Category Archives: Birds

February 26, 2016 · 11:22 am

The Oliver Courier

Last weekend I happened upon an interesting looking typewriter case in a local “curiosity shop”. I didn’t recognize the case nor the machine when I opened it up, and the badge was missing. I found the nameplate on the back however, which said it was an Oliver, made in England. Now I know what it is. The Oliver Courier, aka Patria, and a number of other names. I returned with a box full of old cameras and we made a straight trade. It dates from 1956, and works very well still. I particularly like the typeface, which is pica of a most beautiful style. It is rather loud, and heavy of touch – it’s a man’s typewriter! Built to last. Heavy duty.

Oliver Courier c. 1956

The missing badge bothered me, so I found a photograph of it on line and made a quick imitation badge which slipped neatly into place through slots in the depression for it. Close enough, we’re not going for heritage status here.

THE TYPING SHELF

Wait – there’s more! Inspired by my serendipitous discovery of the art easel as typing desk I decided to make a portable shelf to use at the dining table, rather than be stuck in the basement where there are no windows. So I came up with this idea, and built it in a day from a 12″ x 48″ piece of 3/4 birch veneer plywood. It works very well, and I’ve tested it with heavy typewriters – it’s solid. By lowering the machine I find it much easier to type, and of course it’s a lot more pleasant to sit in the dining room where I have a huge window beside me, and where I can also look right down the hall to the backyard, where a pair of House Sparrows have taken up residence in one of the birdhouses I installed in the trees one year ago. Tenants at last!

Oliver Courier

side view

the shelf alone

view from below

PLANS

If anyone’s interested, here is a drawing and a downloadable pdf file of it.

plan for a typing shelf

TYPING SHELF PLAN

My new tenants…

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Filed under Birds, Photography, Thrift shop finds, Typewriter accessories, Typewriters

Tagged as house sparrows, oliver courier typewriter, typing shelf plan

February 24, 2016 · 6:00 pm

Photo Fun for $5

The other day I picked up a cheap old tele-converter for Pentax, for five dollars. I thought I’d test it out with my 500mm Tamron mirror lens, just for fun, expecting nothing. This is close to a 28x power telescope on the APS-C size sensor of my K100 DSLR. There are two problems with doing this; first thing is it reduces the aperture another f stop from f8 to f11, thereby slowing down the shutter and forcing the ISO higher. Both those factors effect image quality negatively. But second; the thing is really hard to hold steady! However, in the sunshine today I was able to get a few shots, which proved not bad. Remarkable in a way, when you consider these were hand held. The hawk probably would have been acceptable if I’d used a tripod, as the shutter speed was 1/45th of a second. That’s absurdly slow for a 1000mm lens. I applied some post processing to that image to try to make it look more artsy, since it was rather fuzzy to begin with. The heron was about 200 feet away however, and it turned out not too badly. If I wanted to get better results than this I’d have to buy a lens that costs over a thousand bucks, which isn’t going to happen soon.

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Filed under Birds, Cameras, Photography, Thrift shop finds, Wildlife

Tagged as 1000mm lens, great blue heron, hawk, squirrel, tele-convertor

February 17, 2016 · 9:38 pm

Surely, Slowly, Springly

There has been a noticeable shift in the weather lately – despite almost constant rain for days, the sun’s warmth can be felt when it deigns to shine. Spring means migration, and the appearance of birds which either left town or went into hiding over the winter. I also got a very close look at the heretofore very shy muskrat, which inexplicably one day last week stood its ground despite the loud attention of numerous enthusiastic kids, and me with my camera almost in it’s face. Only the attack of an irate duck sent it on it’s way. Green buds abound in the brush, and in the field I saw new flowers poking up suddenly.

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Filed under Birds, Photography, Wildlife

Tagged as anna's hummingbird, bewick's wren, cedar waxwing, dark eyed junco, golden crowned sparrow, hooded merganser, muskrat, northern flicker, red tailed hawk, stellar's jay

February 9, 2016 · 12:30 pm

Shrikes 0 – Humms 1

Seeking elusive Shrikes
I scan the bush
ears pricked

But Shrikes, like
vagrant Pileated peckers
have moved on

So with dashed hope
of seeing a butcher bird
I turn homeward

But hark here’s a sight
before my eyes right
on low branch a-twitter

The head
fiery red
flashes like police

Without doubt
‘tis most
arresting

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Filed under Birds, Photography, Poetry

Tagged as hummingbird

January 29, 2016 · 8:10 am

Between Wet Squalls

Between wet squalls
sunshine and rainbows
the lake trail calls me

Down the street the trail forks
which is the road less traveled
on a circle?… no matter

I choose right
by far the most frequent choice
I am habituated

Prepared for whatever
two cameras ready
one for close up, one far away

At the floating bridge I wait
at hand the short telephoto
hoping to catch the muskrat

I’ve seen it rarely
small brown rodent in the rushes
shiny wet hairy junior football

Each time I see
it sees me too
I blink and it’s gone

In the bushes I detect
kinglets, hairy woodpeckers, finches
they too elude the camera

Halfway round luck changes
a hummingbird, tired of diving
rests close at hand, flashing green

The sun peeks in and out
the rainbow waxes and wanes
several runners pass

At the Garry Oak meadow something very tiny
another hummingbird
even smaller – maybe a Calliope

Sun in my eyes, I move down
into the grass to look for it
but it buzzes away

While I wait
from out of the trees
a Red Tailed Hawk appears

It makes a line
straight towards the tree
the lone tree it calls home

In the field I look up
there looping about the sky
an eagle soars

Perfectly lit by the low sun
the eagle circles
while I focus

Later on I reflect on pictures
the tiniest and the
mightiest of birds

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Filed under Birds, Photography, Poetry

Tagged as eagle, hummingbird, nature poems, red tailed hawk

January 26, 2016 · 9:54 pm

Bird Feeder

Gazing out to sea she stood alone at the rail as the ship sped down the fjord, when she became aware of a man feeding French fries to the gulls; a situation that would force a change of plan for the moment at least, or so she thought.

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Filed under Birds, Books and Short Stories, Painting

Tagged as feeding seagulls, painting

January 19, 2016 · 1:29 pm

Endangered Species

Olivetti Tropic – modded

I have plenty of bird pictures, however, and recently many of hawks. While not strictly endangered, I do think raptors are not having an easy time of it. Not far from here a landowner cut down 10 acres of old forest so he could grow hay. There was a hue and cry about it, but the saddest part for me was knowing that the birds and other wildlife just lost another chunk of habitat. A naturalist said that those woods were home to a number of owls, just for instance.

As much as I enjoy photography, and while I don’t want to get into a debate about whether or not it is or isn’t art, I love drawing and painting in another way. When you take a picture of something it is easy to forget what you really saw there. When you draw something, it really sinks into the mind. Yesterday I painted this picture of a hawk that I photographed just a few days before. I feel like I really got to know this bird better by painting it.

Red Tailed Hawk at Swan Lake

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Filed under Birds, Painting, Photography, Typewriters

Tagged as olivetti tropical, painting, red tailed hawk

January 17, 2016 · 9:30 pm

Distracted

I hate this commuting

We live in a strange age. The middle class is dissolving like snowmen in April. Our new government was elected on a promise to borrow huge sums that will be spent on infrastructure, as a way to get the economy going. This weekend I read in the paper about what the major cities hope to build, and most of it seems to be focused on mass transit. Great, but I ask you this; the workers are going to get more transit so they can travel to their jobs from further and further away, but is their pay going up? We know the answer to that. Give the workers more transit; it will distract them from the fact that their standard of living is declining, and their commuting time is increasing.

I hope they haven’t sold out the latest Stones farewell tour yet

Some cities are hoping to build new arenas and indoor stadiums with the money. Who can afford to go to the insanely expensive events that will happen there? I never attend concerts or sports events anymore, can’t afford it. I saw the Rolling Stones for $12 back in the day. It was fun, although they sucked on stage even then. NHL hockey tickets were $5 for standing room when I was at university. I watched the Montreal Canadiens battle the Chicago Blackhawks for the Stanley Cup, for five bucks!! Today a cup of pop costs more than that. The Canadiens moved from the Forum, one of the best arenas in the world, to a new arena which has hardly more seats. Why? Because they could build private boxes for wealthy business clients, boxes that sell for astronomical sums, which they need to pay the players their insane salaries. But in the end who pays? The fans, of course, through the nose. But not me. I don’t even watch anymore. I can’t stand all the damned advertising that’s plastered all over the boards and even on the ice. It distracts me from the game.

five seconds and I’m out of here

I heard a story from an elementary school teacher the other day. She can’t teach her class because the students are unable to pay attention for more than five seconds. Meanwhile, every one in the world will soon have a smartphone. Great, but if the ultimate result is kids who can’t think straight, thanks a lot Steve Jobs… I’m sure you never thought that far ahead, and I really don’t blame you, but now what? I was told a similar story about writing skills at universities – kids can’t write anymore. But no one fails either. The professors are intimidated by the power of the students. Everyone loses here however. There are too many distractions for students to pay attention and learn. Maybe they see what’s waiting for them when they get out of school?

I forgot what I was saying

But I have distractions too, like fooling around with pictures. But if you’re supposed to be doing your homework, you better quit looking at this right now and get back to work!

undistractable

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Filed under Animal psychology, Birds, Photography

Tagged as distraction

January 14, 2016 · 7:15 pm

a day in the life of a blog

Some days I just want to make some marks with a typewriter, if only to justify the collection. Typing is like therapy in a strange way, you press the keys and a physical reaction occurs, leaving you with a mark on paper. It is a feedback loop of sorts, direct, simple, immediate. And it has the added benefit of being quite capable of creating something you can read, criticize, laugh at, enjoy, loath and keep for along long time (almost forever). Typing is like Polaroid photography! My old Professor of Architectural History wrote a book in which he proposed a number of different analogies as ways to interpret the history of architecture. Polaroids didn’t come into that, but had they done so I’m sure my father would have understood; he was a big Polaroid fan and had a number of Polaroid cameras, starting with the original, and ending with the SX 70. His pictures, which were many, were all of what I mention here; laughable, pitifully bad sometimes, yet a reminder of a day or an event that would last and last. Unfortunately all those photos seem to have vanished! So much for posterity. But still, the possibility exists, and that itself makes Polaroids, and typewritten pages different from other ways of recording moments in time…

A blog is like typing and like Polaroids, is it not? You can just sit down and post something, and there it is as a record of a moment in time. How long it might endure is anyone’s guess however. But I do have a shoe box full of the typewritten bits I’ve posted here over the past years, should some future person wish to read them and be amused, or bored..

SOME PHOTOS, C/W THOUGHTS:

colourful, good bokeh

matching warm greys

how does a neck bend that way?

common, yet noble Robin, your beak is crusty with dirt

cormorant in the last light of day, what are you looking at?

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Filed under Animal psychology, Birds, Photography, Poetry, Typewriters

Tagged as polaroid photography, typewriter analogy

January 10, 2016 · 6:49 pm

Sunny Today, Rain Tomorrow

the fastest animal on earth

Winter is the season of extreme moods. Rain on a summer day can never be as miserable as the grey gloom of winter. Today was one of those winter days we treasure – sunny and all blue skies. I felt like I couldn’t get enough sunshine. The birds responded with displays of beauty too, and I was lucky to get some good pictures. The Pileated Woodpecker was hard at work on the tall stump again, although he refused to come around to the sunny side of the tree. I caught a pair of Stellar’s Jays in a bush right in front of us, and a pair of Ravens high up in an oak, well lit by the sun. On the water I watched ducks for a while, hoping some of the Mergansers would come a little closer. Unlike the Mallards which make their year round home here, these Mergansers come infrequently, and I suppose they aren’t quite as comfortable around humans as the Mallards are. They have this reflex to stop and turn away at a distance of about 15 yards. I came home and hung about doing things like starting a loaf of bread, but always with an eye out the window, with a feeling that the beautiful sunshine was going to waste. So at 4 pm I grabbed my camera again and went back down to the lake to enjoy the last of the sun. I caught a Song Sparrow in the golden light, amongst a crowd of others hanging around some feeders. Then I spotted something far away, coming across the sky and heading for the top of one of the tall firs, about 40 or 50 yards away. It was impossible to recognize at a distance but with the 500mm lens I saw it better, although it was still a mere blip on the screen. I took some pictures and stood there waiting for about 10 minutes with my finger on the trigger, hoping to catch it in flight. When it finally took off my reflexes were just too slow, or my camera was, but in any case all I caught was air. It was another Peregrine Falcon, not exactly rare but then again not a common sight hereabouts. They are distinguished by their Elvis sideburns, although to be fair, falcons had them first. Not every day you see the fastest animal on earth. They dive at 250 km/hr (155 mph).