Photography
Went into Kirkwall and had a wander and lunch on the main street. Rented a car for Kendra to practice her driving. (She did great!). Went for a walk up to the village. Paid our respects to the fallen. Walked around the Church we were married in. Talked with some of the nicest neighbours. Great to see them again.
Day 2 of our Orkney visit saw us go to Happy Valley (we haven’t been there since 1985). Edwin Harold planted trees and bushes from all over the world in this tiny valley. We also had a quick visit with John Hamilton of Stoneworks Orkney. John and his partner Ann Sutherland (aka: Queen Ann) have raise over 80,000 pounds for Charities here in Orkney in the past 5 months. The weather moved in and so we headed home. We had a visit from Brenda’s brother and family.
The pandemic and health issues have kept us from travelling, but with travel restrictions lifted and the ok from the health professionals we booked a trip to see our family in Orkney, Scotland.
Here are a few photos of our journey over and our first day. The blurrier photos were taken with my mobile phone.
The weather turned cold again and the birds came back looking for seeds. We have been hearing Robins early in the morning, but had yet to see any. They finally made an appearance. Cardinals are so stunning in their red coats. Has Spring truly arrived?
We took a short trip down to the Byward Market to get some Maple Syrup and Maple Candies. We haven’t been downtown in months and it was nice to see people out and about. I was a little nervous in one store as it was full of people and tight quarters. But it was still nice to be out.
The weather cooperated to shoot a few more visitors to our backyard bathtub feeder. I am hoping to entice some Bluejays with some peanuts in shells that I bought. The weather is supposed to me amazing this week so I know they will be hungry.
Been watching the Heathrow Airport like activity in my neighbours yard and so I decided to try and get in on the action. Disappointingly, only 1 squirrel visited today. Not A single bird. It was supper cold out, so maybe try again later in the week.
Be sure to click on the picture to see the whole image.
So it has been very cold here this week. One day it got down as low as -26c with a -36c windchill. This has kept me indoors as the roads and sidewalks are so icy. To satisfy my itch to do some photography, I trained the camera on the trees and bushes in our backyard. There is lots of wildlife back there. It surprised me how many different kids of birds that are still here with this cold weather. I know nothing about birds but they are great to photograph. One of my photos even caught the eye of our local news station and will be used in one of their shows this weekend. If I can figure out how to add a video I will include it below after it airs.
Ottawa’s LRT has been in the news since September, well really since it was launched due to all the issues and a couple of derailments it has had. This month the LRT is free as a thank you/make up for all the issues. We thought it would be a good opportunity to take a ride and spoil ourselves to some Beavertails in the Byward Market. So we took the train downtown and walked to the Beavertails Hut and it was closed due to a staff member having caught Covid. Very Sad. Took these photos while we waited for our train to go downtown.
There was a freezing rainstorm the other day and since I am still finding my legs, pulled out my 500mm and 300mm telephoto lenses and shot some wildlife in the trees in our backyard. I was nice and safe in the living room and the wildlife did it’s best to cooperate.
