Inside Caledon, Ontario

Some more Purple Finch pictures taken in my Caledon backyard by my fiance. See Wikipedia for more info on Purple Finchs. First photo shows a close up of it eating, the second photo is of a male and female purple finch and the third photo is of recent late snow storm in Caledon, Ontario which caught many of the birds off guard. Photos were taken with my zoom lens and other than being re-sized they are original and haven’t been modified or enhanced. Click on the photos for large pictures.

Just a quick picture I took the other day in the Zehrs parking lot in Bolton as I stopped to get some groceries. I thought the sunset looked neat and snapped a few pictures. I am glad now that sun is finally staying out later in evenings, much better to look at this than coming home in pitch black every day. Photo was resized and cropped slightly to remove another light poll on the right hand side but unaltered otherwise.

Its definitely starting to look and feel more like spring now and after this past winter it can’t come soon enough. I’m starting to notice lots of birds coming back now, Robins which is a good sign of spring as well as Purple Finch’s (pictured above) which I snapped in my Caledon backyard. The Purple Finch is one of 24 birds in the genus Carpodacus and is included in the finch family, Fringillidae, which is made up of passerine birds found in northern hemisphere and Africa. The Purple Finch was originally described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1789. See Wikipedia for more info on Purple Finchs. This photo was actually taken by my fiance with my cam and zoom lens and was adjusted only slightly in the program Photomatix to bring out more of the colour.

I took this photo of the bright moon in my caledon backyard a week ago. The weather was a little warmer and the moon light was creating a neat effect over the tree line so continuing along with my experimenting of night time photography I took some shots. The photo above is actually a blended mixture of two images, one with a shorter exposure to get the moon’s details and the other with a longer exposure to get the background imagery. Click on the image above for a larger more detailed photo. I used the program Photomatix and its Exposure Blending feature to create the final image. As the weather gets warmer I plan to experiment further with similar shots like this.

My fiance just happened to notice this coyote out of the corner of her eye this morning as we looked out into the back field behind our house. Up until now we have heard them at night from time to time howling so we knew they came close sometimes but haven’t actually seen back there until today. The coyote was following the same path i that field that the deer usually follow in the summer time. It was suggested to me that it might actually be a wolf, looking at pictures on Google Images still makes it hard to tell as they both do look pretty similar but I think it is a coyote. The photo was taken around 8:00am this morning, it was cloudy with snow flurries starting so the picture isn’t the most crisp but not bad considering, only a minor touch up in photoshop to adjust the contrast. Click on the above image for a larger picture or the cropped photo to the left for a close up.

With spring just around the corner the ice is starting to melt on many of the ponds in the area, I caught this Canadian Goose walking along the dangerous ice. Although many geese stay year round now those that did leave appear to be returning, I am seeing more and more of them in the Caledon area as the weather gets warmer. Photo was taken along Highway 50 near the Albion Hills Conservation Area. I used my zoom lens(70-300mm) to take the photo and used the HDR software Photomatix to brighten and enhance it, click on the image above for a larger photo.

It was warm this morning so I went out for a quick drive hoping I might see some deer but struck out on that. I did however catch this Blue Jay on Humber Station in northern part of Caledon. I would have liked to have gotten a closer shot but this was the best I could do this morning. Photo was enhanced with the program Photomatix to bring out the colours a little bit better of the Blue Jay and reduce the ugly cloudy sky. Click on the image for a large photo. On a semi-related note, spring training for the Toronto Blue Jays is already under way, Go Jays Go!

Lorraine Symmes member of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens

When looking for a house to buy in the Caledon area back in summer 2007 I remember stumbling across many homes for sale in the Winston Churchill & Olde Baseline road area, also very noticeable if you drive around the area are red stop signs saying “James Dick STOP Rockfort Quarry”. As a non resident of the area at the time I had no idea what was going on but a quick search on the web revealed the whole troubling story. For more information see the Coalition of Concerned Citizens website which has very detailed and up to date information on the status of the Rockfort Quarry if you are not familiar with the situation.

There was good news today though for residents in the area, word is the Town of Caledon has rejected the proposed Rockfort Quarry. Here is a small except from the Caledon Enterprise reporting on the news.

The Rockfort Quarry application has had its fair share of jeers from the public over the 11-year process, but Caledon Town Council gave residents something to cheer about Tuesday night when councillors announced their official opposition of the plan.

The decision ultimately lies with the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), not the Town of Caledon, but support can’t hurt the cause. The OMB hearing is set to begin in May, and will decide whether or not to allow James Dick Construction Limited (JDCL) to mine the 89-hectare site at the corner of Olde Base Line and Winston Churchill Boulevard. Credit Valley Conservation (CVC) and Caledon Council have both decided to oppose the application, and the Region of Peel is set to make a decision on their position in April.

“I’m just ecstatic,” said Penny Richardson, president of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens (CCC), a resident group that has opposed the open pit mine application from the start. “Once again the Town of Caledon has come through. They’re very responsive to their citizens. We’d actually expect no less of them.”

For the full article, click here.

According to an annual survey by Maclean’s magazine of the most dangerous cities in Canada, Caledon for the second year in a row was deemed the safest community in Canada.

An excerpt from the Macleans article:

Certainly affluence helps shape Canada’s statistically safest place, Caledon, Ont., a scenic, semi-rural suburb northwest of Toronto. It is, at least by the most recent numbers, a larger, real-life equivalent to such fictional television inventions as America’s Mayberry, or Dog River, Sask., of Corner Gas fame — an idyllic world of carefree kids and unlocked doors, or more likely, of very good security systems. Caledon’s policing district of almost 71,000 residents comes by its reputation honestly (naturally), with no murders or aggravated assaults in 2006. Caledon has the third-lowest level of robbery among the 100 areas and the lowest rates of break and enter, sexual assault and auto theft, combining for an overall crime rate of 107 per cent below the national average.

To read more about Macleans survey, visit their blog here or the full article here.

This small little woodpecker has been in my backyard for quite a while but I haven’t been able to get a good picture of him until now. I am not entirely sure but I think it is either a female Downy Woodpecker or a female Hairy Woodpecker, if you know please let me know. I have seen these little guys all over Caledon and if it wasn’t for the wood pecking you might easily mistake it for chickadee or some other small little bird. Picture was taken with my Olympus 70-300mm zoom lens and was then cleaned up and enhanced with the program Photomatix. Below is a small Animated GIF I made of it pecking at the white birch tree.