Song Sparrow

It is so nice to be serenaded by the Song Sparrows as Chester and I walk along the Red River.  Now that there are leaves on the trees, I can’t always find them, but this one decided that the top of the tree was the best place to be.  The river behind him makes a nice background to the pictures.

Since he was so co-operative by staying in his spot, I was able to try 3 different zoom levels to get these pictures.  He was a good distance away – but I don’t judge distances well, so I’m not even going to try to guess how far away he was.  I’ll show the pictures re-sized but not cropped and then cropped and re-sized.  I’m just looking at the quality issues when using the zoom to where it stops and then by pushing it a bit more until the full 2nd zoom is reached.

May 26 Song Sparrow 1R

The first picture is exactly how it came out other than being re-sized to fit here.  Just below it has been cropped and re-sized to fit here.  The R at the end of the picture name indicates re-sized and the CR indicates cropped and re-sized.

May 26 Song Sparrow 1CR

On the first picture only, I also decided to crop it to match the size of the fully zoomed in one to see if the picture would be clearer than the others.  I may have to re-do this entire study using a tripod for the fully zoomed in pictures.  Even using the post to hold the camera steady I found some movement.

May 26 Song Sparrow 1CC

May 26 Song Sparrow 2R

Zoomed in a little more.

May 26 Song Sparrow 2CR

May 26 Song Sparrow 3R

Zoomed as far as it would go.

May 26 Song Sparrow 3CR

May 26 Song Sparrow 4R

May 26 Song Sparrow 4CR

I was using my Nikon Coolpix with 36x zoom for all these pictures.  I think the first picture is using the 36x and the others are using digital zoom.  I do have a tripod, which should help with getting better pictures using the digital zoom, but I don’t normally take that with me when walking Chester.

So far on Africam today, we have seen Lion, Leopard, Giraffe, Elephant, Waterbuck, Nyala, African Harrier Hawk, Woolly-necked Stork, Zebra, Black Eagle, Impala, Spotted Hyaena and Side-striped Jackal.  It won’t be long now until we get to watch the Cheetah cubs again too.  I’m excited to be able to see them again soon.  Click here to see all the pictures from May 28th.

Red Lobster

My Mom and I have a tradition.  On or around my birthday, she takes me to Red Lobster for dinner and on or around her birthday, I take her to Red Lobster.   So today, being the day before my birthday, my Mom took me to Red Lobster and we had our favourite meals the Ultimate Feast!  We had the famous biscuits and a caesar salad to start followed by the ultimate feast, which has 2 types of shrimps, crab legs, lobster tail and we both chose the baked potato to go with it.

Now I am sitting here completely stuffed and wondering why I ate the whole thing – but it was sooooo good!

The temperature here dropped quite a bit yesterday – it went down to -16C overnight and was still at -15C when Chester and I took our walk along the Red River.  But the sun was brightly shining in the blue sky – so it didn’t seem too bad.  The melting slowed down though and what had melted the last few days is now ice so it is even more slippery when walking now.

I was sorry to see that Pete’s Pond has been put in the hands of Wild Earth instead of Africam.   Although Africam will come up with another great location, it would have been wonderful if they had been allowed to take over this project and get it back to where it had been.  But – it won’t be long before the Black Eagle cam is back up for another season, as well as the Pot Plant Owl cam so we will be busy with 5 streaming cameras as well as the refresh cams going anyway.  We are watching some bald eagle chicks grow on the bald eagle cam now too 

Take a look at today’s pictures from Africam to see what you’ve missed.

Today’s pictures are real oldies from my trip to Europe many years ago.  These pictures were taken on the Aphrodite on our way to Greece.

Karen, Myself and Alvena on the Aphrodite

Greg was the one who gave us the midnight tour of the engine room and Manuel was our waiter.  This picture was taken when it was getting dark, but once scanned, I could lighten it up a bit.

Greg, myself, Manuel & Karen

Pete’s Pond

Pete’s Pond is a pond in Botswana, Africa.  A video camera was installed there by Pete LeRoux in 2005 and it was featured by National Geographic for several years.  I’m not sure when it was taken down – but it looks like National Geographic will no longer be hosting it.

Skip forward to the present and it seems that 2 companies are now interested in hosting Pete’s Pond – Africam and Wild Earth.

Both companies are talking to Pete – who will obviously have final say where the pond will be featured.  I am hoping the decision will be made quickly and that whichever company takes it over will have the cams up and running fairly soon after that.  I (of course) am rooting for Africam.  If  Wild Earth gets it, I probably won’t be watching it – they have way too many cameras now and are messing with 3D cams and their site is way too confusing to navigate.  I seldom manage to find the live cameras there and usually just get pre-recorded tapes.  With Africam – you go to their site – you click on the camera you want to watch and you go to the live camera – much simpler.

Africam has night lighting at all the waterholes – they are monitored day and night, with zoomies on duty pretty much all the time.   I do not believe that Pete’s Pond has a lodge there – so there would be no vehicles going  in and out and no people talking.   I think this would be a wonderful addition to Africam’s cams 

hide at Pete’s Pond

Click here to read a little more about Pete’s Pond.  This is the site where I found the above photo of the hide there.

August 19th

Another cool, rainy day here in Winnipeg.    How can we have having October weather, when the calendar says it is still August?  What happened to summer?  It is supposed to rain all day today, tomorrow and Friday. 

I have successfully re-located another squirrel to a park on the other side of  the river.  I am really hoping that this one is the one who has been living in my walls and ceilings.  He fell for a real peanut in the trap instead of the usual peanut butter.

Our walks along the Red River have not resulted in any wildlife sightings lately.  We still keep walking and since 1/2 the walks are in the rain, we also keep getting wet.

I have not seen anything in my viewing time at Africam lately, but there has been a fair amount of action during the daylight hours in Africa (when I am sleeping). For instance, earlier today, there have been sightings of Elephants, Warthogs, a crocodile???, zebras, impalas, vervet monkeys and more. You can see the pictures (including the crocodile) at Aug 19 pics from Africam

I did happen to catch a lion (Sandy Patch lioness) with her one remaining cub on Wild Earth yesterday though.

Sandy Patch Lioness with Cub

She was limping and missing her other cub after a fight the day before.  It is assumed that the other cub was killed and that is when she was injured.  At times, she was putting a little weight on her leg and at other times, she was holding it up – so I hope she and her remaining cub will be ok.

the lion cub

Sandy Patch Lioness with cub

After looking at the pictures from Africam, I checked out the Boma to see if anything had been figured out about the crocodile, only to find a post from Bushie that said

“hey hey all bushie here sorry to tell you all but the croc is a hoax and was just a plastic croc head which we had bought for the fish pond and decided to give you all something to be excited about after the sighting of the cheetah it has been rather quiet so we beefed it up a bit

My appologies to those who really had their hopes up but one day aybe it will be real”

So, I guess it wasn’t a crocodile, but it sure looked realistic from the pictures.

August 15th – Cheetahs, Lions, Wild Dogs and Elephants

Since I always start off with my weather report – it rained all day today – thundershowers in the morning and just heavy rain for the afternoon.  The ground is getting soggy.  There must be millions of spots for the mosquitoes to breed now.  Spraying is supposed to start tonight (weather permitting).

Since it was raining today, there were no outdoor chores done.  Luckily, I got the grass cut early Friday.  I wanted to check the fences to find out how Chester got out of the yard last night, but tromping through the mud and the branches in the pouring rain just did not appeal to me.  He hasn’t got out since then, so it is a mystery.

I belong to the JMI (just missed it) club on Africam due to my impeccable timing at loading the cams just as something exciting has just gone out of sight.  Today it was a pair of cheetahs at Nkorho Pan and they came while it was still light outside and the pictures taken were fabulous!

We are extremely lucky to have Morris taking videos (I’ve been wondering when he sleeps) for us and the cheetah sighting was no exception.  The cheetahs stayed for quite some time and the video had to be put in two parts.

Cheetahs Part 1
and
Cheetahs Part 2

I took a couple of pictures from the video to show you what a great sighting this was!

Cheetahs

Cheetahs

These two pictures are jut a small sampling of what you will find in the videos.  Thank you Morris and thank you Bushie (zoomie)!

Before Morris had finished getting the cheetah videos up, a leopard came by Elephant Plains for a visit.  He got that video for us too!
Leopard at EP

I then switched over to Wild Earth because they were planning on following lions on a hunt. The hunt did not happen, but they did find lions. I only took one picture, but there was one female who was really trying to get the attention of one of the male lions (without success). The only picture I took was of one of the male lions.

lion

WE quickly switched over the Wild Dog cam briefly and I took a couple of pictures there too.

Wild Dog with puppies

Wild Dog and puppies

Then there were elephants and more elephants back at Nkorho Pan.

Elephants

Elephant

Then a hyaena took a walk by.

Hyaena

Amongst all the excitement on the cams, I did manage to get this week’s jigsaw puzzle up at the birds site at bellaonline.  You can find the puzzle of Emma, the Sun Conure at Conure & Tulip Jigsaw Puzzle.

Wild Earth Day

We are having another cloudy, rainy, cool day here.  I am hoping that the yard dries up enough this after to get the grass cut and the ladder out to check (once again) for the squirrel entrance.

On our walk along the Red River this morning, crows provided our entertainment.

crow on the fence

crow flying up to meet friends on light post

all together now

Now – before the walk this morning, I spent quite a bit of time watching a Cheetah with his kill on Wild Earth. The kill happened close enough to the home base that the sounds of it happening could be heard so the arrival there with the cam happened very early.

Cheetah with Nyala kill

Cheetah with kill

Cheetah

Cheetah

Cheetah

This is a male Cheetah and he killed a young Nyala.  He had a great feed and left with a very full belly.

Then I walked the dogs and came back to a message that Wild Earth had a camera set up at a Wild Dog den – so back to Wild Earth I went.  Wild Dogs are one of my favourite animals and are rarely seen.

Wild dog with young pups

Wild Dogs with pups

one of the pups

closeup of a very dark pup

Wild Dogs

Wild Dogs and pups

The pups are obviously very young and this is probably one of their first trips out of the den.  The adults seem very excited to see them and they have trouble moving without an adult checking them out or picking them up.  It was so exciting to be able to watch this as it is happening.

Right now, one of the adult dogs (possibly the alpha male & father of the pups) is sleeping outside the den while the rest of the dogs have gone inside to sleep.

guard dog

He is obviously not going to be sleeping soundly, since he is on guard duty for the den tonight.  If they keep the camera on the den all night, we should find out if the dogs take turns on guard duty, or if just the one will stay out all night on his own.

July 30th

It was a cool, cloudy morning here and then the rain came.  The clouds would get really dark and the rain poured down for a few minutes.  Then the clouds cleared for a short time, only to come back and repeat the dark clouds and pouring rain.  This happened several times yesterday and it is continuing all day today by the looks of things.  It did get up to 18C this afternoon, but tomorrow and Saturday are looking very similar according to the forecast 

It wasn’t raining when the dogs and I took our morning walk – but we did not see anything of interest either.

Africam was pretty busy at Nkorho this morning. I opened the cam to find a Slender Mongoose hunting in the rocks that protect the water pipe from the elephants (sometimes).

Slender Mongoose

Slender Mongoose

He caught a couple of  somethings and had a nice feast while we were watching him.

The mongoose was barely out of sight when a Jackal entered our view.

Black Backed Jackal

He was followed by a herd of Impalas.

Impalas

and them some Zebras, including a sweet baby.

Zebra with Impala in background

thirsty Zebras

Zebra Mom with Baby

It is obvious there is a baby Zebra on the other side of mom, and then she moved out of the way to show us her baby.

Baby Zebra

Then I heard that Wild Earth had found Induna the Leopard, so I loaded up that cam too. Did I really expect to get my chores done today??

Induna

I did manage to get my grocery shopping done between rain showers.  Weeding the flower bed was scratched off the list due to the wet conditions.  The worst part of the dining room floor got washed and I’ll work on more of that later.  I took pictures of Jewel, because it is her 13th hatch date tomorrow. 

Jewel

Jewel's Tail

The Mysterious Block and LIONS

It is currently 4C and raining here.  This is my vacation day and the plan was to play in the dirt (flower bed) and get it ready for planting.  It is supposed to get sunny and warmer by Sunday when I am back at work.

Yesterday, I planned on riding my bike to work again, but the lock on my tool shed couldn’t be opened, so I couldn’t get my bike out.  I tried for several minutes when finally I realized that I would end up late for work by then, even if I did finally get it open.  It turned out well though, because just as I left work, the rain started.  I’ve ridden my bike in the rain before and haven’t melted yet, but it is a little uncomfortable and more than a little unsafe to ride on the road.  The drivers of the cars seem to be less careful around bikes in the rain, so it turned out ok that I could just drive home in my car.

This morning, in the rain, they removed the lovely orange tarps from the block across the street.  I’m still not certain what they have done or why and what else they are going to do.  It looks like they have the styrofoam all over and have now painted something over the styrofoam.  I’m guessing they are going to cover the building with stucco, but still don’t know.  Here are some pictures taken this morning.

Tarps coming down

closer look at building as tarps come down

corner of building

closer look at corner

So, at the top right, along the side of the building, you can see the bricks that have not been covered, the styrofoam covering most of the building and whatever it is that they painted over top of the styrofoam.

It is not raining hard, but the dogs and I all got pretty damp on our walk this morning.  I saw one duck, but he was flying and I could not make out what kind of duck he (or she) was.  I also couldn’t get a picture.

Last night on Africam, a hyena came for a drink. I heard him drinking before I saw him as he was really slurping it up.

Hyena

This morning a herd of Wildebeest arrived for a quick drink at Nkorho.

Right now, I am watching the Styx pride of lions on Wild Earth.

Lions

Lions

Lions

WE just left the Styx pride of lions and stumbled on the Kuhumas pride.

Lions

One of the young lions at the back has an injured back leg and is limping badly.  He seems to be better than the last time he was seen by Pieter (our guide), so there is hope that he will be able to continue to keep up with the pride.

Lions

Lion

May 2nd

It has been a beautiful day here today.  Its still not “warm”, but it is pleasant, especially for doing outdoor work – which is what I spent a good portion of the weekend doing.  I got the smaller front yard raked and cleaned up last weekend, so this weekend was reserved for the back yard.  Since the back yard is the dogs’ domain and since snow often falls on the day I have reserved for poop patrol, the spring cleanup is not a pleasant chore to do – but someone has to do it. 

The raking and bagging is all done, but there are several spots that will need to be seeded and several spots that will be touch and go for the grass to grow.

My back yard with the dogs

It is a good sized back yard and Chester is doing laps, while Dakota watches.  A good rain right now would really help it get green.

Of course, the dogs and I walked to and along the Red River before I got started on the yard work.  Before that I went to the Y for an exercise class and before that I tried one of the new bikes at the Y for awhile.  Then, my friend Connie and I went to the Red Top Restaurant for the breakfast special.

A couple of my crocus are now fully open. 

Crocus

A couple of my daughter’s cats have started coming upstairs lately.  Cyrus didn’t pose when he was here earlier, but Sable decided to play with one of Chester’s toys to have her picture taken.

Sable

Unfortunately Africam was down for a good portion of my view time yesterday, so I do not have any pictures from there. Right now, it is back in operation again.

Wild Earth did have some great moments while I watched though. There was a leopard up in a tree, with lions just underneath it. I got there after it started and I know the leopard was not Karula, but I am not sure what happened, because the lions were not trying to get to the leopard, but were eating right under the tree.

Lion

Leopard

Lions

This is the Styx Pride of lions that have been seen several times the last few days at WE.

I have put up a new jigsaw puzzle on my birds site at bellaonline.  You can find it at Two Budgies Jigsaw Puzzle. It is a couple of adorable budgies, if you hadn’t figured it out by the title!

Last day of April 2009

April is leaving here with some April showers.  Hopefully we will see the grass starting to get green now.  The temperature is 4C and we have just returned from our morning walk.  I saw the Wood Ducks again.

Wood Ducks

I wonder if they are going to nest around here.  Too many people let their dogs off leash along this stretch, so I would worry about them if they did.

Today is Thursday, so it is Survivor night at my home.  Thursday is also my Friday, since my weekend is Friday & Saturday, so Friday is my day for errands and chores that don’t get done the rest of the week.  I hope to get the back yard cleaned up this weekend, since I did the front yard last weekend.

Right now, I am watching a peacefull Nkorho at Africam with Wildebeests and Impalas.

Wildies and Impalas

I am also watching Wild Earth where the Styx price of lions are lounging around.

Lion

one of the youngsters

I did find out that the leopard yesterday was Karula, as I thought.  Just as I was leaving for work, I got one more picture of her and it was too late to add to yesterday’s post, so here it is now.

Karula

Just because the dogs both had their pictures up here in the last few days, I thought I should take a new picture of Jewel to put in today – gotta be fair!

Jewel

Thats my report for today.  Hope everyone has a great last day of April!