Week 4: Are You Gonna Finish That?

a bird

I'm a little early this week but I was happy with the photos I have so far and I am doing nothing exciting tonight so the blog it is.

The last two days have been a mix of good and not-so-good stuff.  Yesterday morning my drive to Elliot Lake took an extra 45 minutes due to weather.  Have you ever driven when the road is just white from edge to edge, the huge snowflakes are flying into your headlights and you lose your sense of up, down and left and right?  Well, that was the first hour of my day yesterday.  Then later when I got in my car to go from one school to the next, I noticed the check engine light was on.  Crap, what to do?  I got that temporarily taken care of and drove in much more reasonable weather back home.  The trees were so beautiful with the fresh sticky snow I had to pull over to take some photos.  When I got into the Sault I decided that Bellevue Park was likely beautiful so I headed there for a few more photos (I'm sure you know that when I say a few, it does not really mean a few).  This morning we had a stunningly blue sky from horizon to horizon.  We haven't seen the sun in so long, I didn't care about the -20 degrees and after seeing the one student I had scheduled, I headed out to shoot (after first confirming with my boss that I could flex my day).  The waxwings are still there so I haunted their trees for a while.  I was feeling so peaceful and happy, basking in the sunshine and I really didn't want to leave but the car had an appointment.  $370 later I was heading up to Connor Road to meet a friend for a little hike on some Voyageur trails.  Ten minutes into that, we passed a partially ice-covered waterfall.  I aimed the camera, depressed the shutter and...nothing.  The black screen of death is back!  Aaarrrgh!  I dug out my notes from my last dealings with Canon Canada but they didn't get back to me this afternoon.  I guess that's what I'm doing on Monday.

My assignment photo this week is of a pair of bohemian waxwings.  I forget which one had the berry first...I saw them pass it from one to the other but apparently the camera didn't see that part.  This photo looks like the male is saying, "Are you going to finish that?"

I saw some other birds today.  A chickadee of course.

And a sparrow, I think.  I can confirm the species tomorrow when Levi's birder friend comes over to play cards.

I had a similar photo of a group of the waxwings last week but today the sky was so blue and the birds were facing the sun.

This is part of the boardwalk.

Since the sun was shining there were cool shadows everywhere.

The snow and ice with the sun behind it was making glittery sparkles everywhere.  I couldn't capture the glitter in the snow but if you look in the background, all those little circles were sparks of light shining on ice.

Here are some photos from the not-so-sunny day yesterday.  First we have some berries at Bellevue Park.

A lonely bench in the snow.  We really don't have much snow this year.

This one I took when I pulled over on the four lane just outside of town.

That's it for this week.  Send healing (or replacement) thoughts Hermione's way.