What Santa Brought Me

I made out pretty well considering I barely celebrate Christmas!

From my brother I got this witty e-card.

One of the students gave me a traditional Karen woven cross-body bags.

Sylvain and I had agreed to exchange one gift each as a compromise. He got me two ceramic frying pans. Since I refuse to use Teflon and couldn’t afford ceramic when I first furnished my kitchen, poor Sylvain has been putting up with broken yolks on his over-easy eggs on Saturday mornings. No more!

Although his breaking the “one gift” rule didn’t surprise me, the Kobo Touch e-reader did. It’s so CUTE! I like the fact that the pages look like real pages with real ink, though for that you sacrifice being able to read in the dark. That’s okay. I love the way I can turn the page by swiping my finger in the same place and direction as I would to turn a page in a real book.

For dinner we were invited to his sister’s house, and she is the most amazing cook, so that was a fantastic treat in itself. (I’m not just saying that because she reads my blog, either.)

Equally exciting was what Sylvain did for me today. He drove me and his sister out to Kingsville to see a Great Grey Owl that had been reported there this week. This boreal species is rarely seen around here, but this seems to be an invasion year…certainly it is for the Snowy Owl.  I knew I might never get another chance in my lifetime to add this species to my life list, and I was becoming whinier with each passing day that we did not set out to try to view it (due to the busy-ness of the holiday).

We found the crowd of photographers and birders easily. What a handsome owl!

Great Grey Owl - Kingsville, ON - December 2011

Once Sylvain and his sister had taken enough photographs of this bird that the Peterson’s guide describes as “very tame,” we set off to try to see Snowy Owls in or around the farmers fields near Point Pelee National Park.

From the narrow dirt roads we did manage to see the white lumps among the dead stalks and remnants from this year’s harvest, but even with the scope we could barely make out the faces of the two snowies.  We have read and agreed to abide by the birder’s code of ethics, which prohibits, among other things: littering, trespassing or harassing stressed birds. And so we did not tramp across the farmer’s land to get a closer look–as some photographers chose to do.

After a washroom stop at the park, Sylvain decided to make one more loop around the fields that had the snowies. A woman approached with a small girl in the car. Had we seen an owl? We pointed out the two white blurs in the distance, one to our left and one to our right. Her shoulders drooped with disappointment.  We drove on up the road to head home. Suddenly Sylvain asked, “What’s that up there?”  He was pointing to the television antenna on the roof of the house we were passing.

“Is it real?” his sister asked.

“It has to be real, it’s moving!”

We jumped out of the car before it was even brought to a halt and turned our binoculars on the gorgeous white owl perched on the wire, haloed by sunshine and blue sky.  I waved to the vehicles back at the fields and soon the mom was pointing out the Snowy Owl to her small daughter. This was actually the most heavily barred of the three Snowy Owls we saw today. The others appeared whiter, at least from a distance.

Snowy Owl - Onion Fields - December 2011

What a great Boxing Day gift!

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