Early Riser Sunrise - The Bluffs

The last few years, since living in Scarborough, it has not been as enticing to jump out of bed at 6:15 am on a Saturday or Sunday morning and split down to the lake shore for the sunrise. We used to just be able to whip out, throw track pants and a sweat top on and boot it down to the marina on foot in about 10 mins. That was because we lived in Whitby in an apartment, and were pretty much a 2 min drive to the Whitby waterfront. I do miss that. We used to go down for an hour or so, even in dead of winter under icy windy conditions, then come back and load my images onto the computer, warm up with coffee and watch the slide show. It was fun, it was addictive!

Living now about a 20 min drive from the shores of Lake Ontario, it is not so spontaneous, it's not so much a"omg look at the sky, let's go!" it's more of a "what is the weather supposed to be tomorrow, think there'll be a good sunset? wanna plan to get up and go down? what time do you think we should leave? I guess we have to set the alarm to be sure we get up right?"

Well, all that means that I've lost my drive, become lazy, although sunrises and morning atmosphere is my favorite light and feeling.

This past Saturday, I decided I'm getting up, I don't care, and we are just going to get dressed and head out. We do have to drive, as it's way south of us, the Bluffs, but the beach there gives a perfect sunrise viewing opportunity.

It did not fail to disappoint. There was even this cute seagull there, who hung near us pretty much the whole time, and almost came to my hand when I pretended to have food. I felt so bad lol! Sorry buddy :-( I think of him as Sully the seagull as he seemed so disappointed and sullen to realize we had not food for him.

Some photos from that morn.

Lots of Monarch Caterpillars

It's the Labour Day long weekend, hard to believe that summer zipped by that fast yet again. There are still nice temperatures out there, and lots to see. It's raptor migration season beginning, and the Monarch butterflies are on their 4th stage of their life cycle, this 4th generation that will be born soon, will be the one that heads to Mexico.

We saw Monarch butterflies mating a couple weeks ago, and on our recent walk at Tommy Thompson this weekend, we saw quite a lot of the little results munching milkweed leaves, the Monarch caterpillars. There were other types of caterpillars there, one we saw a lot of, the Milkweed Tussock Moth's caterpillar, which are quite the sight, with their spiky orange black and white hairy selves. Lucky I did Not give in to my impulse to touch its hairy spiky fur as apparently it has an irritant or poison that can burn and sting lol! There was a Tiger Moth orange fuzzy caterpillar, and a Hickory Tussock Moth, another poisonous caterpillar.

The Monarch caterpillars were plentiful, we did not spot any chrysalis' but we saw at least 25 Monarch caterpillars, all over milkweed. Some were small, some were huge. We also saw one Polyphemus Moth caterpillar, which looked to be beginning to build it's cocoon, but hard to know for sure. They are huge green caterpillars.

The gold finches were going nuts on the thistle seeds, there was a juvenile cormorant swimming near the bridge, a kingfisher hovering over the marsh area, and 2 families of Trumpeter swans with juvenile swans with them. A couple egrets flew by and we spotted one in the marsh. Terns are still around.

Tommy Thompson is great for a good long walk with very little incline changes. Our main intention to go there for our weekend nature hike/walk was for the possible Monarch chrysalis sightings, and maybe a bald eagle fly by high above and way far away. We did not hold out much hope of the odds being in our favour, but we were pleasantly thrilled and surprised both those hopeful sightings were Almost met!

We didn't see a chrysalis, but we Did see plenty of Monarchs, their caterpillars, and lots of other interesting caterpillars. Yes, we did get to see a bald eagle, but not a far away fly by, we saw a juvenile perched in a tree. John spotted his tail and back from a bit away. As we rounded the trees he was in, there he was, a bald eagle, looking around, sitting shaded in the leaves of the tree. At one point he looked over towards me and seemed to stare into my eyes. We stood and looked at him for a bit, then we continued on. We felt very very lucky to get to see him and hope he is fine, as he'll most likely be on his way by now, to where he was headed.

Snowy Owl and Far Away Bald Eagle in Toronto!

It is very hard to believe that such creatures are able to be seen in Toronto, Ontario, but they are! Bald Eagles were not a sight that I recall one just being able to casually look up into the sky and see flying over head, and to remark, "hey, there's a bald eagle."

It actually went down more like this; "hey, what is that?" "what, where? Oh, I don''t know, let me look." "OMG, holy ^%$&, it's a Bald Eagle!" After looking through my lens, although the large dark bird was far away, it was quite easy to tell, after zooming up the image to look at it on my camera view that it was bald eagle! John and I remarked that possibly it is due to the fact that spraying pesticides was banned a few years back, that the eagles are happier here again, but I'm not an expert, nor am I an environmentalist.

We did quite the long walk down at the shores of Lake Ontario. Not only did I find a cool piece of purple sea glass on the shoreline, but we were thrilled to also see our first Snowy Owl that wasn't a tiny speck way out on the pier like the one we saw in 0212 at Whitby Harbour.

It was windy, it was cold, and my feet were sore, but it was definitely worth all that to be taken by sudden surprise as a female Snowy Owl soared right over our heads and floated around on the updraft a while before disappearing behind a line of trees. 

Later on we spotted a big white thing in the distance, sitting, and sure enough, as we followed along the path, we got closer to her and there she sat on an old dead piece of wood. She rested there for a bit, and we got to watch her from a bit of a distance. Eventually she lifted off and flew on. 

What a beautiful creature to behold.

I hope she will be able to find enough food if she remains around during the winter months. I hope she will be ok.

We did see some other creatures, Longtail Ducks, Trumpeter Swans which were most likely this past summer's babies, and Merganser Ducks, Gadwells, and Bufflehead Ducks. The light was dull but there were a lot of little gems to spot.

Exciting Birds and Animals This Summer So Far

We've been to a few of our local haunts this past late Spring and Summer so far.

This year, we've seen a few really cute sightings and had some cute encounters with baby animals, and have seen some juvi birds.

In these couple of instances, I didn't get good pics, only a couple not so great cell pics, unfortunately, as I didn't have my DSLR.

On the way to the entrance to the RT in the morning, there's a cement accessibility ramp, as well as stairs. It was May or early June, and as I headed for the stairs, my husband, who walks me to the subway some mornings, spotted a tiny baby bunny. Then, we spotted 3 more. One was actually half way up the ramp heading towards the doors that enter the walkway to the TTC. I dropped my bag and chased it to try to capture it so I could put it back with its brothers and sisters. They all were hanging around the empty square garden area at the base of the walkway. I did finally corner the little thing and cupped it in my hands, holding it until I got it to where the other bunnies were. I didn't like that they all still seemed so vulnerable, but there was no way I could really do much about it. My husband said that an hour later they were no longer there. A month later, we spotted one, a bit bigger by now, in the grassy area outside our condo.

The next encounter, outside the window of our ground level condo gym, we spotted a shadow going back and forth every 10 minutes or so, out of the corner of our eyes. My husband looked behind and out the window was a mom squirrel carrying a baby squirrel up the cement pebbled pillars that lead up to a narrow cross way on the outside of the building. I waited for a bit to see if she'd go get another one, but she didn't appear. Weeks later, there again, was the mom, up on the top of the narrow crossway with her one baby sitting beside her, in silhouette against the bright sky. The pic shows a reflection in the window, too, of the Mom and baby squirrel.

Getting back on track again, we've had some cool bird sightings so far this year. A brown thrasher at Rosetta, blue jay, cat birds, cute squirrels, a black squirrel with a red tail, red eyed vireos, wax wings, flycatchers, hummingbirds already, and more!

The biggest thrill was getting to see the little baby Killdeer at Doris McCarthy Trail in early July. They were so tiny, adorable little replicas of their parents. I couldn't get great shots, even with my 70-300 mm zoom as they were pretty far away.