The Common Grackle

Another bird I see here (in Mom and Dad's backyard on the eastern shore of Lake Huron) that I have never seen at my own feeder in BC is the
Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula). This bird is similar to a crow but smaller, slimmer and with a relatively longer tail. It has gorgeous lustrous feathers, indigo or deep purple (not the band) on its head and bronze-coloured on it's back. Mom likes "that black bird" about as much as I like Starlings!

Again, I can't claim credit for this photo. Good bird photography requires skills and equipment that I don't have. Yet.

I did take a bunch of tree clean-up pictures this week. A heavy snowfall in late February caused considerable damage to trees in the neighbourhood, including Mom and Dad's cedars. When I get home and have had a chance to cull and edit the photos, I'll post them here.

Birds Seen In Mom and Dad's Backyard

I'm visiting my Mom and Dad on the eastern shore of Lake Huron for a couple of weeks so I'm not in my usual kitchen window location looking out for new species in my own backyard. But they also have bird feeders and I'll list a couple of their backyard species that don't visit my West Coast neighbourhood.

This morning we had a solitary male Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis), brilliant red with a black mask and looking fat with puffed up feathers against the cold. He perches at the side of the feeder, looking watchfully around as he uses his powerful-looking beak to break apart the sunflower seed hulls.

Sitting on top of the feeder's roof, also with puffed-up feathers is a Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura) patiently waiting for his turn. The Dove is large enough to make perching on the narrow bench a trick that requires some practice. This one has obviously had many opportunities to perfect the art of squeezing his bulk into the cramped space against the slanted side of the feeder.

www.ebird.org is a website developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society where you can submit and track your own bird sightings anywhere in North America. You can keep track of your sightings in multiple locations over time and create reports. It's an easy way to contribute to research into North American bird populations and migration. The website also lets you access its sightings database and you can plot species statistics on a map.

That's it for today's blog entry. Mom and Dad's PC keyboard is very different (ergonomically shaped with much larger key caps) from my own and typing becomes an exercise in frustration what with fixing all the typos and having to close that irritating "My Computer" window that pops up every time I miss the too short space bar.

Sunshine Coast Trip, Part Two

Part One of this trip is here.

The next morning, after an excellent breakfast served by our hostess at the Bonniebrook Lodge, we got back into the car and headed up 101 on the coast past Robert’s Creek and Sechelt into new unexplored territory.

Halfmoon Bay has a well-kept business-like harbour in a sheltered bay surrounded by high treed slopes. Fishing boats were tied up at the government wharf.


Garden Bay seems more of a recreational boater’s destination although very few boats were around when we stopped by. The Royal Vancouver Yacht Club has a facility here for the use of its members. The caretaker stopped to chat when he noticed us snooping around. I don’t think he really believed that my sister is a member of the Yacht Club.



The road twisted up and down and around and around as we drove further up the coast. North of Madeira Park, we came to Ruby Lake, an idyllic little lake with a glassy reflective surface and small tree-covered islands, surrounded by forest.


If you look carefully you can see houses here and there between the trees.



We drove as far as Earl’s Cove where the ferry leaves for Saltery Bay, before turning around. It was lunchtime and we turned up a narrow little road to Egmont looking for someplace to have lunch. And we found the Backeddy Pub. It’s even more rustic than it looks in these pictures!


Nine or ten of the locals were gathered to watch the final Women’s Hockey game between Canada and Sweden. And that’s where we were when Canada won the Olympic Gold.


It would have been great to also go to Skookumchuk Narrows to see the Skookumchuk Tidal Rapids but we didn’t have time this trip. Homeward bound, we drove back to Langdale to catch the 4:30 ferry back to Horseshoe Bay.

In the Neighbourhood of Mount Kilimanjaro

I was going to finish up part two of the Sunshine Coast trip today, but I was clearing up some old unread emails and came across NASA Earth Observatory's latest email newsletter. So I was clicking on the links in the email and ...well, you're getting another post on volcanoes instead!

Here is the new image from NASA’s Earth Observatory showing the Crater Highlands to the west of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. There are several volcanoes in the image and the largest crater, Ngorongoro Crater (more correctly called Ngorongoro Caldera), is the largest unbroken and unflooded caldera in the world. The Ngorongoro volcano was one of the world’s tallest mountains along with Mount Kilimanjaro before it exploded and collapsed 2 million years ago. The crater is about 19 kilometres (12 miles) across and the rim is 600 metres (2,000 feet) above the crater floor.

Today, Ngorongoro Crater is home for tens of thousands of big East African wild animals, including lions, elephants, wildebeests, zebras, rhinos, Thomson's gazelles, and water buffaloes.

This web page (where I snagged this photo and where you can see a much larger version of the photo) has magnificent photographs of the Crater and its wildlife.

Ngorongoro Crater is on the eastern edge of the Serengeti. Both the Crater and Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park are sites popular with safari-bound tourists. Stephen and Theresa Woo tell the story of their Tanzania safari in their photo journal. Lots of pictures!

Another interesting spot in the same area is the Olduvai Gorge, where in 1959 Louis and Mary Leakey discovered the 1.8 million year old fossilized skull of zinjanthropus, a human ancestor. The Gorge is rich with fossils, ancient tools, and footprints left millions of years ago.

To explore Tanzania further, here are some clickable maps.

Sunshine Coast Trip, Part One

My sister and I went to the Sunshine Coast one weekend this February.


Here we are (my car is the green one to the right), at Horseshoe Bay in the lineup for the 11:20 am ferry, Queen of Coquitlam. It's a 40-minute ride across to Langdale.


We're off the ferry and headed into Gibsons. Mount Elphinstone has some snow.


In Gibsons we went down to the beach (Hopkin's Landing) to have a look at the house where Kay and Art lived when they were in Gibsons. They could watch the ferries come and go from their deck.




Next we had lunch at Molly's Reach, famous for being the place where the CBC series, The Beachcombers, was filmed in the 1970s. We had excellent soup and sandwiches. Just up the street you have a good view (if you ignore the parked cars, rooftops and hydro poles). Maybe I should have walked farther uphill for the photo.


Our Bed & Breakfast, Bonniebrook Lodge, is located right next to Chaster Creek. I suppose "Bonniebrook" Lodge makes for better marketing than Chaster Creek Lodge. It's very nice. You have a choice of private cabins beside the creek or suites in the main house with a great view across Georgia Strait. We had a cabin with a large Jacuzzi-style bath and a cozy gas fireplace. If you go, I would recommend bringing warm slippers, the cabin floor was quite cold!

Here's the beach across the road from our B&B



and a tiny park with a cairn in honour of Captain Vancouver who visited the area in 1792.


Robert's Creek, a short 10 minute drive from Gibsons, is a quaint little community known (perhaps undeservedly) for its granola-heads and artsy/craftsy inhabitants. It also has a picturesque beach.



Davis Bay and Wilson Creek, another 10 minute drive, is a very attractive community on the southeast side of Sechelt. There are large new subdivisions going up in the hills high above the shoreline. We drove up around in the new streets - lots of great water views from up there. The well-maintained shoreline has convenient free parking, a boardwalk, benches to sit on, and a pier.



It's mid-afternoon and the sun is low in the west.




Sechelt, a town with population around 8000, is not quite as pretty, largely due to the large gravel/sand mining operation which seems to be visible from almost everywhere. We drove a little ways up Porpoise Bay above Sechelt for better views. No photos, you'll have to take my word for it, there are excellent views up there of steep treed mountainsides and Porpoise Bay itself.

Back at B&B, we relaxed and had a pre-dinner glass of wine. My sister studied Mount Kilimanjaro maps and National Geographic's latest article on the Serengeti. You can never be too prepared for a trekking adventure! I played with my iPod and looked at the photos I had taken so far.


In Gibsons we had dinner at a Mediterranean/Greek-style restaurant, Leo's Tapas & Grill. Very Good!

Back again at B&B, it was a clear night and stars were clearly visible. I suggested going to the beach to stargaze. So, in the dark, we stumbled around off the road, groped blindly over the logs and driftwood piled at the high water mark and teetered carefully across the stony beach to look at the stars. Did I mention it was very dark? I did pack a flashlight for the trip but of course I left it back in the cabin! We could see the Milky Way and looking west across Georgia Strait, the lights of Nanaimo on the horizon.

Part Two of this trip is posted here.

Dominion Homes: Plenty of New News Lately!

Dominion Homes (NASDAQ:DHOM) is proving to be a more interesting stock to follow than I expected when I first talked about purchasing it.

Here’s a recap of the latest news (some bad, some encouraging):

Feb 21 - Customer lawsuit #1. Plaintiffs with mortgage problems.

Feb 21 – Customer lawsuit #2. Plaintiffs have financing issues and claim the value of their homes was misrepresented.

Feb 23 – Customer lawsuit #3. More mortgage and down payment issues.

Feb 27 – DHOM 2005 earnings announcement. In summary, revenue down, income down, sales down, backlog down. Includes the comment, “we do not expect to be profitable for the first quarter of 2006.”

I also listened to Dominion’s Feb 28th earnings conference call. The webcast will be available to listen to until later in May. They make lots of comments about the initiatives underway to turn things around, e.g., reducing excess land inventory, paying down debt, and the Wells Fargo home mortgage venture.

Feb 28 – Dominion Homes makes a deal to have Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) take over its mortgage services. I think Dominion’s new CFO is starting to earn his keep!

Feb 28 – A bizjournals.com article discusses the Wells Fargo venture. It also says that DHOM is being subjected to “questions” from the State of Ohio and a HUD (US federal government agency) audit.

Feb 28 – Marketwatch publishes an article discussing the downturn in the US housing market. Mentions “troubled” Dominion Homes and another homebuilder also experiencing a decline in sales.

Mar 1 – An article in the Columbus Ohio newspaper, The Columbus Dispatch, on the Wells Fargo deal starts out “A plan to spin off Dominion Homes’ mortgage division will make it impossible for the public to continue tracking the embattled home builder’s loan defaults.” This newspaper, in the middle of Dominion’s main market, has lots of articles related to Dominion Homes and problems in Ohio’s housing market and mortgage financing.

Mar 2 – Dominion Homes hires a new President and COO. This is the second new “C” level executive hired since the beginning of the year.

Exciting times!

Despite all of this, the stock hasn’t moved as much as you might expect in the last couple of weeks. Maybe most of the negativity has already been absorbed into the stock price. It did drop from about $20 to $10 last year.

I’m maintaining my stop loss at $7.00.