Jack’s Walk

Angus is a lucky boy, ©voyager, all rights reserved

This is not Jack. This is Jack’s best friend, Angus, who is a very lucky dog today. Earlier in the week Angus ate part of a carpet that got stuck in his gut. He was sick for a few days before we figured out what happened and we only figured it out because by accident I found a bit of carpet fiber vomit in the long grass at the back. I’m sure that’s already way too much information, but here’s a few more details. The vet gave poor Angus barium and then for two days we fed him mashed potato in little bits to help push it all through. He was scheduled to have surgery today if it didn’t work. Well, early this morning it worked! Out came about a meter of wound up carpet fiber and now Angus seems almost back to normal. He’s weak, but hungry and for the first time in 5 days he barked. I have to admit I’m surprised it worked, but it’s hard to argue with success. Welcome back, Angus.

Pollination Party – Moths 1

More perfect shots from Nightjar, this time Hummingbird Hawk Moth Macroglossum stellatarum.

©Nightjar, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

It reminded me of a fun anecdote – during my studies at uni, one of my half-classmates mentioned one evening in the pub that he has observed a beautiful hummingbird in his garden. Pedantic killjoy as I am, I have pointed out that there are no hummingbirds in Europe, so what he has in fact observed was in this moth.

It was mildly embarrassing moment, because he was his half-classmateship was the biology half (me studying Biology-Chemistry, him studying Biology-IT). But there was no real reason for him to be embarassed. Nobody has perfect knowledge about everything and their similarity to hummingbirds in flight is really uncanny.

I have seen these beautiful moths occasionaly in my garden, but never when I had camera in hand.

 

 

Itsy, Bitsy, Dance

There will be more spiders from you! In the meantime, I think this green spider looked lovely when it waved at me from our plum. The way it was running around on that leaf it looked like some sort of dance routine.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Shake it to the left…

Shake it to the right…

Oh, didn’t see ya there. Hi!

Jack’s Walk

Inukshuk on the Portage River, ©voyager, all rights reserved

This is another section of the Portage River and if you look closely you can see that someone has taken the time to build a few inukshuk on the shoal, probably while waiting for a fish to bite. The water here is very clean and these are bring home to eat fish if you can catch one.

Jack’s Walk

Barachois, Gaspe Peninsula©voyager, all rights reserved

This is one of two public beaches in a small community that sits on the northern edge of the Malbaie Salt Marsh called Barachois, which fittingly means salt marsh in French. We don’t come to this beach very often because it is mostly sand an I find sandy beaches pretty boring. I’d much rather go to a stony beach where you can beach-comb for treasure. I’ve found all sorts of interesting things on the beaches of Gaspe; fossils, agates, seaglass (I have a large collection of this), pretty stones only some of which I can identify, bones and driftwood. I collect and then negotiate with my husband about how much I am allowed to take home. As a result I have collections here and there. At home I’ve made a little beach that grows year by year, but here my treasures mostly live in jars because the real beach is so close by. I say you can keep your groomed white sand beaches. Give me the sticks and stones and bones on a beach full of treasure.

Wednesday Wings

This week’s Wednesday Wings come from avalus, who writes:

Usually I can not take pictures of birds with my cellphone cam due to the lack of good zoom. But last week a friend and I helped this little fellow to escape the architectural nightmare and birdkiller, that is the our chemistry departent building. It is made of lots of glass and with windows in odd places and every so often we find birds that have flown in but could not escape again and died. This one was already pretty exhausted, as I doubt we could have caught it with the box otherwise. It did not put up any resistance.

This story had a happy end, we released the little one a minute or so after taking this picture: We took away the cardboardpane we used to cover the box, the little one looked at us puzzeled, left droppings in the box and flew away.

 

I do have no idea what kind of bird this is.

Young bird sitting in a lab

©avalus

 

I think it’s a juvenile Redstart that got caught in the lab.

Jack’s Walk

Weighty things on his mind today, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack did a lot of swimming at the beach today. Usually he’ll go after a stick a few times and after that he prefers to just paddle around close to shore. Today, though, he couldn’t get enough. Again and again he wanted us to throw out a stick for him to bring back. He kept it up for close to half an hour which is a lot of exercise for a 10 year old puppy. By the time we got home he was totally exhausted. He followed me into the bathroom, laid himself down and proceeded to sleep for the next 2 hours just as you see him here.

Itsy Bitsy and Very Lively

I dug out more spider pics, because, why not?

I have made these pictures last year, but I never got round to send them. These were one of the first macro shots I have made, when I still did not know what I am supposed to do (I still do not, but slightly less so).

This spider is slightly translucent and very small – that mesh is just a few mm across, it is the texturing on a sheet of extruded polystyrene that I have used to make thermally isolating covers for my sewage treatment facility.

I love the copper colour of the abdomen contrasting with the translucent green of the thorax and the legs. It looks like made from glass or gemstones and precious metal. Actually it could be a nice inspiration for a jewelery, if it were not a spider. But maybe there is a market for spider shaped jewelry?

I just could not get a good shot at its face. It was running around constantly and in all possible directions, not staying still for a moment. But I noticed that under certain angles its eyes seem to reflect light like cat’s and I managed to catch that on a few shots. Then I have let it scuttle away, taking care to put it in a place where I will not squish it.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.