Seattle Aquarium

Shelley and I took a short trip to Seattle on the Clipper passenger ferry. The ferry ride itself is longer, but because it leaves from downtown Victoria and goes to downtown Seattle, it's shorter than going to Vancouver. And we stayed at the Edgewater Hotel which is only half a block from the ferry terminal in Seattle.

We spent our first morning at the Seattle Aquarium. It's not huge, but it's a nice aquarium. We passed this suitably themed mural on the way.

Aquariums are a challenge for photography between the dim lighting and the glass and water and moving subjects. It didn't help that I started out with my camera at the wrong settings (leftover from a previous session). It's almost surprising when one turns out.

Amazingly, my aging iPhone sometimes does better than my expensive camera.

I prefer shooting stills rather than video, but sometimes it takes video to capture something, like these cuttlefish and anemone fish. (also by iPhone) I think cuttlefish are very cool. They are related to octopus and squid.

Anemones are also pretty cool.

And sea stars

The aquarium also has an outside area with harbor seals, oystercatchers, and killdeer, all of which we have in front of our place in Victoria.

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Amaryllis

My sister lent me her Amaryllis since she was going to be away when it flowered. It was interesting to watch the flower bud gradually develop and open. It has definitely been brightening up my office. It's gotten so top heavy that I had to tie it to the railing so it wouldn't fall over..

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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