Justfolk's photos

I could hear a goldfinch singing. Checking, I saw this fellow sitting just outside the window, singing in the rain.

It wasn't even ten degrees this afternoon in the higher levels around Town. But down in the sunny niches by the rivers, like in one of my favourite parks, Bowring Park, it was warmer at least in spots. Thus this fellow, a Green comma, had awakened from his seven- or eight-month slumber, and was flitting around in the pretty temporary warmth. It's going down to two degrees tonight. I didn't know what he was at the time. But when I got home afterwards I perused the guides until I narrowed it down to Green comma. And I cannot say the name comma without hearing Del Shannon's falsetto singing "Comma comma comma comma com com...."

I was walking in the park this afternoon in the sunny eight-degree weather, when I saw this young fellow quietly playing his guitar, with his friend nearby listening. When I got opposite them, across the river, I pointed at my camera and at them and back at the camera with my eyebrows raised. You know: the international gesture for "Can I take your picture?" He didn't notice but she smiled and nodded. I took the picture and we exchanged thumbs-up gestures and another smile. And I went on.

That's not quite true. I saw a Yellow-rumped warbler a few days ago. But he got away before I got a picture. This one, this afternoon, was nearly tame and I got a couple of dozen pictures of him before he got bored with me and flew further into the woods.

At the dry dock this afternoon.

In May month, a sunny day with ten degrees temperature is a brilliant one. And all hands get out to catch a few rays.

As a boy in my father's car, I came over this highway. It was gravel and it was narrow -- I remember alder bushes swatting our car whenever my father had to pull over a little for a passing car coming from the other direction. The alders on the other side swatted at that car too. That was over sixty years ago. About five years later this highway was superseded by a more modern, wider, straighter, and paved highway a few hundred metres away. This one became a pathway for local people to get into the country. It's still a solid road, but the bridges are no longer being repaired. It's great for walking. And yesterday some friends and I walked a half dozen kilometers including a stretch of this highway.

On the 24th of May Weekend, which -- officially -- yesterday (the 17th) was the beginning of, many people like to go trouting. So, as we walked past this brook, we wondered if there were trout to be seen in it. There weren't.

These are my walking companions yesterday on a trail none of us had walked before. The trail starts on this 1940s-era bridge, built for the highway that, in Newfoundland before it joined Canada, was the equivalent of the Trans-Canada Highway. And much of our path was along that old gravel highway, now mainly an ATV route. We, like most walkers, ignored the injunction against crossing it. Without walking up on the modern highway a few hundred metres away, there was no other way to cross the river.

The view over Arnold's Cove from Arthur's Hill to the Come-by-Chance refinery. It was a warm morning there today and that squiggliness in the image is actually heat rising from the valley.

At the edge of our driveway this afternoon, some healthy fungal life, Coprinellus micaceus. There's not many other shrooms to be seen yet.

It was a dark and rainy day today. There are a half-dozen goldfinches that are apparently resident in our backyard and this is one of them.

One of the goldfinches, sitting for his portrait.

It's a dark morning outside our kitchen door.

Today the matched pair of Downy woodpeckers, Mr and Ms, spent a half hour investigating the little crannies of this European white poplar, just three or four metres from the rail of our back deck. So, leaning over, I got some nice close-ish close-ups of each of them. I kept hoping they'd both be in the frame together but I had no such luck. So here is the prettier of the two, Mr Downy -- prettier only for that splash of red on his head.

He came to the telephone wire and looked at me. So I got him some peanuts. And he came down for them.

This afternoon, my walking companions stayed on the other side of the pond while I walked out to say hello to this man and his friend who were trouting by the river's escape to the sea. (You can see my three companions in the distance, politely waiting for me.) It was only two degrees with a stiff NE breeze but the trouters were well wrapt in wind-proof gear and sitting in the lee of the barasway. It's a good spot for the trout running in or out Manuels River. I wondered if they'd caught anything yet. It turned out they were Ukrainian, speaking so little English that it matched my Ukrainian. None. We gestured. No fish either. I gestured wondering if I could take his picture; he smiled and nodded. I gestured good luck and he said thanks. And I walked back to the other side of the pond.

I lived most of my childhood about 200 metres to the left of this picture. That street, straight ahead, was thought to be a wide, modern avenue. And perhaps it still is.