Notes on Nuthatches

A new visitor has appeared at my feeder during the past week – a sharp-beaked, red-breasted nuthatch with a body shaped like two stout cones placed base to base. This nuthatch, with its rufous-t...

Winter’s Subtle Beauty

At 9 a.m., snowflakes fluttered down in thin confusion, no longer yesterday’s dense, wind-slanted sheets of dry, white precipitation. Diminished residue of a vast snowstorm that yesterday swept ...

Balmoral Grist Mill and Animal Movement in Snow

This morning, beneath a sky overcast and still (the lull before the snowstorm forecast for tomorrow) I walked to the Balmoral Grist Mill, a heritage building dating from the late 19th century and loca...

Return to the Great White North

In deep, still cold before sunrise, I walked our .75-kilometre access road, the temperature -20°C, the air clean and searing, the snow squeaking beneath my boots as only cold snow does. No sound brok...