Photos of the Week

The Western tent caterpillars are numerous right now. People don't like them, but they are actually quite attractive.

My sister Clare would be proud of me for spotting a hummingbird, but it was up in the top of a tree where it was hard to get a good photograph.

This Black Oystercatcher was the opposite, it was on the shore below me so the angle still wasn't ideal. I probably would have overlooked it, but I heard someone say "I wish I knew birds better" so I looked around to see what they were talking about. While I was taking photographs of it, another couple came along and exclaimed about the colorful beak and eye. The man asked if I sold my photographs to National Geographic. I said no, to which he replied, "Oh well, I guess it's still a good hobby." I hope so, since only an extremely small fraction of photographers sell their photographs to Nat Geo.

I'm still getting used to Great Blue Herons being so much more common here than in Saskatchewan.

Now that the weather has finally warmed up a bit (coolest May on record) the bees are coming out. There are certainly plenty of flowers for them. A lot of them are bumble bees, but they are hard to identify when they are buzzing around. I think this is a Yellow-faced bumble bee. It was a large one, perhaps the queen herself out foraging while establishing a new nest.

Western honey bees are the most common honey bees, despite being non-native. They are the honey bees used in commercial honey production.

I'm not sure what kind of bumble bees these were.