Victoria Butterfly Gardens

I always enjoy visiting butterfly gardens. It's a chance to photograph a bigger variety in more abundance than outdoors. We'd been meaning to go to the Victoria Butterfly Gardens since we move here. We'd gone years ago when visiting. It was a challenge to try to identify the butterflies afterwards. Some are listed on the web site. The rest I relied on the iNaturalist Seek app.

The first thing you see when you walk in is the big leaf cutter ant colony. It's interesting how there are such different sizes of ants or presumably the same species. The big one might be some kind of soldier. I'm not sure what the role tiny ones would be.

I'm not sure what this one is. Some kind of mantis maybe?

A very large katydid! It was about 4 inches long.

I love the colors on this beetle.

Of course, the main attractions are the butterflies.

I used both my macro lens and my all purpose telephoto. The telephoto is definitely more versatile, but the quality was noticeably better with the macro lens. There wasn't a lot of light so I cranked up the ISO to 1600.

Some of the butterflies were a little ragged.

There were some other creatures in with the butterflies.

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Raccoons

I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye and looked up from my desk to see two raccoons strolling past my window. I've spotted them a few times before but hadn't got any photographs of them. I grabbed my phone since it was the handiest and managed one poor photo of them before they disappeared into the bushes. I got my camera and stepped outside to see where they went. I was pessimistic because they don't usually hang around, at least in the daytime. But there they were.

They didn't seem too scared of me. It was more like I was a mild annoyance because I was standing on the path they wanted to leave by. We had a momentary standoff.

They decided to leave in the opposite direction.

Raccoons can be pests, but I enjoyed seeing them. And I was happy to finally get a few photos. There were raccoons in Saskatoon, but I rarely saw them. I assume these are the Vancouver Island subspecies, dark furred like the Pacific Northwest subspecies.

Abkhazi Garden

We went to Abkhazi Garden last weekend with my sister. It was cold day for Victoria. It even froze overnight! But the sun was shining. We even had tea at the tea house, which is pricey, but is a nice spot looking over the gardens.

There wasn't a lot growing yet in the garden. It was still January. How soon we forget Saskatchewan. It's interesting how even the same type of plants flower at different times here. Cherry blossoms or rhododendrons will suddenly flower in the middle of winter instead of at their usual time.

One of the earliest spring flowers are the snowdrops.

There weren't as many Christmas Roses (Black Hellebore) flowering as I remember from last year. I didn't find a good actual flower to photograph, but I like the dark leaves.

The rhododendrons weren't out yet, but the buds are waiting patiently.

There were only a few spring crocuses out. (Not the same kind as on the prairies.)

The surface of the pond had actually frozen overnight and made some interesting patterns and reflections.

Photos of the Week

A few photos from a walk around the neighborhood. I was using my 100-400mm lens with a 1.4x extender, which gives an equivalent of 1120mm. That size of lens on a full frame camera would be huge and heavy, but with micro four thirds it's quite manageable. But it's still a lot of telephoto to hold steady, even with good image stabilization. I didn't want to carry a tripod around so I compromised with a monopod.

I was looking for the Harlequin ducks, but this day it was mostly American Wigeons. 

As usual with birds, the males are more colorful than the females.

There were some Common Mergansers but they were farther away and into the sun.

This Bufflehead was also a little too far away and into the sun. At first I thought this was a Hooded Merganser. Or it could have been a Common Goldeneye. There are too many black and white ducks around!

And there were a few of the other usual birds around - gulls, robins, and sparrows. In Saskatoon the robins are a sign of spring, but they're here year round.

This sparrow was singing away loudly, half hidden in a bush beside a building.

Of course, I couldn't resist a few reflection photographs.

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Foggy Hike

Last weekend we hiked to Jocelyn Hill from the McKenzie Bight / Mt. Work trailhead. It was foggy at first, but it didn't rain, there wasn't much wind, and the temperature was pleasant (+12 by the end). It's quite a long way from this end (about 10 km round trip) with a fair bit of up and down (600 m ~ 2000 ft) so it took us about 3.5 hours. The trail was pretty wet, running with water at some points, but that's the nature of this area in the winter. I only took a few photographs.

Arbutus trees are always interesting, but wet from the rain and fog they were glistening.

The Douglas firs were also sparkling with raindrops.

This is a favorite spot that I've taken similar photos of in the past.

I think this is an Orange Jelly Spot, although there are several similar fungus that it could be.

Sunrise

Victoria in the winter is usually covered by heavy cloud, but occasionally we get a colorful sunrise or sunset. Our place doesn't have a good angle on the sunset, but the upstairs bedroom window gets a decent view of the sunrise over the harbor. This morning was a good one. You can just make out the "Empress" hotel sign on the left side of the photo above. As usual, the gulls were out and about.

Here's one from before Christmas, just after our big snowfall.

And an iPhone photo from before the snow. It's interesting how the magnolia flower buds develop in the fall, ready to bloom in the spring.

2022 in Review

Another year has gone by, my first full year living in Victoria and working completely remotely. It seems like my life is slowing down, but reviewing the year, I still managed quite a lot.

As far as I know I still haven't had Covid. I was only sick once during the year, with a cold I picked up at the one large social event I went to (family wedding).

It wasn't my biggest year of running, but it was up there - 2800 km total, about 55 km per week. 276 runs which equates to 5 or 6 per week. I managed a couple of big runs - a 45 km trail run, and 50 km on the Galloping Goose trail.

I got out kayaking in the harbor almost once a week in the summer. I wasn't sure if I'd use the folding Oru kayak enough to justify it, but I'd say it was worth it. I love getting out on the water. (And it's some upper body exercise that I don't get from running.)

I took roughly 17,000 photographs which is a pretty good year for me (third highest). Of those, I shared about 1500 on Flickr. That took me past 200,000 photographs in Lightroom. Of course, these days, lots of people take large numbers of photos with their phones. I got the new OM Systems (formerly Olympus) OM-1 camera which I'm enjoying.

I didn't keep track exactly, but I'd guess I read about 120 books, 10 per month, which is probably about average for me. It's a mix of regular and science fiction and non-fiction, mostly science and nature. I usually read non-fiction over breakfast and fiction for the last hour of the day. I got a new Onyx Boox Nova Air C ebook reader to replace my Kindle, and now get most of my ebooks from the local library. The only physical books I get these days are coffee table photography books. The Onyx runs Android and allows you to install other apps, so I can still read Kindle books on it as well as library books in Libby.

It was my busiest year on iNaturalist - 218 observations, 202 species. I try not to submit really common stuff, and only submit when I have a decent photograph. A lot of my observations were underwater ones from scuba diving.

After no travel for two years (other than moving to Victoria) Shelley and I made a cautious return to traveling in 2022. In June we did a road trip ending up in Five Springs in Wyoming. I wanted to do some paragliding but the weather didn't really cooperate and I only got a couple of short flights. In October we drove down the West coast as far as Los Angeles and then flew to Loreto, Baja Mexico for 10 days of scuba diving. We mostly camped in our van, so the trips were relatively safe as far as Covid.

I don't write blog posts as often as I used to, but I managed 54 in 2022, mostly photographs.

And yes, I'm still working. Some people probably thought my move to Victoria was a step towards retirement, but I would still program for a hobby even if I wasn't doing it as a "job". I usually start my day at 7:30am (9:30am Saskatoon time) with the programmers meeting. And I usually work till supper at 6pm, with a couple of hours off to run, shower, and eat. If I'm wrapped up in something I might put in another hour or so after supper. I'll work on the weekends as well depending on what else is going on. It probably averages 50 to 60 hours per week. Not as much as I put in when I was younger, but not bad. GitHub says I did 453 commits in 2022. Of course, it's balanced out by time off for travel - about 2 months this year. Although I usually end up doing a certain amount of work even when I'm traveling.

Best wishes to everyone for the new year.