As I was preparing supper this evening, the snowy egret made a return visit! I was ready with a longer camera lens, but my limited photo skills still didn’t produce great art. At least I got something for the record.
Snowy egret now has its own page, as is only fitting for a rare and welcome majestic beast.
I was lucky enough to spot a snowy egret as it walked down our river at 6:30 this morning. I had seen them many times in Florida near where my parents used to spend the winter, but I never remembered seeing one here before.
I grabbed my camera and binoculars and ran out onto the lawn to try to record this unusual bird, looking a bit of an unusual bird myself in my red plaid flannel PJs. Our neighbours are not close enough to see what I’m wearing, so citizen science need not be thwarted by decorum!
The egret waded and fished as it travelled around the little point of land in front of our house, nabbing and swallowing little fish. My photos were not very sharp, but in person I could see this white bird’s dark legs and comically yellow feet.
I uploaded the photos to iNaturalist and was surprised to find only one other snowy egret observation on PEI. I later confirmed with a biologist friend that they are quite rare here and are not known to breed this far north. I was chuffed to bits!
I’ve looked at this river view every day for decades, know the ebb and flow of both the river and the wildlife on it intimately and, I thought, completely, but turns out I still have more to learn. Every day brings new discoveries. What joy.
I’ve been a Setapp subscriber for a few months now. MacPaw, the company behind the Setapp service, are a Ukrainian company, something I only learned since the Russian invasion on February 24. MacPaw took many steps to protect their services, and are now using their apps in innovative ways to communicate to their clients and make their voices heard, like this release note for an update that basically was, really, just this note:
A new app showed up on the Setapp service this week, PhotosRevive. It promises to colourise black and white photos using some AI hocus pocus. I popped some photos in to see what it could do, and the results were mixed, but interesting.
You can tweak the PhotosRevive settings to make things look a bit better, but I’ve not had time to play with it yet. I like black and white photos, or am at least used to them, so probably wouldn’t have gone looking for this, but it’s a fun addition to the Setapp universe.