a place where nature, photography and writing meet
While working in the garden on the weekend, I turned up this inhabitant – a Red-bellied Snake (Storeria occipitomaculata). As you can see by comparing it to my hand (and I have quite small hands), it’s a small species, about 20 to 40 cm (8 to 16 inches) in length, with a narrow, delicate head. […]
Have you ever had an irresistible urge to carefully pick up a rock to see what’s beneath? Do you ever yearn to unearth a colony of ants? Or perhaps a ground beetle or a spider? Maybe you’d like to find a worm, or perhaps a tiny snake. Or a millipede, or an isopod or two. […]
As I’ve probably mentioned recently, we haven’t been hiking off the farm too much this summer, mainly because the deer flies have been horrendous in a few of our favourite forests. Also, we’re trying to cut back on our vehicle trips, so we try to work our hiking adventures in alongside necessary errands. Yesterday, we […]
We decided to kick off our week of bioblitzing by recording interesting sightings while hiking a couple of sections of the trail system at Murphys Point Provincial Park here in eastern Ontario. We set out around noon and finished up a little over three hours later. We didn’t try to count absolutely everything, as that […]
With the weather warming up here, this may be the last favourite moments from the past for awhile, as I should soon be back to reporting mainly live sightings. The photos in this post are all of a juvenile Eastern Milk Snake (Lampropeltis triangulum triangulum) encountered near Mississagagon Lake, north of Kaladar, Ontario, on Sept. […]
Eastern Garter Snakes (Thamnophis sirtalis sirtalis) near Charleston Lake – May 16, 2004. This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for awhile. In fact, I was almost certain I had already written about this, but when I checked, nope! So, as there’s still snow on the ground, and I’m feeling very antsy to […]
Note: Each horizontal row of images can be clicked on for a somewhat larger view This is my Darwin Day tribute to Charles Robert Darwin, born Feb. 12, 1809. Originally, I set out to create something rather different, but changed my plans when I realized that they were far too ambitious. In the end, I’ve […]