Road trip to Colorado

After three long days of driving, I am finally back in Colorado!  My labmate and I left Canada on Monday (May 30th), which may be a miscalculation because it was Memorial Day in US and we sat and waited in the car for almost two hours to cross the border.  Because of the delay, we spent the first night in Ann Arbor, Michigan (instead of the usual first night destination: Kalamazoo).

We saw two White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) outside our hotel the following morning.

Windy Pine BioBlitz - Day 1

This past weekend I was at Windy Pine documenting the fauna and flora of the area.  It was sort of like a bioblitz but with only three people.  Once we arrived, the first thing we set out to do was sampling the aquatic invertebrates.

Skullcap flowers at the lake shore.

Jackson Park, Peterborough

My mother returned back to BC yesterday, so I am officially on my way through graduate school now. Just need to wait for the classes to start next Tuesday.

I went for a short jog in the morning when I was taking out the garbage. It was incredibly warm and humid but it felt good to explore and discover more of Peterborough.

Then in the afternoon, I went to check out a park nearby where I live called Jackson Park. It is a beautiful place with a small lake right at the entrance with many trails and streams running around it. [Most of the photos in this post were taken with the OM lens. I'll probably use the wider lens the next time.]

Another cold but quieter day

A cold but cloudless day today. Great day except for the cold temperature plus the skin-tightening wind chill.

A Red-Winged Blackbird was the first thing that I saw when I went to dyke. It was on top of the garbage can and didn't fly away when I approached it to take some pictures. It's quite a beautiful bird with the colorful "shoulder badges" that it wears on its shoulders, except for the fact that it's always so noisy, "Konkere-eh! Konkere-eh!" This reminded me of one thing. My TA once told me that blackbirds in Canada sing "konkere-eh" while the ones south of the border sing only "konkeree." I wonder if this is true or not. I think I'll have to observe this phenomenon myself to say for sure, but definitely interesting.

Speaking of being noisy. The Snow Geese were still at the same spot as yesterday. However, the group was very quiet today. I guess they do take breaks from all the honking. I saw a few more large groups along the mouth of the Fraser River today. With the cold temperature lately, I wonder if it's enough to motivate them to spend their winter southward.

Saw three Great Blue Herons today. One of them (on the right) was extremely stylish with a little bit of Mohawk. I wonder who its stylist is?

I also saw a colorful red and black caterpillar today on the trail. I took a couple of pictures before removing it from the road. A Yellow Jacket Wasp, Vespula vulgaris, was also observed on an unknown flower. It wasn't moving much at all when I got closer, and since its autumn, I think it might be near the end of its life. While I was taking pictures of the wasp, a fearless harvestman climbed onto my shoe.

On the Fraser mouth, a small group of wigeons was observed. But I wasn't sure if they are mainly Americans or Europeans.
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