Taking a break in BC

I was hoping to do some outdoor activities while I was back in BC last week but work took priority.  I only went out once to West Dyke Trail with my mother to do some bird-watching.

We were hoping to see the eagles in their nest but no luck.

Moving from Peterborough to Ottawa

I officially moved to Ottawa on Friday, thanks to my parents who flew from BC to Ontario to help me move.

Here are some photos from the past few days.

On Wednesday (Nov 20), while bored from packing, I looked at the wasp nest next to the house and found that all of the wasps were dead (probably from the cold) and so I took the nest out of the crevice.

Close-up on the nest.

Aquatic plants in Pigeon Lake

This afternoon I had the fortunate opportunity to learn about identification of aquatic plants in Pigeon Lake from one of Trent's graduate students and a contributor of the guide "Aquatic Plants Guide: Aquatic plants in the Kawartha Lakes - their growth, importance and management".

An overcast day.

Things I saw when I moved at a slower pace...

I missed the bus a few times today, so I ended up walking to and from school today.  I had not done that in a while, and I missed the things I can come across with when I am moving at a slower pace.

Found these small egg shells on the trail.  The parent bird probably took them away from the nest.  I wonder what kind of bird laid these eggs.

Photographic update

Sorry for the lack of update lately, I have been working hard on my thesis so that I can complete my degree before the new school year (so that I don't have to pay any more tuition).  I am also working on another research project, preparing my PhD application, arranging travel arrangements, and so forth.  I will be flying back to BC this coming Wednesday for a few days, then I am off to Whitehorse to attend an Arctic/Alpine Pollination workshop (information here), and my summer travels will wrap up in New Orleans (via Vancouver and Toronto) where I will be presenting my research at the Botany conference.

I don't have free time to go anywhere to take photos, but I still bring my camera everywhere I go just in case.  Here are the photos I took this past two weeks.

July 1

Attending the Multicultural Canada Day Festival 2013 in Peterborough.  The low-point of the day was that a friend had her kayak stolen from top of her car while we were at the festival.  To have this kind of thing happening, especially during Canada Day, is just not acceptable.  The kayak (see posting here) was brought over from Europe, so it is likely the only one of its kind in Canada, if anyone has seen it (anywhere in Canada), please contact the Peterborough police (more info in the link above).

Collection of assorted photos in November

November had been extremely slow, photography and blogging-wise due to the combination of poor weather, thesis writing, and uninteresting things to blog about.

Here are some photos taken in the second half of November.

Found a bird nest on the ground on the 14th when the weather was nice and I walked from where I live to school (takes about 1 hour).

Visiting Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG)

In the morning, we had a quick introduction of all the participants - mostly graduate students from US (two from UK), two scientists from China, a apiary owner, etc, we went straight to learning about the zoological diversity of pollinators - ranging from springtails to giraffes!


 In the afternoon, we were given a quick tour of the Missouri Botanical Garden - the second largest botanical garden in the world (after Royal Botanic Gardens in UK).

Exploring Lady Eaton Drumlin

Passing by the nest again this morning. I brought my DSLR but no bird was on the nest.

Biked to school on Monday

On the way to school this morning, I saw a large bird carrying sticks to this platform. I think it is a Great Blue Heron, but I only had my small camera to take this picture. [Edit: I was mistaken. This is an Osprey nest.] I will look forward to see the development whenever I bike past this nest now.


Male Goldfinch singing.


The moon when I was biking home. Full moon in four more days.


The weather has been decent enough for the midges (Family Chironomidae) to come out now. This is a male with the plumose (feather-like) antennae.

Last few days of the course

The second half of the course (Feb 26 to Mar 1) was dedicated to bees. We learned and received a lot of resources, although the identification keys for bees are either too old or too complicated for us to identify the bees as easily as we'd liked. Nonetheless, the instructors from the Packer Lab are extremely helpful and knowledgeable, and are in the process of making bee identification much precise and accurate, e.g. for the genus Megachile.

I didn't take too many photos for the remainder of the course, but here are some:

A list of the most common genus in the family Apidae.


Went outside during lunch break on the second last day. This is the Central Experimental Farm.


Snowy weather for the majority of times here in Ottawa.


Where the course was held.

This afternoon, on our last day, we had the opportunity to tour the Hymenoptera collections in the building.

A collection of bumble bee nests. The nest in the bottom left corner was from Ellesmere Island high up in the Arctic Circle. Amazing!


More collections.

On the desk was a map of Canada, and in front of me was Yukon, the place I will be in less than 3 months.


History of CNC.

My first time videotaping using the Nikon S4100. The leader briefly mentioned one of the first collections from the Arctic, the Arctic Expedition.

It was snowing pretty hard today. Hope it gets better tomorrow for us to drive back to Peterborough.

Revisiting Jackson Park and the day/night before

First week of grad school went by very fast. Yesterday, we had WHMIS training in the morning (not really applicable to us biologists who uses very few chemicals in the lab) and more TA training in the afternoon (more applicable this time as it applied to situations in biology and during field works). Plus we got to know other graduate students and their research projects.

Nice weather yesterday.

Then in the evening, there was the second annual Pub Crawl hosted by Trent's Graduate Student Association (GSA). It was pretty fun because there were free or cheap beer and it was great getting to know and hanging out with people in my research lab.

Biking to West Dyke Trail

Here are some of the things I encountered while out biking at West Dyke Trail.

Red-eared Slider, one of the many in the ditch.

Trading dragonflies for people

I wasn't in a particular good mood early on in my bike ride when some morons in a car decided to yell when coming up right behind me on a bike. Not cool at all.

So I pedaled past Steveston (so many people, with the festival and the farmer's market going on at the same time, as well as the event going on at London Farm) and headed towards Terra Nova. Terra Nova now is like a dragonfly heaven, so many individuals (compare to the ones I saw up North) flying around and claiming territories. That put me in a good mood already.

Bald Eagle watching & first experience with OM lens

Today I headed to Finn Slough first thing in the afternoon to meet up with a fellow birder, who is kindly giving me his lens adapter for adapting old Olympus film OM lens to 4/3 digital bodies, as well as lending me his Zuiko OM 50mm f1.4 lens to try it out.

Before I got to Finn Slough, I spotted this Red-tailed Hawk on top of the telephone pole just above me. From experience, I know they tend to be very shy and almost always fly away before I can take out my camera. So I biked past it and took photos from about 100-m away. Not the best photo but good enough to finally show that there are Red-tailed Hawks around in the area.

Glowing Hummingbird and then Sunset

Another beautiful day today. First thing today was biking to Garden City/South Dyke Sharing Farm to see if I can find some critters. Unfortunately, only few of the gardens look like they are in use this year, so I couldn't find anything, except for a bee that flew by me real quick.

Pigeons on Wire. Some people like to feed these birds (and the gulls) by throwing their leftover breads in this area. Today, a patch of the ground was filled with dinner rolls! It's such a waste of food, plus bread aren't good for birds at all. It's hard to convince people otherwise.

Birding on this cold cold day

Brrr! Today's probably the coldest I felt so far this season. But it was sunny and beautiful, so outside I must go (plus I had a late and filling lunch, and need to work it off)!

Snow-capped on Mount Baker

Checking out all the birding places in Richmond!

I had the car for the day, so I was able to drive my mother and I around to check out some birding areas in Richmond.

Paulik Park

A Northern Flicker excavated the nest for a short while.

Blue sky & white clouds = favorite

The weather was very nice today, and my mother and I went out for a walk by the dyke.

Through the neighborhood. Love the blue sky and white clouds.

This cat was sunning when my mother saw it. It jumped down and walked away after we stared at it for too long.

Removing Nest Logs

Last time this year, I learned about the banded woolly bear. This time I am learning about barbets in Taiwan. How interesting is that!?

I saw a Brown Shrike again while visiting my friends doing their noise research in the morning.

Today my supervisor presented the preliminary results of our data to the fellow researchers in our division and we received several interesting comments and suggestions.

Afterwards, my co-workers and I headed to the botanical garden to remove some of the nest logs that we attached to the trees in TBG. They attached these nest logs before the breeding season hoping to attract some barbets able to excavate nest cavities in these nest logs (as it was proven successful elsewhere in Taiwan by a man interested in conserving the barbets). However, after one breeding season, there was not a single nest cavity excavated (except for a very small attempt at the start of the season). I believe there are enough live trees in TBG to be used as nest trees so the barbets do not bother on nesting in these nest logs. It feels wonderful to be outside again doing hard work.

Tree number 1.

Removing the wires and nails.

Me on the ladder photographing the conditions of the logs, as well as the attaching wires and nails.

Very little rust on the attachments after six months.

However, fungi did well on these dead logs.

Tree number two.

Scaling the height and planning.

Up we go.

Nest logs removed.

Remember the Grey-streaked Flycatcher mentioned in the earlier posts? Well, after removing the logs, I saw a group of photographer nearby and guess what they were photographing? The flycatchers!

Hooray!

Well, aren't you glad to see me.

After work today, my friends and I went to a special screening of "Julie & Julia", which I thought was a good movie, especially for food enthusiasts.

What a fulfilling day. Sadly, I am leaving in 12 days.

365 days ago (2008-10-12) ...
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Falling the infested nest tree

Thanks to the concerns of my friends. I am still doing fine - just a lot of work lately and tired day after day. But I am confident the rewarding end will truly justify the means.

A barbet's nest tree had been cut down today due to the fact that it was located in an area infected with the Brown Root Rot Disease caused by pathofen Phellinus noxius. The maintainence workers helped us cut down the trees, and our job was to oversee the cutting of the nest tree and bring the nest tree into the lab for future measurements and analyses.

Before arriving at work, this was one of the Crested Goshawks that I saw trying to catch squirrels for breakfast.

This was the nest tree to be cut down.

It was a particularly successful nest tree with 5 different excavation attempts and two successful nest cavities.

The workers working hard under the blazing sun removing the debris.

Boom! The bottom of the nest tree was already infested with termites, so taking it down was a quick 20 seconds (or even less).

The top part of the tree was already decayed so some of the nest cavities turned into rotten wood when it fell onto the ground.

Some of the bottom ones remained in good conditions.
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