Tag Archives: painted turtle

20170612 Burwash, Tree swallow, Hawk, Dragonfly, Bee-fly, Damselfly, Dragonfly, Painted Lady, Clearwing Hummingbird Moth, Pussytoes, American Redstart, Lupin, Viburnum, Painted turtle, Eastern Meadowlark, Bobolink, Savannah Sparrow, Barn Swallow, Skipper, Crab Spider

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Burwash, Tree swallow, Hawk, Dragonfly, Bee-fly, Damselfly, Dragonfly, Painted Lady, Clearwing Hummingbird Moth, Pussytoes, American Redstart, Lupin, Viburnum, Painted turtle, Eastern Meadowlark, Bobolink, Savannah Sparrow, Barn Swallow, Skipper, Crab Spider

We made an afternoon trip to Burwash to see Clearwing Hummingbird Moths on the honeysuckle blossoms.  We saw a lot more than expected.

In the way into the site, a Tree Swallow welcomed us from a telephone cable…

A little further on this hawk eyed us.  I did not see it in flight or from any other angle and can’t ID it.

Dragonflies were munching on the flying insects along Neilly Lake.

This is the first Bee-fly I’ve seen since photographing one pollinating Coltsfoot blossoms on Harris Lake Road.

This might be a female Marsh Bluet…

Maybe a Dot-tailed Whiteface.   I didn’t see the rest of the body.

Painted Lady on Yellow Hawkweed…

Aha!  Here it is, as predicted:

Pussytoes … showing some sort of different flower structure … worth of further research!…

Unknown bee/wasp or fly on the newly blooming Ox eye daisy …

American Redstart serenading, showing rictal bristles…

Patches of multicoloured lupins are developing.

Nice shadow on the leaf of the V. trilobum…

Lots of painted turtles were on the move …

A first for me!   Eastern Meadowlark singing away.  The bird kept its distance from me.  It was foraging for food, perhaps with a nest nearby?

Another birdie that I rarely see, only at Burwash ….

While the bobolink and meadowlark were singing and going after insects, this lil Savannah Sparrow stood on the fence, seemingly unimpressed by all of the activity…

  On the way out of the old prison farm this other common swallow said goodbye.  Notice the difference in undercolouring of the Tree Swallow (above)  and this Barn Swallow …

This is about the size of a skipper.  Probably one of these.  EDIT:  Probably Columbine Duskywing.   It was nectaring on this roadside Birdsfoot trefoil near a rock outcrop which has a lot of blooming columbines.

It didn’t take long for this Crab Spider to find an Ox Eye Daisy to lie in ambush on.  The Daisies only opened up the previous day.

Click on the photo to see the eye structure….

While at Burwash I met a photographer who lives just north of Sudbury.  He gets great wildlife imagery at Burwash and Killarney.  He’s a very interesting man, a practitioner of some of the iceman and breathing techniques at Innerfire.

20170602 Choke cherries, Yellow pond lily, ambush spider, painted turtle, bunchberry, corydalis, geranium, Skerryvore, Landscapes.

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Choke cherries, Yellow pond lily, ambush spider, painted turtle, bunchberry, corydalis, geranium, Skerryvore, Landscapes.

Choke Cherries, blooming later than Pin Cherries, but earlier than Black Cherries…

Yellow Pond Lily with visitor …

Roadside flowers with ambush spider awaiting some nourishment …

Very elegant message on the sign at the entrance to the town of Skerryvore.

This painted turtle appreciates the calm traffic but seems otherwise unimpressed…

Cornus canadensis, awaiting the results of the June 30th vote in Canada!

Light on this Capnoides sempervirens, the harlequin corydalis, rock harlequin, pale corydalis or pink corydalis, shows a good view of the seedpods.   Soon they will pop with any touch, flinging their seed a metre or so away to find a crevice in the rocks, where they are commonly found.

And as the above Capnoides mature the Geraniums start their blossom period.  Geranium maculatum (wild geranium, spotted geranium, or wood geranium)

These Wild Geraniums are related to the Pelargoniums, (aka “Geraniums”) the source of much enjoyment by gardeners:

I also used the FZ 1000 to capture the very bright sunlight (3 weeks away from Solstice) shining through Continental Arctic air, illuminating spring colours of the landscape —- giving very bright, high contrast scenes.   Here are a few …

Oft-photographed woodpecked White Pine on Hwy 529.

The different forms of leaf chlorophyll are absorbing different wavelengths (colours) of sunlight, leaving the unabsorbed light to reflect to our eyes.  The forms of chlorophyll vary from plant to plant and seasonally, hence the spring and fall “turning of the leaves”.  More detail here.

A pair of blackbirds are leaving their perches on top of those snags.

Worth stopping to enjoy?

The angles leading to the disappearing  line of snags made me stop and look and think about perspective.    But I didn’t get as far into the subject as this article does!

The correlation of the catspaws and the upturned pine branches stopped me here … as the little cut in the rock pulled my eyes out into the “moose pasture”.

This little creek flows west from under Hwy 529, usually reflecting something, sometimes sunset clouds.

I am reminded of my first flight instructor who told me.  “Don’t look at the sky, look into the sky.”

Same thing with making pictures by looking through a camera’s viewfinder, looking into the scene.

End of today’s lesson!  (Thank goodness, eh?)

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