Birds, Boats, and Baths

We woke this morning to the sound of gunfire.

This happened to coincide with the uproarious sound of geese calling; I think we can figure out what was going on here. We saw a big group of turkeys the other day too — it’s the time of year when any sensible fellow is doing what he can to stock up his freezer for the coming winter.

Now, I recently had an interesting encounter with what I believe was an Eastern Towhee. I happened upon the thing during the morning stroll out back; I was playing fetch with the dog, and it was happily chirping away, perched about 4 metres up in a tree. As I approached it, hoping to get a closer look, it quickly flitted to a nearby branch — which happened to place the trunk of the tree in between it and me, thereby obfuscating my view. And so I continued ’round the tree, looking up at the bird again. And again, it immediately chose another perch, conveniently hidden to my eyes by the tree trunk. This game continued for a few minutes, the both of us circumnavigating this tree, basically playing hide and seek. Eventually one of us lost interest, though I can’t quite remember which one of us it was now.

But in view if this article here from the Boston Globe, I’ve been thinking a little differently about avian intelligence. Crows, apparently, are just as adept as chimps when it comes to making and using tools.

Speaking of birds, have you ever been buzzed by a biplane? Probably not since World War One, right?

There’s a bustling marina in Collins Bay (near the aforementioned Amherst Island), and an equally bustlesome airfield too, by the looks of it. During our brief visit, several pilots appeared to be seeing who could fly low enough to scare the fish.

Another leftover from the Amherst pictures:

After relying on Lake Ontario for a week’s worth of washings, one begins to suffer from what might be called “the Itch.” Needless to say, I was glad to have a real shower back at home. But on the plus side, there were sailboats everywhere:

So, Lake Ontario: good for boats, bad for baths.