0PP0RTUNITIES

       Sometimes there are very few opportunities for photos.  Sometimes thee are opportunities but your too slow to take advantage of the,.

     Well, photos fell into my lap this week.

     Usually I have jack rabbit photos. These critters were a little bigger than jack rabbits.

     I was going for a walk a few days ago. I got around the bend from my house and laying down a few  feet from the road was a cow moose. She  was about 150 m from my house and about 40 m from me. I had a good look at her and talked to her a bit. She was not going to get up and go anywhere. I walked a little further and here twins were there.

    I continued on my walk. I got back to the house and suddenly thought. What am I doing? Why aren't  I taking photos? I hurried, got the camera and got out where I saw the moose. Two photos  and my camera batteries were dead. So hurry back to the house and put in new batteries. I went back out and the moose were still there. It was very bright so really difficult to get photos. You just had to point and shoot.

   While taking photos four white tailed deer came along. So I also have photos of deer.

  So yesterday you saw the first digital phots I took and today you see the last digital phots I took.

IT WORKS

       I have been slowly working on transferring my photos from my old computer.

       First, I had to find out that I would need a memory stick. 

       Then I had to figure out how to download to the memory stick. Funny things happened. First, I loaded about a dozen files and then zip it decided to load about 4000 photos on it's own.

      Well, I didn't know if anything loaded or not so I thought I'd check. Things looked wonderful until I discovered that I was on the old computer and not the memory stick. That was a blow to my confidence. So okay, the photos were on my memory stick..

      Well then it took a while for me to try using a photo from the memory stick. I finally got up courage and then had to look around and find out how to open a file on blogger. After about an hour it worked.

      So for today's blog, I will show you the second photo I every took on a digital camera. Here I am in 2008 watching birds about a km from my house.  

     

I FOUND MY CAMERA

      Well, I didn't lose my camera. I didn't use it when I should have. One of my commenters reminded me that I hadn't taken a photo when I should have.

     I should have taken a photo  of the rabbit and it's changing color. So here is the jack rabbit  starting to look a little ragged.

     This was taken out of the back window of my house.

SENIOR RELATIONSHIPS

       My 81 year old brother found a girlfriend a while ago or maybe some older lady found a boyfriend. I'm not sure which. It's a happy time for both of them. They got permission or a thumbs up from their kids. So they're jumping through the proper hoops.

       One thing my brother said to me is, "Why do they make it so hard for old guys to get married?" The statement took me by surprise. 

     He went on to tell me what some of the difficult issues are. If you get married, benefits from your previous spouse are cancelled. So CPP(Canada pension plan,, OAS(Old Age Security) are cancelled from the deceased spouse's account. Many seniors depend on these benefits to some extent. The  benefits are also cancelled if you live common law and they find you.

     I suppose in some cases it would be a sizable loss depending on the previous spouses status.

     So  this was  something that was a big surprise to me.

CHANGE OF RABBIT COLOR

        Since the rabbits hang around my yard quite a bit , I get to make interesting observations and then curiosity makes me look things up. This last while one animal has made my yard his/her location for the day. They are not very active in the day as they rest  and groom.

       So two weeks ago I started noticing small changes in color of the rabbit's coat. All winter the jack rabbits have had a very thick white coat. The white coat is great as it provides warmth and camouflage in the winter snow.

      So I got thinking about what makes the process happen. It's primarily a molting process. The photo period provides the start  of the molting process. So changing light causes hormones to do their work. Biology  continues the process.

      So now the big white coat is falling off. I find large tufts of white fur around my yard. A new summer coat is growing in which will be a brown/gray which provides camouflage in a summer environment. It is also much cooler and prevents the  animal from overheating.

     The change in molt is slow but is never the less  happening.

FIRST DAY OF SPRING.

          So here we  are on the supposed first day of spring. It's a little more complicated. March 17 gave us very close the equal day and night. 

        So I'll give you the sunrise and sunset for today.  The sun rose at 7:35 am and sets at 7:50 PM . The day length is 12 hours, 15 minutes and 38 seconds.  The actual spring is when the sun crosses to the north side of the equator.

      However ,I'll take the first day of spring as I'm hoping for warmer weather.

      We still have lots of snow and all lakes are frozen as well as most rivers. However , at this time of year things start melting very rapidly.

      Birds are coming back. A few crows have been here for about two weeks. We do have some crows that over winter here but I didn't see any this winter. Geese have arrived. I haven't been out where I would see more birds.

     So I'm looking forward to better days.

     Some how or other my camera didn't seem to work or was it the photographer as I didn't get any photos.

CANADA GEESE

    Yesterday morning, I saw several flocks of Canada geese fly over. We don't have any open water except for some parts of rivers. Now, in some fields the snow is gone and they could feed.

    Nevertheless, they are probably not going to land here and stay. No, the first geese here are going on. Water isn't open here and they are flying further north, What gives?

   Well, some Canada geese fly to lakes on the arctic coast.  They stay  on the ice for six to eight weeks. They eat  debris on the ice from material that has blown on the ice during the winter. There are also insects on the ice at that time of year. There will be fresh water on top of the ice.

   When most of the snow  and ice have melted they will nest. 

   Now Innuit hunters take advantage of this situation and harvest large numbers of geese. They use white material to make a blind that allows them to move. They are a able to harvest many geese. Meat and down it valuable at that time. These days hunters fly out and make a camp and stay a few days. People who have permanent jobs go on these hunts.  

      I don't know about their behavior in the fall. I do know that it's pretty cool when flying, to look down and see flocks of geese below you.