"Seagulls"

There is actually no bird species called a "seagull", even though everyone uses that name for the ubiquitous gulls (17 species of which can be seen in North America) that you find all around the Great Lakes shorelines.  So when I dropped into the Owen Sound harbour the other day, I wasn't surprised to find some gulls.

There were four ships in the Owen Sound harbour, making the Chi-Cheemaun, the ferry that runs between the Bruce Peninsula and Manitoulin Island, look relatively small.  The other three were big lake freighters, including the Algoma Olympic on the right.  I presume they were all in harbour for the winter.

It's actually their raucous call that I always associate with the Great Lakes shoreline, more than actually seeing the birds.  That screeching is always in the background, as the birds wheel around and pick up whatever they can find to eat while I usually try to ignore them.

I don't usually get photos of birds in flight, let along clear ones, but I just lifted my camera and snapped, and it worked.  These first two photos are a Herring Gull, the larger of the two common gulls we see here.

Incoming! - another gull sailing toward me.  I raised the camera and snapped three times.  I amazed myself as how clear the focus was, as these three pix are considerably cropped.

You can clearly see the black ring around the bill that marks this as a Ring-billed Gull.  They're very common, and are actually found inland as much as on the shoreline.  I often see flocks settle on fields, and there are always a herd of them around the garbage dump.

There are actually 7 gull species that have been seen in Ontario the past year according to 'ebird'.  These two species are by far the most common and the only ones that can be seen year round.  With the success of these, I think I may have to try a few more bird shots!

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A Walk in the Woods

The other day I went for a walk in the woods, a nice bushwacking spring walk through the woods next door, where the snow was melting fast.  No need for snowshoes anymore, and a special time in the woods before the leaves starting thinking about coming out.

Parts of the woods still had a fair bit of snow on the ground, I suspect here because it blew in off the field and was deeper than average.

Other parts, including the old tractor trail I walked in on, had almost no snow left at all.

There's an interesting small forested wetland in the woods, which is melting, but won't lose all it's ice for quite awhile yet.  This becomes an oasis of interesting plant life later in the season.

I've noticed one Butternut tree in the woods, a tree that is endangered in Ontario because of the Butternut Canker disease.  It's easy to identify with those flat strips on the bark, winding up the trunk.

Looking upwards it appeared that this tree was still healthy.  At least it wasn't already full of dead branches.  I'll have to keep an eye on it over the summer.

A fallen log was decorated with hundreds of tiny white bracket fungi.

And this tree is infested with the Hoof Fungus, also called the Ice-Man Fungus, as the Ice-Man had some of this in his pack, apparently used as tinder for starting fires (5000 years ago).

Although the bark at ground level still looked ok, looking up I saw that the entire tree was already dead.

I left the trail and worked my way in a big circle to the farthest corner of the woods, where this nice old stone fence borders the field.

A big contrast is the long pile of rocks and tree stumps bulldozed up around the field from clearing of other fencerows a few years back.  I'm afraid this is part of the new face of agriculture.

You can now see all the way to the far end of the farm where the house and barn are, a view that was formerly broken by three separate fencerows, breaking this view into three separate fields.

But if you ignore that, the view over the rest of the back field was beautiful on this particular day, with small white clouds scudding across a blue sky.

Several of you commented on our cold temperatures here, after my shots of ice on Georgian Bay the past two days.  But to us, this is not cold unless there's a wind.  It's normal spring weather, when most of the snow cover is gone, the solid ice is gone, temperatures have risen from -10 or -15°C (5 - 15°F) and are now hovering around freezing, probably below freezing at night and above during the day, at least by after lunch.  It's all part of that transition from 'real' winter to 'real' spring.  And it's great weather to get out walking.

Thornbury Harbour

Thornbury Harbour, where I shared pictures of the ice formations yesterday, is still clogged with ice.  Inside the harbour walls the ice ranges from flat but broken ice floes to that slushy white ice in circular patches that I found last week in Meaford.

Looking west from the main pier, the inner harbour is still ice-filled, but you can see the waves of Georgian Bay washing in to the shoreline further west.

There is lots of ice along the shoreline to the west as well.  I actually caught the little green light in the top of this harbour light - though what a green light means at this time of year I'm not sure!

I think this was the coldest picnic table in North America yesterday, with a bitter Arctic wind rolling in across Georgian Bay.  We hurried back to the car to get warm.

But not before I noticed those slushy circular icy patches, moving hypnotically up and down as the swells rolled in underneath them.

Over on the other side of the inner harbour, where the waves don't roll in beyond the sailboat docks, the ice was still in flat ice floes.

But then I realized, the white ice building up along the edges of these floes as they move back and forth and bump into each other, is all step one in creating those slushy circular ice patches further out.  I've learned a bit about how ice disintegrates at this time of year here.

Another Harbour - More Ice

Winter temperatures have revisited us the past two days, with a stiff Arctic breeze to boot.  It was -16°C here this morning, and though the sun came out and it was a beautiful day, it remained cold.  We headed out for a drive in that bright afternoon sun and ended up at Thornbury harbour, overlooking Georgian Bay again.

The harbour-master's cabin at the Thornbury Marina, with the Georgian Peaks Ski Club on Blue Mountain in the distance.  Obviously the waves had been crashing on the rocks here, rapidly building up a heavy coating of ice on and over the boulders at this corner.

The roof, the boulders, even the picnic table were totally iced over, and we had to watch our footing to avoid the ice on the sidewalk.

The ice on the boulders ranged from several inches thick near the waterline, to a thin slimy looking film up on top of the breakwall.

But it was a little patch of shrubs behind the boulder wall that looked most interesting in its coating of white ice.  Take a look at these:

Just like a heavy ice storm, but limited to a small patch where the waves from Georgian Bay had crashed over the boulder wall.

Even the small patch of grass had been iced!  An unexpected tiny patch of beauty on a cold afternoon.

Coast Guard Boats

I was interested in seeing the two Coast Guard boats on on the dock in Meaford last week, and would really like to know more about how they spend their time over the summer.  They have a crew of four, and their main work is search and rescue, I believe for all of Georgian Bay.

There is a fence that stopped me wandering too close, but a zoom lens gave me a good impression of what the Captain would see looking out of the cabin.

They will be launched and staffed again for the season in just a few weeks.  Canadian Coast Guard ships are unarmed and have no 'policing' function, unlike those of some nations, including the U.S., but there have been proposals to arm the ships in the Arctic.

These are a standard design ship of the Cape class, 36 of which are based across Canada.  The colour scheme is intended as a reminder of the Canadian flag, and is the same on all Canadian Coast Guard ships, all the way up to the large polar icebreakers.

I'm sure these are loaded down with electronic equipment, including several radio services, satellite GPS, a loudhailer, and other gear to help in search and rescue.

Elsewhere the summer sailboats are all still up on land waiting for the end of any danger from ice, along with all the floating docks here.

The floating docks in the well-protected inner harbour stay in the water for the winter, because there is no wave disturbance here.

There is currently one ship in the water, over on the other side of the harbour.  It must have a strong enough hull to winter the ice, though it is docked in a sheltered corner.

Sometimes I wish I knew more about boats and ships; they have always intrigued me.

Ice in Meaford Harbour

I can't resist a few more pictures of the ice in Meaford harbour, from last Friday.  The pattern of the loose slushy ice floes, constantly moving up and down as the waves passed through the ice was something to see!  If you didn't check out the video in Friday's post, watch it here; I find it really mesmerizing.

It was certainly a brilliant blue-sky day, but the unusual accumulation of loose floating ice along the shoreline reflected the previous 3 days of north-east winds off the bay.

Many of the boulders along the shore were heavily coated with ice, and the inner harbour was all full of ice.

The breakwall with the harbour light had a heavy build-up of ice from the waves crashing over it and wrapping around it.

The inner part of the harbour was a mixture of larger flat ice floes that had floated down the river, and the loose slushy ice circles that had washed in from the bay.

But outside the breakwall, was this crazy pattern of floating ice and slush.  This is where I took the video, watching the waves roll underneath this ice and wash up on the boulders.

Much of the ice had formed these circular patterns, which I don't know the name of or reason for.  But just using my imagination, I'm guessing these are partly slushy chunks of ice bumping into each other and building up a ridge of white ice around the edge of each piece.  Let's call them 'slushy circle ice floes'.

 In any case, it made for some spectacular late March scenery on this shore of Georgian Bay.

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