Take a second look …
The yellow eyes of the Saw-whet Owl are so startling, their gaze so steady, that we tend to ignore everything else. It’s easy to miss the trace of blood just below the owl’s bill, a smear of something that changes the way we look at the bird, that deepens our understanding of it. What discoveries might we make if we took that second look more often, if we trained ourselves to see?
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Butterflies of Manitoulin Island: An Informal Survey
At the end of July, my wife and I left Toronto to spend a week in a cottage on Manitoulin Island. The largest fresh-water island in the world stretches across the top of Lake Huron for 160 kilometers (100 miles). It takes the better part of seven hours to drive there from Toronto, so I had plenty of time to think. The question that nagged at me was simple: Why do we travel? The only answer that occurred was that we wish to see things we cannot see at home. It may seem trivial to some, but the main reason … Read more
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Three Swans: A Visual Haiku
I took this photo of three Trumpeter Swans on the shore of Lake Ontario about five years ago. The way it sets up, with the swans on either side looking in the same direction, and the one in the middle turned slightly away, reminds me of the structure of classical haiku. As you may know, this Japanese verse form consists of three lines. Usually, the first and the third line contain five syllables, and the second line seven. That’s not a big difference—seven syllables instead of five—but it’s enough to give each haiku a feeling of irregularity, of its rhythm … Read more
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Mammals of the Leslie Street Spit, Toronto
More than twenty species of mammals have been recorded on Toronto’s Leslie Street Spit, an artificially constructed peninsula that juts into Lake Ontario from the city’s east end. With more than three million people, Toronto puts the kind of pressure on its parks and green spaces that should eliminate any hint of the wild and untamed. Yet somehow the Spit, also known as Tommy Thompson Park, has achieved the character of an “urban wilderness” that provides shelter and food for a population of mammals that range in size from the White-tailed Deer to the White-footed Mouse. For more than sixty … Read more
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