266: Red Sky At Night

I almost missed this year's nocturnal owl survey. Anyone who's been around these parts knows it's one of my favourite rites of spring (as evident here, and here, and here, and here). This year the stars weren't aligning, as buddy Jason couldn't make it to town in time to squeeze into the early April window the survey results rely on. Too bad, since the astoundingly early spring would come with excellent road conditions – after our 2011 survey fell short due to heavy snowpack on the route we take.

But we learned on Friday that late-April results would still count so we made a go of it, building in an early burger run to Blondie's. The evening was incredible. Shoe Lake, a popular canoe launch in Nopiming Provincial Park where we typically stop and wait for sunset, was completely thawed. In our ten previous owl surveys the lake ranged from slushy to completely frozen, even in the warmest of springs.

And there was lots of activity. Our 20-mile route resulted in 18 owl recordings, among our best years on record. The results would have been more fruitful had the pitch-black forest not been inundated by thousands of calling spring peepers and wood frogs (especially because normal interference from geese, ducks and grouse didn't seem to be an issue). But no cause for complaint; even in years where numbers are low it's a treat to stand stark-still on an empty logging road in the dark and listen to the sweet nothing that envelopes me. Or the slap of a beaver's tail on water, which can darn near empty my bowels. Either way, it's cool.



And of course, we are not above spoiling the serenity of it all (photo by Jason).

Want to take part in the Manitoba Nocturnal Owl Survey? Head here. And stay out of the Nopiming – that's our turf.

260: Brushing Up

Up late-late at night, dickering with a recently-doodled office-meeting doodle and trying out some freshly downloaded freebie Photoshop brushes from Chris Wahl (I think it's set seven, if you're scrolling through his wares). Please click here for a crisper, better view.

And now I am zonked. Good night, all.

Owl-less Survey

"It's good... just gotta take it slower."

Famous last words, before proceeding a few more metres in the CR-V and getting stuck. Only nine of the 40-kilometre stretch of foggy logging road had melted to a point of navigability. Cue rigourous rocking/pushing sessions, a couple hundred metres in reverse to the nearest turnaround point, and then high-tailing it back to asphalt. The 2011 nocturnal owl survey was over before it began.

230: Screech

For the past couple of weeks I have been scoping out a certain tree in the neighbourhood, as it was rumoured to be harbouring a screech owl. Friends of Kerry's had spotted it on more than one occasion in a notch of a grizzled tree about two kilometres from our house, but were reluctant to disclose the exact location. Owl hogs.

Luckily, I was able to recognize the tree from the photo they showed. We found it during our frosty walk a couple of weekends ago, but the owl wasn't included. Two more visits by bike this past weekend were equally fruitless, though the ride – my first of the season – was muddy, filthy and tons of fun. Yesterday though, I struck paydirt, and the owl and I had a decent 10-minute shoot before direct sunlight disappeared. It seemed half-asleep, but tracked me with a mean stinkeye (below) as I navigated around with the camera.


I am hoping this is the little fellow's home and not just a hangout; it looks more than suitable. It would be great if I could track its progress over the summer.

229: Subterranean Homesick Owls

Illustration Friday's current theme of subterranean – very specific, which I like – allows an opportunity to display wares from a weekend spree of woodcut-based monoprints.


In January, a friend offered me a couple of small blocks of particle-board and some cutting tools to try my hand at carving, something I hadn't really done since high school (on linoleum, I think we all did this in high school). After a few sessions of trial and error, I carved myself a nice little cut of a burrowing owl (above).


Actual printing went down on Sunday; about a dozen or so decent copies (above) run off on a small but effective homemade press at my friend's place. These I am quite proud of.


For Illustration Friday's purposes I scanned one of the black-ink prints (above) to further the piece digitally, though I hoped to retain the print's sense of hand-craftedness. Burrowing owls are unique among the owl set for nesting in abandoned prairie-dog dens, among other subterranean abodes, and the stark, confined nature of these prints suited an idea I had in mind. Where the concept – and this write-up – takes an odd turn is in the piece's source of inspiration. Subterranean, for some reason or another, made me recall the mining sequence about midway through Dance, a two-minute animated National Film Board vignette that used to fill space on CBC when I was a kid (any Canadian worth his toque should recognize this tune).

Click here, to view the illustration larger (and on black).

218: The Brown Owl

This owl I drew in the spring as part of my May sketching spell, but I spent some time tinkering this past week to add colour and texture (and also performing bits of digital surgery, moving the bird's right foot inwards and adjusting a previously-awkward right wing). The original sketch was drawn entirely with a black brush pen. All told, done for hoots and giggles, nothing more.

The verse comes from the poem The Great Brown Owl, by Jane Euphemia Browne.

196: Drifting In And Out Of Snow

It's funny (to me anyways) that at the moment summer finally hits my home town – and hits, big-time – illustrative thoughts turn to such cold imagery. But when you come from a place that can conceivably get snow during parts or all of 10 of 12 months in a calendar year, the white stuff can drift into your consciousness quite easily. To wit, to hoot: this owl – sleeping under a blanket of drifted snow.

And since it's too hot to go into further detail, I will insist only upon viewing this link where you can see the piece in its more feathery, detailed glory.

The original line-work was drawn with a Pigma brush pen.

189: True To My Word, Part One

It's been eight May days, and I have drawn eight times – tonight, aided by three glasses of red wine, I drew a red squirrel from a photo taken during our 2007 road trip around the Great Lakes. And wine goggles be damned, it's not that bad. But just to prove I've been hard at it, here's a sampling: my May 2 submission, a brown- and black-ink brush pen sketch of Pepper the saw-whet owl, drawn on some graph paper. This took about 20 minutes.

I've been making good use of the brush pens. The black one in particular is beginning to die, and the increasing dryness of it is providing a nice effect.

187: The Owling, Part VII

Top row (left to right): Jenn, the rookie; Jason, the captain; Kerry, by evening light. Middle row (left to right): Kerry stands tall at the Pinawa Dam; Tulabi Falls (and Lake, still frozen). Bottom row (left to right): Kerry's last photo for the day, I swear; me, chaneling my inner Luke Perry.

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April means it's time for my first real getaway opportunity of the year: the annual spring nocturnal owl survey that my friends and I have taken part in for the past seven years. Our route in Nopiming Provincial Park is not remote by any stretch of the imagination – about two hours north of town – but at this time of year (and day) we may as well be the only people in the region for miles and eerily quiet miles. This year was no exception.

This spring has been more disagreeable than most, and I half-expected to be very much encased in winter as the changing of the seasons out there typically lags behind the city by a few weeks. But we caught a rare (so far) glorious early spring Saturday and made a bit more of a day out of it than normal, arriving on the scene early in the afternoon to check out some nearby scenic haunts; the old Pinawa Dam and Nopiming Park's Tulabi Falls, a locale I hadn't been to since the mid-90s. Both places were in fine form, a curious mix of snow, ice, muck and torrential meltwater.

Not surprisingly, our survey route itself – a lumpy logging road – was snowed in; we came to realize this fact about a mile or so in. This resulted in the same mile being driven in reverse on a pair of snowy tracks in the dark at walking speed. Getting stuck would mean a night in the car and who knows how many more hours contacting another person or vehicle. Back on dry land though, on our back-up route – despite the late spring conditions – we did hear four owls, alongside some grouse, geese and mysterious chewing noises coming from the dark.

186: I Doodled

A couple of months ago or so, my Alabamanian friend Mary devised a simple enough scheme to exchange small pieces of art through a small doodle swap. Twenty or so folks joined in, and were divided into a pair of groups who exchanged addresses and were given a send-out deadline in mid-April. And nice for me, since in a few weeks these things will begin randomly dropping in my mailbox – if all goes according to plan – on ten separate occasions.

Some folks, I believe, are theming their cards; me, I went straight to the heart of doodling and created ten individual scribbles with little or no link to one another. Some were über-quick, some I spent more than a handful of minutes on. A couple I even tore up and started over (going against everything the doodle stands for). I used a scrap of brilliant orange posterboard, littered with X-acto scratches from its previous life as a cutting surface for old Howiezines. I used two pens – one ultra-thin and a thick calligraphic nib – and a brown-ink brush pen, with bits of pencil, white watercolour paint and blue ball-point thrown in for good measure. I rubber-banded the lot and let them bang around in my backpack a week or so to erode them a touch. And as a bonus, on the backs of the cards I pasted equally-random photographs.

Shown above are four of the total ten. I'm not divulging who they were sent to, nor for the moment offering a closer look until the swap is complete – keep pants on.

185: Pepper!

Last week's grouchiness melted immediately at the sight of Pepper, on display at a local birdfeed and supply store as part of a fundraiser for a local owl-related charity.

On a hot tip from friend Steph, Kerry, my dad and I headed to see some hot live owls, originally slated to include a long-eared owl and a burrowing owl, which I was very excited to see up close (rare as they are). Instead of the burrowing owl though, there was Pepper – a one-year-old northern saw-whet owl (Aegolius acadicus).

I have never seen a saw-whet owl – common enough as they are here in the wild – though I've heard plenty during my annual volunteer stint as part of a local springtime nocturnal owl survey. But they happen to be my favourite bird. In the whole. Wide. World. As such, Pepper merely had to bat his big Bat-Boy eyes and everything seemed suddenly alright again.

No disrespect to Nemo (above, top left and bottom right), a long-eared owl also in attendance – you were OK, too. But please view some close-ups of Pepper here, and here.

168: Yavatar

Here's me – continuing my playing around with the macro lens – shooting a familiar subject, the little stone ookpik sculpture that has eventually become my brand. I continue to use a vectorized version of this fellow – that I made in Freehand a few years ago – as my avatar here and on a handful of other internet haunts. And during yesterday's Creative Night (following a failed drawing), I sat down and tested just how accurate my hand and eye are at manual focusing with my ookpik and our red sofa.

162: Zoomanity!

Above: four stages of snowy owl stink-eye, two gut-heavy prairie dogs and one Kerry, practicing her birch-bark biting on the Hunt Lake hiking trail.

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The weekend previous was salvation. Fall here is sometimes mercilessly brief, and following a most miserable Thanksgiving weekend it looked bleak for lovers of the season. But Big Weather tossed us in Manitoba a life preserver last weekend and we made good use of it, squeezing in a day of hiking on our favourite trail in the Whiteshell and a trip to the zoo to fulfill my need to see the owls at least once a year.

The Whiteshell was in fine form, even if almost all the leaves had fallen. The park was quiet, virtually empty of critters (the sole highlight was a scavenging red fox that circled our weenie-fire in the evening). And Owl Row did not disappoint either, though one snowy was so perplexing we ran out of time to see almost anything else, barring some extraordinarily obese prairie dogs. But this owl, hopefully she is OK; despite making comical expressions and interesting photos, her stretch-and-yawn act every 15-20 seconds made me believe something is not alright with this poor thing.

Closer looks at a few of these shots can currently be had, o'er on Flickr.

110: Huit Hiboux

Top row (left to right): Inuit soapstone carving, perforated metal candle lantern, Peruvian carved wood owl. Middle row (left to right): Panamanian marble owl, portrait of my avatar owl (click here for all the backstory on how it was created), Guatemalan carved wood owl. Bottom row (left to right): Inuit-themed soapstone carving from Banff National Park, Kenyan-made stone owl carving.

I've used our unfinished basement for shots in the past, such as for PhotoFortnight's theme of night, and also when I snap pictures of jack-o-lanterns (you begin to get a sense the basement lends itself to imagery of a creepy bent). I secluded myself there recently for a brief exercise in candlelight photography. I used a pair of those ubiquitous IKEA tea lights to help with these one- to two-second exposure shots of owl collectibles and carvings that sit atop a mantle in our home's foyer (I also took photos of a stone garden gargoyle and a heavy iron hippo, which didn't make the cut for the owl-theme's sake). These owls came from a variety of sources; many are gifts from my mom who has headed to Central America the past few winters (and is currently trekking across Colombia and Ecuador).

Click here for a closer look at the grid layout above.

Twelve O'Clock And Owl's Well, Part II

This triptych (which can be seen larger here) was taken while waiting for night to come at Shoe Lake in Nopiming Provincial Park, to begin a volunteering stint for the Manitoba Nocturnal Owl Survey.

The survey was fruitful this year; Kerry, buddy Jason and friend Christine and I heard 15 total owls (of three species) over 20 stops along a rugged and sloppy logging road, as well as three drumming ruffed grouse and an angry, tail-slapping beaver in a nearby creek (scaring the breath right out of me). We also saw ravens, two bald eagles, three panicky snowshoe hares, one scurrying mouse, one waddling skunk and one shooting star.

Sadly for me, I forgot to bring the little connector dealie that attaches the camera to the tripod ­ – so there were no cool night shots to be had this year. Which may have not been a huge loss ­ despite more stars than I have perhaps seen in my entire life, the moonless night did not provide much in the way of tonal variations (unlike last year).


Addendum! The following weekend featured a once-in-a-blue-moon happening. A great grey owl, largest owl in North America and Manitoba's provincial bird, sat perched in our neighbour's tree for an entire Saturday afternoon. These owls are rare enough in their natural habitat (which is, by the way, not inner-city elm trees) – so a find like this, while Kerry and I conducted front yard spring cleaning, is unlikely to ever happen again in my lifetime. The sighting was also a great chance to use the new zoom lens, though the brightly overcast sky was quite unkind to a camera being pointed up into the trees.