Official Volunteer Researcher!

This weekend I had the opportunity to take part in the 15th annual Loon Watch at Kejimkujik National Park. Each year, in June and September, volunteers gather for an afternoon to paddle the lakes of Keji and count the pairs of loons they find, along with any young.

This year my Dad and I drove an hour into the backcountry of the park and paddled on Pebbleloggitch and Beaverskin lakes looking for loons. As expected, we saw none on Pebbleloggitch but once we got to Beaverskin, we hit the jackpot! I snuck down the portage with the binoculars and spotted an adult loon with a large juvenile! We sat and watched them for a while while we ate our lunch, and they put their heads down and had a nap! After a while the adult awoke and called, and suddenly there was a second adult! It must have been around the corner, fishing.

After lunch we climbed into the canoe and tried to get a bit closer to the birds for a better look. Immediately, the adult called to the baby and it scooted closer. The other adult went off to the other side of us, calling and trying to lure us away from its young. We promised we wouldn't get too close, took some pictures and left them alone to go explore the other end of the lake. By the time we returned, they had disappeared, melting into the background at the edge of the lake.

It was a great day, with beautiful skies, calm lakes, and a nice dose of fauna (in addition to the loons, we saw a hawk, a bald eagle, two ducks, several frogs, and a deer!). It's a pretty neat feeling to help out with some of the great research that goes on at the park. (And I got a cool hat that denotes me as an official volunteer researcher!)

Maybe I should be a gardener...

There's something about walking into a greenhouse and inhaling that first lungful of moist, warm, dirt-scented air that just instantly lifts the spirits - especially in the middle of winter, but the effect is the same in the middle of May.

This weekend I went to the open house that Halifax Regional

Municipality hosted at its greenhouses, where it grows all the plants for city parks. We got to wander through a number of greenhouses, see plants in various stages of growth, view some displays about bugs, community gardening and compost, and generally take in the smell of good dirt and the beauty of plants in full bloom in May.

Most of the plants were obviously for eventual transplanting into outdoor parks (some were even labelled already for which park they were going to), but there were also some (like this giant man-eating cactus) that had clearly been in residence for a while!

It was also a great chance to get some colourful close-ups - one of

my favourite kinds of photography! All in all I was definitely glad we stopped by. And it got me thinking... maybe I should work in a greenhouse all winter? Warmth, amplified sunshine and plant life would certainly be good for the soul in January!

Outdoorswoman extraordinaire... do they pay well for that?

This weekend the boyfriend, the dog and I went for a walk/hike in Hemlock Ravine, a hidden treasure in Bedford. I like, on the weekends, to try and walk somewhere other than the usual weekday half-hour loop, and the Ravine happened to be close to the Chinese place I wanted to go for supper. As we walked I was playing nature guide for Trevor, with "name that bird" and "name that tree" and "hey look at that!," observing the forest recovering from Hurricane Juan, and playing nature photographer. It got me wondering if I would enjoy a job that allowed me to work outdoors and/or with nature. The answer is a qualified yes: on warm sunny days. However, on rainy days (like about 10 minutes after we got back to the car, when it started to downpour)... not so much, thanks!

Smoke on the Water

Today provided a hard-to-resist opportunity for photography. There are some pretty big brush fires across the harbour (which unfortunately are apparently also consuming some houses) which are creating some pretty impressive smoke plumes. They can be seen all over the city, including from my office and from the beach at the end of our street. So, Loki dog, my roommate and I went down to the beach to a) enjoy the unseasonably summery day and b) take some pictures of the smoke.

Loki didn't seem fazed by the smoke; she was just happy to be running and chasing seaweed and digging in the sand and running. Here's hoping they get the fires out soon.

Last Thursday was one of the biggest events of the year for the Halifax Chamber of Commerce, the Spring Dinner. While I am not techincally part of the events team, on days like this I get to indulge my event-coordinator side and help out. We spent most of the morning tying chair covers onto 600 chairs in the room. It's impressive to see the room come together from bare tables and uncovered chairs to a fully set, green-and-champagne, film-themed spring "zen garden," as I called it. And the food and speaker were pretty good too - with a beer company sponsor, everything was cooked using beer, and Steven Brandman was really interesting talking about the film industry in Halifax. Unfortunately, he didn't bring Tom Sellick with him (Brandman is the procuder of the Jesse Stone series which shoots in Hali). But, RBC did bring the real Olympic torch (right)! It is admittedly a great advantage of my job that I get to try and experience such a variety of things. Not many jobs offer you the opportunity to get experience planning and executing large events without that actually being your job! More photos can be seen on the Chamber's website.

And as an ending point, as a follow-up to my last post: today's sporting event on tv as I write is Canada vs Czech Repubic World Championship hockey, on repeat on TSN.