Puffins, murres, etc., were all over the water during our boat tour of the Witless Bay Ecological Preserve. When the boats approached and startled them, the murres had this strange way of moving off; they kinda ran on the water while flapping their wings. The flapping caused more water to splash. This [...]
I believe these are called Lesser Auks. Puffins and murres also belong to the auk family of birds. The rocky islands off the coast of Newfoundland were once the home of the great auk, which looked a bit like a bigger flightless version of these (these are maybe slightly bigger than puffins, and [...]
The person in this costume must have been very warm because it was about 36C and these costumes really had no air circulation what so ever. When the person in the costume was standing up, the entire costume stood about 10ft tall. I actually stood on top of a pillar to get a [...]
Day 2 in Lisbon - went on a walking tour, which started at this square.
While in Taiwan this time, I was able to get some time away from the pearl market and one of my friends and I was planning on going to a “day” market. (Meaning it is open during the day instead of at night.) When we exited the MRT (Mass Rail Transit), a [...]
Along with puffins and gulls, we saw a lot of common murres. The word “murre” is pronounced like the word myrrh (as in “gold, frankincense, and myrrh”)–at least in Newfoundland it is. Murres looked to me like flying penguins. Their swimming ability is simply amazing; they’ve been caught in fishing nets at [...]
Newfoundland is loaded with puffins. Tourist shops are full of puffin this, puffin that. Granted, they ARE very cute. But I never appreciated how interesting these birds are. They nest in HUGE colonies, and each individual home is an underground burrow that gets dug through tree roots (hence there are usually [...]
I took this at Cape Spear, Newfoundland, with a 100mm macro. 20 years ago when I was in Norway, one thing that struck me there was how large the dandelions are. Here on the island of Newfoundland they were equally large. I wonder if there is something about moderate northern climates that [...]