Pets, photography and life in general

Friday, May 31, 2013

Monday, May 27, 2013

Yeah, it's been a looooong time! But I just flew out to Vancouver to do some birdwatching although after the first few hours I guess it's more like rainwatching with a bit of birding! Anyway, after watching 4.5 episodes of Criminal Minds on the flight, I took the train and a bus to my hotel, dumped off my luggage and went to Stanley Park. When I was here a few years ago there was a great blue heron colony and there were almost 200 nests so I was pretty excited about coming back. I had my big, heavy umbrella with me which didn't do my photography any favours. The first thing I noticed was the sound of all the herons, the second was the putrid stench! I tried taking some pics but they didn't turn out too well since I was using one hand.

So after I saw the herons I walked a little way along the sea wall and kept hearing this squeal. I saw 2 crows going after each other...except that's not what they were doing. They were dive bombing an eagle! This may be one of the Vanier Park eagles or it could be the one that I saw the last 2 times I was here, over by the swimming pool at Second Beach. I would never have seen it because of the umbrella so a big thank you to the crows for alerting me. Again, not the greatest because of the umbrella and all but eagles are eagles.

That's it for day 1. It's not even 6 pm and I'm ready for bed because my body thinks I'm still in the eastern time zone!

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

ING Direct and the cost of gas

This one is too good to be true, but it definitely is legit! You all know ING Direct from the commercials with the guy with the accent who tells you to save your money and not to use other banks. Well right now, they have a referral program to people opening new accounts. If you are referred by another account holder and you open an account with them, when you deposit $100 before the end of August you each will get $50 deposited into your new account! I did it last Friday, filled out the form, sent off the cheque, today is Tuesday and they already cleared my cheque and put the $50 into my account. If you are interested, this is the link. It explains all of their different accounts and if you want to open an account and you need a referral, my Orange Key is 39626323S1 which you can enter near the bottom of the form. I originally was just going to open this as a savings account for emergencies but I compared the interest rate of my bank's TFSA to ING's and will be moving my TFSA over to them as well as they pay higher interest. It's not a huge amount but better in my account than theirs!

Also, for those of you who drive, there are a number of sites that tell you if the price at the pumps is going up or down the following day. I usually get updates on twitter via 680 news but they don't always post about gas prices. This site seems to be the most reliable and it's not just for the Toronto area, in fact, not even just for Canada. I like knowing whether I should fill up or top up the day before.

Hope everyone is surviving the never ending heatwave!

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Cheap...not cheep, cheep!

This one isn't about birds!

I haven't done a lot of shopping lately but this week got a few great deals:

Ocean Spray Cranberry juice - no coupons but $1.50 for 1.89 litre containers is a great price so I got 7 at No Frills, usually they are usually between $3 and $4.

Egg creations - I like these because I eat a lot of eggs and these are just egg whites, usually around $3 but they were $1.50 each and I had $1 off so it came to .50 for one container. I am going back for more. 1 carton is the equivalent of 9 eggs and I use them for omelettes or quiche.

Cheese Strings - $2 a pack, usually almost $4, I had coupons for .75 off so they were $1.25 a pack and had $6 in coupons inside. Among the coupons were $.75 off cheese slices and I just noticed they have small packs of them on sale for $1 so I'll go and get some of those this week!

Oasis juice - Orange juice and some other varieties for $2, I have a ton of $1.25 off so I bought 4 for .75 each. They have excellent juices so I'll likely get more. I've been on a smoothie binge lately so they are great with frozen fruit and protein powder.

Catelli pasta - 3 boxes at $1.47 each minus 2 coupons at $1 each and one at .75. That's tonight's dinner!

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Who, woo, hoo doesn't like owls?

Okay, these owls don't hoot, they screech (occasionally), they whinny, they meow, they tremolo and they're always adorable!

Papa Screech:

Mama Screech:

Baby Screech:

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Early morning at the Bluffs

Molly woke me up at 6 this morning and I decided to put the time to good use by going out. You can double click on all the pictures to make them bigger. I went to Rosetta McClain Gardens first:

I saw a mama raccoon climbing into the cavity of a tree, and when I went closer..

Hello sweet little face! I think there were 3 babies in there and they were quite happy to have mama return. After that, some baby starlings were screaming at their parent for food:

And more baby starlings!

Beautiful paths. Last picture before Bluffers:

A very loud red-winged blackbird at Bluffers Park:

I love willows:

Robin:

Mallard ducks and ducklings!

Looks peaceful, right? All of a sudden, something swimming below the surface made a beeline for the duck family. I'm pretty sure it was a mink but I never saw it because mama duck freaked: