Of Spring, and things.

First American Robin of the year. Shot through window glass.
Nikkor AF-S DX 55-300mm, 1/30th sec., f/5.6, ISO 200

Spring's coming.

Robins, House Finches, Grackles, Red-Winged Blackbirds, Goldfinches - all summer residents, and all appearing in the back yard over the last week or so. Despite a dumping of snow on Thursday, causing Mr. Robin to blow himself up into a ball to stay warm, they're here to stay, warbling from the rooftops and madly scurrying around collecting nesting material.

On the other hand, I was scurrying around myself on Friday, heading to Seneca College to give my more-or-less-annual guest lecture to students in their Bioinformatics Program, an enjoyable chance to catch up with an old friend who runs it, and to test-drive my latest slide deck, which uses rather a lot of photos of zoo animals to make various points. That all seemed to go well, and gave me an opportunity to explore the adjacent York University campus a bit, an interesting conglomeration of coloured concrete, strange angles, and metal details. I particularly liked the huge and ironically impersonal monolith of the Ross Humanities and Social Sciences building, and the crazy internal details of the Joan and Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Art, full of interesting design elements, half-finished sculptures, and enthusiastic arts students.


Ross Building
1/200th sec., f/8, ISO 200

I decided, on this occasion, to take only a single, fixed-focal-length "prime" lens with me, a technique used by many, many photographers over the ages, including the incomparable Henri Cartier-Bresson - no zooms, no wide-angles, no telephotos. In this case, I had just a 35mm lens that on my DSLR gives more-or-less the same "normal" field of view as Bresson's 50mm mounted on his venerable Leica. The idea is to use your feet and hands and eyes to compose the photograph, rather than a zoom ring.


Wall detail, Centre for Fine Art
Indoors - 1/640th sec., f/2.8, ISO 1,000

Having trundled around Keele Campus for a bit, I'm finding myself rather pleased with the little 35. As expected, it's a bit soft at very narrow apertures, likely due both to diffraction inside the lens and also the resulting slower shutter speeds, showing up my less-than-rock-solid hands. Also as expected, when fully wide-open it does suffer a bit from coloured fringing around bright objects. But in its sweet spot, which I don't think I've quite hit in either of the photos above, it's rather nice indeed. There will be more photos coming... once the weather warms up a bit.


The lens in question.
Shot with Nikkor 18-55mm @ 18mm, 1/6th sec., f/3.5, ISO 200.

The same stuff as usual

Well, a few weeks of summery weather have passed recently (punctuated by the occasional thunderous windstorm, like the one that made me half an hour late getting home last night), and that means that the sports car crop is beginning to show signs of establishing itself nicely for summer. Recently:

- a Ferrari 308 GTB (as far as I could tell), which my commuter bus actually managed to overtake on my way to work
- a few BMW M3s and a rather spiffy M Roadster, parked at the local Home Depot. I suspect that the owner was using it to pick up a bag of dirt or something similar.
- the ugly, but oh-so-expensive Bentley Continental GTC, looking even worse as a convertible than it does as a hardtop
- the tediously boring looking, but deeply expensive and horrendously fast Mercedes SL65 AMG
- the not-at-all boring, very stylish and still deeply expensive Maserati Quattroporte, as well as a Maserati Coupe looking all mean, dressed up in its best black tie and tails
- and today, a BMW 645ci, which is not by any stretch of the imagination the most lovely thing ever, but is probably pretty fun to drive anyway.

Sigh.

On the completely unrelated topic of birds, I saw a Robin and a Cardinal teaming up to chase away a Blue Jay, a species notorious for predating other birds' youngsters. Quite the rainbow of colours there, for a few seconds at least. And a few weeks ago, we had a very handsome little White-Crowned Sparrow for a day or two, migrating on through to wherever it is that they normally nest (somewhere north of here, I'd guess). Unfortunately, he was a) very small, b) far away and c) hiding under a bush, so no photos I'm afraid.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that, after several months, I saw the hawk again, being chased away by a flock of starlings. Poor thing.

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In other news, it would appear that I didn't win the University of Toronto Magazine Short Story and Poetry Contest (is anyone surprised? I'm not.) My poetic entry may yet surface as a guest-blog item over at Zoe's place at some undefined point in the future, so I'm not going to post it here. You'll just have to use your imagination.*



*I wouldn't waste a lot of time on this, though.

The obligatory post with cars and pictures

Well, as I've been muttering recently, spring has finally sprung in this part of the world and the back yard is beginning to fill up with hanging baskets of flowers:


Petunias and some yellow things.


Unfortunately, the back yard is also filling up with weeds:


This is a dandelion.


And occasionally with hack photographers taking pictures of themselves through glass tabletops:


Ricardipus.


and really silly looking birds, too.


A Common Grackle, Quiscalus quiscula, marching along.

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Oh yes, cars... well, recently, a bright red Ferrari (probably a 360 Modena) which my morning bus overtook on the highway; a white Lamborghini Gallardo parked near a waste transfer station (I suspect mob activity); and a spiffy, late-model Mustang GT at the local chopper shop (that's a "custom motorcycle modification and fabrication establishment" for you non-North Americans). A rather large number of convertible Mercedes seem to have crept out of the woodwork too, as well as the drop-top BMW M3 that I saw yesterday as it gradually left us behind on a country road. And there have even been some old muscle cars, escaping their winter garages: Camaros, older Mustangs, and the like. All in all, a good week or two.

Spring means it's Ferrari season

Yes, Ferrari season north of Toronto has officially begun, with the first sighting of the year yesterday. A bright red F430 Spider, on a day where the racing version also triumphed at the American Le Mans race at Long Beach (in the GT2 class; 12™ overall). Although I at first thought it was a 360 Modena (a much more common 'rari), on closer observation the characteristic double mirror stalks and teardrop-shaped front air vents were clear as day.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera with me (not that anybody who reads this blog probably cares about car pictures anyway). Later on, I went out to the local renovation store (ok, Home Depot, a store I have a love-hate relationship with) , bearing Junior Ricardipus #1's mighty, 0.1 megapixel Disney Pix Micro, and grabbed some other car shots en route. The Pix Micro has the advantage of being tiny, about six and a half by four and a half centimetres, and weighs almost nothing, so it's easy to hold and shoot with it while still keeping both hands on the wheel. Definitely would not be the case for Mrs. Ricardipus' digital monster.

The resulting shots, as you might imagine, are a bit random in nature. This Porsche was the best picture of the bunch. The rest are over on Flickr, in the set located here.

In the back yard, the male goldfinches are becoming handsomer and handsomer, another sure sign of impending summer. Here are a couple of shots, with the usual disclaimers about shooting through dirty windows, zooming waaaay in, and so forth.

Easter weekend, with birds and sunset

In the backyard chez the parents, a Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker, Sphyrapicus varius. If I may quote from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website:

"Although most non-birders believe that the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a fictitious bird created just for the humorous name, in fact it is a widespread species of small woodpecker. "


Unfortunately I wasn't able to snap any pictures as it was a long way off and isn't very big to begin with. However, I did get a couple of shots of another visitor, a Northern (Yellow-Shafted) Flicker, Colaptes auratus. Through the trickery of modern digital photography, I've blown it up for you... still a bit fuzzy though. It was also a fair way away. Hm, that seems to be a common refrain whenever I post bird pics. Anyway, here it is, feasting on grubs and things in the grass. It's also a woodpecker. Really.




Neither species is uncommon, but nonetheless we seldom see them, even in the slightly more spacious, 60's era suburbia in which I grew up. Not to mention the rape-and-pillage, raze-the-trees-to-the-ground, late 90's development where I now live.

Speaking of which, the goldfinches at our place are still yellowing up in readiness for summer. I'll see if I can snap a few pictures, next time they're in a cooperative mood. In the meantime, I'll leave you with another sunset shot from the in-laws' place, which is conveniently located in the same town as the out-laws:

Not entirely obsessed with cars and birds, really

Miserable, rainy weather this weekend... bleak. Like this:

However, the Goldfinches are here with a vengeance, and some of the little fellows are beginning to yellow up nicely. If you like, compare the photo below with the one from last weekend. By the time breeding season rolls around (and these little birds breed later than other species), the males will all be striking in splendid bright yellow and black trim.

I tried to take a picture of some grackles, but the results were miserably out of focus. Next time, perhaps.

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In other news, the spring crop of sports cars is not quite under way, although a banana-yellow Mustang GT made an appearance yesterday, as did a Porsche 944 and a couple of Boxsters. People drive Mustangs and Porsches year-round here though, so nothing really unusual there.

It's worse than that...

After my recent rant about email, I realized that the situation is much, much worse than I had initially thought.

I estimated six thousand emails, based on having deleted about 4,500 right off the top, and then clearing out another 1,500 or so from the Sent Mail and In boxes.

What I forgot about, of course, was the couple of thousand or so already filed in various folders. So let's make that an even 8,000 for the sake of argument, and add another hefty novel or two to the stack of Shakespeare.

I'm beginning to feel positively educated.

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In other news: Spring, it would seem, has well and truly sprung, with the scent of barbeque in the air (I'm firing ours up tonight - wish me luck, as the future Mrs. Ricardipus and I once set one on fire), soggy trampled grass underfoot, neighbours digging away in the garden and the backyard full of spring visitors: goldfinches, a house finch, a song sparrow, grackles, red-winged blackbirds, robins, and the usual starlings, house sparrows and doves. No sign of the hawk recently, but we'll wait and see... plenty of tasty prey to snack on.

Here's a truly terrible picture of three goldfinches eating away at the feeder. They're still wearing their winter drab, but beginning to brighten up a bit.

And here's an equally poor shot of a Red-Winged Blackbird... these males do a good job of trying to impress, puffing up their red epaulets and bleeping at each other. Unfortunately, certain photographers don't do them justice. He's a bit out of focus, a bit far away, and clearly interested in something other than the camera.

Strangely enough, I saw one of these in California last week. I'm guessing it was too lazy to migrate up here. But maybe it's supposed to be there, and I'm just being unsympathetic.