Eastern Towhee in my backyard! How cool! Never seen one of these before!

Jackie it's your birthday!

Jackie it's your birthday!
Happy Birdthday Jackie!
You're one year old today!
YEAH!

   -Love mom, dad, stirling and winston.

Red-winged blackbird calling to his mate.

Male goldfinch calling to his buddies.

male and female house finch at the feeder.

Male and female cardinals on a wire.

White crowned sparrow. Notice the lack of white throat and yellow nares that the white throated sparrow sports. He's cute.

Three male goldfinches feating on niger seed. It looks like they have full summer plumage now. Nice and bright yellow!

Look at the beast in my backyard. He's either a crow on steroids or he's a raven. I'm voting for raven because if they made crows this big, I'd be scared!

Getting "bizzzy" in the backyard!

WOW! Look what dirty spectacle I found in my backyard tonight! Downy woodpeckers mating! (*hee hee*)

Jack & Winston!

Jack and Winston are so cute together!!!!!

Recent Birds in my backyard!

Grackle! I had seven of them in my backyard at once tonight!

House Finch! So Cute!

Northern Cardinal - male.

Blue Jay!

Red-winged Blackbird

Male downy woodpecker

White throated Sparrow ruffling his feathers!

The Detroit Red Wings have been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs!

It's very sad. I'm going to be depressed for 3 days. 'nuff said.

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

Very crappy two weeks!

Hello loyal readers. There hasn’t been a blog update in some time because to tell you the truth I’ve had a really crappy last couple of weeks and I haven’t really been up to writing much. But in the interest of my most excellent readership (*grin*), here’s a recap.

Erin and I got broken into. The robbers beat the crap out of Jack. The bastards took him out of his kennel so that they could beat him with a crow bar. What losers! Jack suffered cuts to his face and was bleeding from the nose very badly. After three days he bounced back well and he’s his old self again now two weeks later. The good thing is they caught one guy. Turns out he confessed to doing four B&E’s in the last month. The police have been wonderful and have done their best to investigate this case. They will be pressing charge of animal cruelty on the arrested person as well. That’s one good thing. Special thanks to all our friends and family who have been supportive in the last couple of weeks. Including Julie who rushed right over immediately to lend me her camera so I could take pictures of the big mess left behind. All my cameras were stolen of course. We’re now going through the hassles of insurance claims…bleck!

So, the next thing was to put in a security system. We got three quotes and chose Falcon Security Company. Their product best met our needs. I don’t want to have that awful feeling of coming home to a ransacked house and a half-dead dog again! It cost about $1600 to put in (first year of monitoring included) and it did decrease my house insurance premium more than I expected: 20% reduction. That’s a bit of a bright side there.

During one of the two days that I was home while the security system was being installed, Utilities Kingston came to swap out my gas meter. They also came to give me some bad news. The venting on the outside of my house for the furnace is now not up to code. It’s called B-vent and its Bad News! Risk of carbon monoxide leakage is high on these crappy set ups. I had my furnace inspected by a Heating Contractor and it turns out the furnace was on its last legs. Heck it’s a Coleman! They make tents not furnaces! So the old furnace has to go. In with a new high-efficiency Bryant 90i…. it’s a beauty…. But it hurts to pocket book. Ugh. So I am definitely bleeding money this month. Holy smokes! I need to win the lottery to pay my debts ;-(

So there’s my crappy update on my crappy last two weeks. I hope the next two weeks are as good as the last two were crappy. I wish!

I was home sick today and look at what I saw? The cat and the dog on the kitchen table. This is crazy! I live in a zoo! 

FebFest - NHL'ers Hockey Tournament

Ok, well...I was waiting to post this entry because Joanne has some photos from the day. But I have seen her recently and she has come out of the woodwork with them, so I might as well just post this entry.

The day after RailJam we were pumped for the FebFest Ex-NHL'ers tournament. It's an all day event beginning at 9am. We had seen the bleachers being out up a few days prior and the buzz was certainly in the air. We decided to get an early start. Erin and I met Jen, Alex and Joanne at Alex's place shortly after 7:30am. After the mandatory Timmies visit we hit the stands. We thought it would be tough finding a good spot but at 8am there were less than 20 people in the stands. (*grin*) So we had our pick. We settled in for a few hours of hockey fun. The Downtown Kingston organization and Kirk Muller and Doug Gilmour did it well. The 8 teams were loaded with celebrities and ex-NHL’ers like Paul Coffey, Bob Probert, Wendel Clark, Gary Galley, Shayne Corson, Gord Sinclair from the Tragically Hip, Neil Belland, PJ Stock, Steve Larmer, Marty McSorley, Mike Gillis, Dave Ellet, Rob Black, Jeff Jackson, Jason Priestley from the old Beverly Hills 90210, Mark Napier, Joe Cirella, Rick Smith, Rick Paterson, Lloyd Eisler of figure skating fame and don’t forget K-Rock’s own G! Each team was filled out with local Kingston people who made a donation to charity to secure a spot on a team. Definitely a win:win situation for everyone. So we hung out there ‘til we were hungry (a.k.a. 11am) and then we headed over to the Brew Pub for drinks. As an aside, at about 10am there was an extreme close up of us in the crowd buy Cable 13 and my buddy John waws watching at home and saw me with my Red Wings cap on. Too cool!

So we got the window seat facing the Tir N’an Og and from there on in the Brew Pub got nutty. Suffices to say we spent about four hours there. Yes, four hours. We kept ourselves entertained with numerous shenanigans some of which involved Joanne’s kick ass digital camera. (I can’t wait to get the pics!) At one point Erin spotted Lloyd Eisler on his cell phone outside the Tir N’an Og and she ran out there with Joanne and Jen to take pics. Too funny. But then… it happened! I had a mission that day. A simple one really. I wanted to shake hands with Bob Probert. A kick ass enforcer for the Detroit Red Wings in his day, he could also score goals. In his first full season with the Red Wings in ’87-’88 he scoring 29 goals!!! But he was groomed for toughness. He’s a huge man at 6’4” and little old me spied him having a smoke alone outside the Tir N’an Og. So of course, I bolt from the Brew Pub wearing my Red Wings hat with Joanne following me with the camera. We introduce ourselves, he signs our program. He puts his giant arm around me…. I’m looking at his shoulder of course! And we take some pics. We take one lengthwise so “I won’t look so small.” HAHA! I thank him for coming to Kingston and I ask him if he’s “like to punch me in the face so I can tell me friends”…. He politely replied…”No, I’m ok.” AHAHAHA! I thought Joanne would pee her pants. Bob saw the rest of the Brew Pub people waiving in the window and asked “what was that place?” and if “those were hockey players?” I told him it as my friends. In hindsight, I should have invited him for a beer! Dammit! But I was too drunk to think straight at that point!

So back in the Brew Pub we finished it off and headed with our Thunder Sticks back to see the final game at 4pm. We cross paths with Ken and Julie walking Molly and then we hit the stands. I spy Ted and Patti who came from Ottawa to enjoy the day, and we had a little chat with them. The final game couldn’t have finished better. It was tie and after a 1 minute scoreless overtime. The shootout began! Doug Gilmour’s Team won the coveted John Counter Cup! YEAH! So the crowd started to dissipate and Patti spent a few minutes trying to get close enough to Doug Gilmour to kiss him…and then Erin wanted Patti to meet Lloyd Eisler. After a few minute search in the Tir N’an Og, they aborted the mission.

Afterwards, we said bye to Patti and Ted who were off to see PT at Atomica and we headed over for video game festivities at Alex’s pad. The night included some Frogger, Asteroids, and Burger Time. Holy smokes! A high end gaming machine and we’re playing games from 1981! Haha! A good time was had by all. Yummy pizza too.

So when I get some pics, I’ll post them here.

FebFest – RailJam!

Rail Jam was billed as a professional snowboard and trick ski competition but in reality is was much more amateur and consequently much more fun. After a quick drink at the Toucan, Erin, Julie, Ken and I hit King Street downtown to check out all the buzz. It was awesome, they had a two story scaffold set up with a ramp to a 4-inch wide metal rail. And people volunteer to hurtle themselves down this thing in a competition that awarded $500 to the best snowboarder and $250 to the best skier.

It was so fun to watch people wipe out, hit their heads against the rail or straddle the rail with full force! Luckily, a great many people had helmets! Let’s hope they also had cups!!! Haha! Despite the unseasonably warm weather the event was very well attended and 48 participants vied for the money. I was happy to see that the crowd was loaded with teenagers. Kingston needs more free-fun for teenagers. They were giving out tons of prizes in the crowd too. I got a cap and a DVD video called Adrenalin Hunters. Kewl. Kudos to the FebFest crew for organizing a very fun Friday night!

Needless to say we went back to the Toucan after for more beer and some free nachos! Thanks KSSC (*grin*)

Floor Hockey game 2

It was a war. Their forwards were big and good. By some stroke of luck, we won 8-6. It could have gone either way. I scored 2 goals. Yeah! I rewarded myself with two pints of Hoegarden! YUM!

Floor Hockey: Game 1

So Erin and I joined an Indoor Floor Hockey team and last night was our first game. Our team rocked it with a final score of 10-4. Sweeet! And I only got called for one infraction (high stick on a one-timer from centre!) DOH! I'm sore this morning though... it was a lot more of a workout than I thought. I play road hockey on a regular basis and it's not as much of a workout as this was. Action Packed Fun! I scored 4 goals! The star of the game was our goalie Kevin without whom the score would have been much closer than 10-4! Special thanks to Julie who provided T-shirts for the Team: Eat, Drink and be Merry!