Visiting Canadian Museum of Nature's Natural Heritage Campus

For a part of my PhD research, I will visit several herbariums and examine specimens in the genus Mertensia spp.  I will be studying at the relationship between morphological (reproductive and vegetative) and phenological (timing of flowering) traits in genus Mertensia.  Today, I took the bus to Canadian Museum of Nature's Natural Heritage Campus in Gatineau and spent most of the day looking at herbarium specimens.

The collection room.

Ottawa's Museum of Nature

Thursday evenings are supposedly "museum nights" here in Ottawa and they are free during this time of the week. So, after 16:00, many of the course participants packed up for the day and headed out to the Museum of Nature.

The entrance. The building from the outside looks like a castle.

Officially Into Spring

One day into the actual Spring, and it was chilly and cloudy (compared to yesterday). It is never good to get your hopes up.

I went looking for pollinators in London Heritage Farm today. But given the weather and the flowering conditions (almost zero), most of the honey bees I saw were sunning (when the sun was out briefly).

There is a sharing farm in the back with several private gardens. One of them was guarded by this toy Stegosaurus.

Wandering around the parks in Richmond...

The surprising but much anticipated snow finally arrived last night. This morning, the entire region is covered in the good white stuff.

After procrastinating about going out and do some wildlife-watching, I hopped on the bus in the afternoon and headed towards Richmond Nature Park. When I approached the second bus stop for the transfer to RNP, the bus drove away from me. So I slowly walked along No. 5 Road and took out my camera just in case.

Long behold, there was something walking in the snow covered field. It was a Coyote!

Haven't seen these beautiful animals in the longest time. This one looks in good condition - no mangy furs. I watched it hunt unsuccessfully a couple of times before it disappeared behind the trees.

Day Trip to Taichung

Today I went to Taichung with a couple of good friends to visit an art exhibit by one of the friend's elementary school friend. The art gallery was a real gem hidden in the crowded rural street market, and the exhibit was wonderful with fantastic large paintings of simple outside scenes.

No photographing inside the gallery, so I only took a photo of the outside poster.

Afterwards we went to National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung City, and coincidentally we arrived on the last day of the Darwin 200 exhibit. Being biologists, the three of us were very excited to be fortunate enough to catch this exhibit.


The museum is well-known for its permanent exhibit of "Age of Dinosaurs", which I visited everytime I was there when I was young.

The newer part of the museum is the indoor Botanical Garden. Sadly, we only had enough time to see the Darwin display in the main building before closing time. So we took photos of the garden from the outside only.

I can only imagine how fantastic the inside must be!

HUGE butterfly!

Closing time...

Another wonderful day today with close friends and happy memories.

365 days ago (2008-10-11) ...
.