Eagle Eye Cam

Ok, you've got to check this out. A guy in BC has a webcam in a Bald Eagle's nest over 120 feet off the ground. A crazy opportunity to get up close to this amazing animal... complete with sound! http://www.infotecbusinesssystems.com/wildlife

Here's a before and after shot of me editing this image to remove the offending branch. Is the new image believable? What do you think?

Goldfinches in the backyard. They still have their winter plumage (grey/white colour on the body).

So I am home sick .. yet again! It's a new world record. Four colds in 4 months. Amazing really. I definitely need an Immune System Upgrade!!!!! Anyway, to cheer myself up, I took this cute picture of Winston playing in the backyard.

Wolfe Island is a birder's paradise!

S we spent two days on Wolfe Island over Easter and we took the opportunity to break out the camera and see what we could catch on film. First of all, for the record, we saw twenty different species of birds!!! Here's the list: mallards, red-tailed hawk, house sparrow, turkey vulture, Canada geese, tree swallow, red-winged blackbird, blue jay, downy woodpecker, ring-necked pheasant, grackle, mourning dove, herring gulls, common merganser, starling, killdeer, cormorant, caspian tern, ring-billed gulls and, believe it of not, a snowy owl! WOW! Here's a bunch of pics including other non-feathered animals we came across in our island travels.


Lets kick it off with this creepy vacant house!

A ring-tailed pheasant.

Red-tailed hawk. We saw 7 of these birds of prey in 2 days!

A cute garter snake.

Turkey vulture!

Donkey drinking.

I call this one: The Scarecrow.

Two cows.

A Snowy Owl who's not yet packed his bags to move north. What a beautiful bird!

Winston is HERE!

There's a new addition to the family! An 8-week old brindle Boston Terrier. He's sooooooooooo cute.... and he was the last of the 13 puppies the breeder had this spring. His name is Winston. Cute eh? (*giggle*)

He's sooo small!

Here's Winston chomping down on Jack's Pelican!

White-breasted nuthatch at my feeder.

The full moon in my backyard!

The Junco's are here! The Junco's are here! YEAH!!! I saw 12+ in my backyard tonight!

A female Yellow Bellied Sapsucker. I saw her partner as well, but couldn't really get a good pic of him. The difference is that the female has a white throat while the male has a red throat.

The ubiquitous House Sparrow.

Erin, Jack and I went for a walk at RMC tonight after work. Here's a nice pic of Mackenzie Bldg. I work about 3 offices from the clock tower on the 4th floor. My office is at the back of the building though ;-)

I got a shot of a Killdeer in flight. Look at the double black bands on his neck. Unmistakable.

We spotted this big Osprey landing on the flood light for the soccer field. How cool is that! (Remember you can click these pics to make them larger.)

Here he is taking flight! Beautiful!

Erin, Jack and I went for a nice long walk at Lemoines Point this morning. It was a little chilly but the sun was shining. Lemoines Point is jusy waking up from its winter sleep. 

I got attacked by a flock of black-capped chickadees at one point! One landed on my head, another landed on my camera lens .... too funny! They are soooooooo cute! Here's one good shot I managed to get. 

Jack is so cute sitting on the rock. He's very dirty after his long walk though! 

Where has the Actionhamster been?

My apologies for not writing more often but things have been busy and topsy-turvy! (Is that a word?) Anyway, here’s a brief update:

1. Erin and I caught a communal cold and we were both laid up for 3 days. Jeez. I hope that the last sickness I have to go through. It’s been a bad three months for me virus-wise!

2. The strike at St. Lawrence College is over so I’m back to teaching.

3. The insurance money from our break-in has come through so Erin and I have had a bit of a shopping spree. Replacing the laptop, buying monitors and replacing all the stolen camera junk.

4. On the topic of buying camera junk, I bought a sweet D-SLR: Canon 30D! Droool!!!! If anyone wants to buy me a birthday day gift for May 15th, consider getting a gift certificate to Henry’s camera shop. I have a things on my wish list that I really want to get to complete my camera setup (i.e. macro lens, 2x teleconverter and filters).

5. Erin and I had tickets for the Matt Good concert Sunday night and unfortunately it was postponed due to health. I guess Matt had a bit of exhaustion. That’s too bad.

6. We’ve done some housekeeping in the fish tanks. We gave away 7 brown hybrid cichlids and picked up 2 orange/pink hybrids, 1 auratus and two babies (1 keyhole and 1 firemouth cichlid). So the fish tanks look much different today that in the past. If I can ever afford to buy a macro lens, maybe I’ll try to take a picture of the fish someday. One day I also want to upgrade the two 29 gallon setup to one 100 gal setup. But that’s $1,000. Not a priority right now ;-)

7. Our floor hockey team is solidly in 4th place, but our last game of the season (this Wednesday) is against the best team in the league (not fair that we’re playing them twice this season!!!), so we’ll probably finish in 5th place in the end. Out of 8 teams. Not great, but not bad either. The free nachos make it all worthwhile though haha!

So there’s the brief update.

-Eric