Paddling the Humber River

After finding we were too early for the salmon run at Étienne Brûlé park on Saturday we canoed the Humber on Sunday.

Even though it was busier than I have ever seen it with people in the park we saw so much wildlife. The biggest treat was a pair of deer, which you don’t expect right in the city.

In the same marsh on the Humber River there was a great egret and great blue herons.

The Humber is home to a very large number of double-crested cormorants. We often see mute swans, Canada geese and mallards but this time as the water level was so low in the marsh we saw dozens of these adorable little lesser yellow legs wandering around in the mud.

There were literally piles of turtles, mainly map and painted turtles too.

These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees

So I haven't been posting much recently, but I've been busily preparing for this collective art show about bees. If you're in Toronto, I hope you'll come check it out!

Exhibition Campbell House Museum   June 22 - July 16, 2022  160 Queen Street W. Opening event  Campbell House, Saturday July 2,   2 – 4 p.m. Artists' Talk & Webcast The Canadian Music Centre,   20 St. Joseph Street Toronto  Thursday, July 7 7:30 – 9 p.m. (doors open 7 pm) Co-presented by Art-Sci Salon & The Canadian Music Centre These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees investigates wild, native bees and their ecology through playful dioramas, video, audio, relief print and poetry. Inspired by lambe lambe – South American miniature puppet stages for a single viewer – four distinct dioramas convey surreal yet enlightening worlds where bees lounge in cozy environs, animals watch educational films and ethereal sounds animate bowls of berries (having been pollinated by their diverse bee visitors). Displays reminiscent of natural history museums invite close inspection, revealing minutiae of these tiny, diverse animals, our native bees. From thumb-sized to extremely tiny, fuzzy to hairless, black, yellow, red or emerald green, each native bee tells a story while her actions create the fruits of pollination, reflecting the perpetual dance of animals, plants and planet. With a special appearance by Toronto's official bee, the jewelled green sweat bee, Agapostemon virescens! These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees Collective are: Sarah Peebles, Ele Willoughby, Rob Cruickshank & Stephen Humphrey The Works These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees Sarah Peebles, Ele Willoughby, Rob Cruickshank & Stephen Humphrey Single-viewer box theatres, dioramas, sculpture, textile art, macro video, audio transducers, poetry, insect specimens, relief print, objects, electronics, colour-coded DNA barcodes. Bees represented: rusty-patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis); jewelled green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens); masked sweat bee (Hylaeus annulatus); leafcutter bee (Megachile relativa) In the Landscape Ele Willoughby & Sarah Peebles paper, relief print, video projection, audio, audio cable, mixed media    Bee specimens & bee barcodes generously provided by Laurence Packer – Packer Lab, York University; Scott MacIvor – BUGS Lab, U-T Scarborough; Sam Droege – USGS; Barcode of Life Data Systems; Antonia Guidotti, Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum