Description: This whimsical design, which features a rapping hamster dressed in gold chains, golden track top, dark glasses, and baggy gold pants, while holding a wireless microphone, and captioned with the humorous moniker of "MC Hamster", pays homage to a certain 1990s rapper's iconic attire and sense of fashion.
Description: This whimsical design, which features a rapping hamster dressed in gold chains, red baseball cap, red track suit, and dark glasses, while holding a wireless microphone, and captioned with the humorous title of "The Original H.A.M.S.T.E.R. Rapping Master", pays homage to a certain musical collaboration between two of the biggest names in rap music in the mid-2000s.
Description: You'll be "feline fine" with this whimsical design, which features a statuesque quintet of AI-generated cat runway models walking--with just the right amount of smoulder in their step--the catwalk at a fashion show. The hottest kitties not to be on a tin roof! ;) A great gift for cat lovers!
Description: There's nothing like a funny farm fresh animal idiom (do I need to draw you a picture?) to get the giggles going! You'd better "bull-lieve" it! ;) This AI-generated muscle-bound rooster and ox duo have the perfectly challenging ("oh yeah?") and appropriately skeptical expressions for any harebrained theory or explanation that comes their way.
Description: You must be a speed reader cuz you're really booking! Add a bit of humor to your favorite reads with this whimsical design, which features an AI-generated pair of tortoiseshell guinea pigs, reading an oversized tome of fantastical adventures amid a colony of red fly agaric mushrooms. So engrossed are they in their reading that they fail to see that they have been transported to the adventure itself!
Description: My mid-morning stroll through an old-growth forest in mid-June 2016 led me to one of those simple, yet breathtaking wonders of nature: the sight of sun-dappled shadows painted on the leaves of trees that have existed centuries before my time. The interplay of dark and light has always fascinated me.
Description: My introduction to the Satyr Comma / Anglewing. Apparently these little, bright orange butterflies are supposed to be skittish, but don't tell this beauty that... it posed for several shots on a blade of marsh vegetation. Photographed at the Campbell Valley Regional Park in Langley.
Description: A fruitless search for a Rufous hummingbird in the backyard yielded the consolation prize of an unexpected photo session with a beautiful, accommodating Western Tiger Swallowtail -- one of the largest and most iconic butterflies to grace the Pacific Northwest during the summer.
Description: As a fan of both Shakespeare and shorebirds, this scene might be alternatively captioned "Baird(s) on the Beach." My meeting them in such close quarters was an unexpected pleasure; a small contingent of these tiny migrant sandpipers (all juveniles!) was completely at ease with the photographer in their midst, and continued to feed nonchalantly on aquatic bugs or park themselves on top of the mounds of seaweed nearby. Photographed over the Labour Day 2018 long weekend.
Description: This handsome adult male Northern Harrier (unwittingly) gave photographers a beautiful sunset pose in the marsh where he hunts voles and rodents who roam the marsh and farm fields. Photographed at the Boundary Bay Wildlife Management Area in South Delta, British Columbia, Canada, in mid-February 2018.
Description: With his bright white cravat evoking a stylish old Elizabethan charm, this handsome bibbed domestic Mallard (of the Duclair designer "persuasion") was definitely the odd duck out at the local wildlife sanctuary. That didn't stop him from charming the photographers in his midst, and moving his way to the forefront of the feeding frenzy that included many, many wild Mallards.
Description: I encountered a party of eight juvenile Pectoral Sandpipers at the Boundary Bay Wildlife Management Area as September 2018 passed its halfway mark. Like the other shorebirds who normally prefer the grassier, less muddy parts of the beach to forage from, these medium-sized migratory shorebirds did not mind me in their midst. Photographed on a sunny and slightly breezy afternoon on a fairly low high tide that let me walk out a few hundred feet from shore to observe the visiting fauna in close quarters.
Description: By mid-May 2016, the Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary on Westham Island had already hosted 10 fledged Barn Swallows! I can usually find at least a couple of them who like to hang around the Warming Hut, as curious about the photographers behind the long lenses as we are about them. Always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of these colourful and cosmopolitan aerialists!
Description: Finding this Great Egret in the winter grass in the reeds fronting a Langley farm on December 31, 2018, was a great way to wrap up the year. My subject was neither disturbed by the trio of photographers capturing its every move, nor by the traffic roaring down the 2-lane road, and in fact, ventured to with 15 feet of me to feed. Whatever caused this migratory heron (which is a rarity in Metro Vancouver) to spend its decidedly non-tropical vacation here instead of at its regular winter stomping grounds in Miami, Mexico, and Guatemala is a mystery -- but one that I am very grateful for.
Description: Nature spared no expense when it came to the Mandarin Duck, and this male, dressed to his finest breeding nines, is no exception. In his flight to freedom, this gorgeous escapee from an Oregon farm found his Eden at Burnaby Lake's Piper Spit, and in the company of many Wood Duck cousins.
Description: In a cute moment highly reminiscent of another bushtit family gathering from 2016, three young songbird fledglings roost together in the sun-dappled shade of the pear tree, while parents and helpers (older siblings) pick grubs and chatter from the leaves nearby. My young subjects were only too willing to oblige for my lens. Photographed in late May 2020.
Description: Metro Vancouver's second snowstorm of the winter season finally brought the lovely and much anticipated male Varied Thrush to my backyard, where he spent the greater part of the day excavating the white stuff for tasty grubs. With their dazzling palette of orange, grey, and black hues, this reclusive songbird is a welcome sight during the monochromatic winter months. Photographed in mid-February 2019.
Description: That the Surf Scoters of White Rock Pier are habituated to the presence of humans is a bit of an understatement. These were a few of hundreds of these large black seaducks who routinely passed under the boardwalk during a crisp but sunny morning visit in early November 2019, giving great bird's eye views of that colorful and comically oversized schnoz that the ladies of his kind have found so fascinating for so long.
Description: A male Green-Winged Teal enjoys the calm waters of Piper Spit/Burnaby Lake. This dabbling duck is tied with the Bufflehead, a diving duck, for the title of the smallest ducks in North America. Only at Burnaby Lake can we see these ducks literally (and quite fearlessly) at our feet, chasing ducks much bigger than themselves. Photographed in January 2015, just as the sunset was touching the waters of the Piper Spit.
Description: An unusually late-staying migrant dressed in his best breeding finery, this Ruddy Turnstone was attracting wildlife photographers with his foraging techniques (lifting clumps of seaweed much bigger (and probably heavier) than himself) on the shore, and in the process of scrounging up a late lunch, walking right into the midst of the long-lens-toting paparazzi, who were often forced to back up! Photographed at the Tsawwassen Ferry Jetty in November 2015.
Description: With their long, bright red bills, yellow eyes, and pink feet, Black Oystercatchers are one of the most intriguing looking birds I've had the opportunity of photographing. Usually, they aren't very finicky about the company they keep (human or bird), and can generally be counted upon to deliver a few impressive cameos.
Description: This male Pekin Robin decided to satisfy his curiosity of the approaching humans, and flew into a large ropical tree to observe us from under the large leafy cover. Our initial encounter was all too brief and disappointing, but this second meeting yielded the opportunity to study this wonderfully dressed and beautiful singer in much greater detail and length. Our subject must have noticed this, as he was unusually still and not hopping from branch to branch!
