin. This is a short paddle up sunday creek accessed right off highway 60 in Algonquin. It turned out that water levels were very low and we ended up having to push ourselves over many logs and through some very muddy sections it was very frustrating trip in. Once we made it to Norway Lake (the lake before Fork) we seen some wildlife that made it all worthwhile. As we paddled across Norway Lake we watched as 2 wolves chased 3 moose a cow and twin calves out of the bush right at us. At first we didn't realize what we were seeing, but once the moose were in the water it became quite obvious that the remaining two animals on shore were wolves! They stood on shore and nipped at the moose a bit, but once they realized that we were there they left as quickly as they came. My camera was well packed as it looked like rain, so I was unable to get a picture of the wolves, but I did get a couple of shots of the very weary moose. 

after watching the moose for sometime, we continued on our way to Fork lake. The river to Fork was impassable, and we had to turn back and spent the rest of the weekend on Norway Lake. It was a great weekend there. We heard wolves and 2 Great Horned Owls every night and on our last day the wolves were howling for much of the day very close to our site.

Here are a few other shots from around the lake:

Gold Finches

I have been trying to get a few shots of Goldfinches feeding on thistles lately, and a couple have turned out, most of them were found at Haroldtown CA: