Blair's Blog

It’s finally happened – a third driver in the family. Steven, at the last possible moment before turning 15 tomorrow, wrote the exam for his Learner’s Driver Permit. Well, last possible moment ignoring the effects of his birth being on the other side of the international date line. He’s been studying for the last couple of weeks and wanted to have the license before his birthday. So this afternoon, we headed to a registry and he passed the test on his first try.

On the way home, I let him drive for a bit – on a country road with no traffic around. Here is a quick shot that I managed to take of his maiden voyage. It probably could have been clearer, but I was a little distracted by all the yelling and clutching the dash with a death-grip…

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Time for an update on the duck situation. Momma duck has a name, Amanda. Alyssa chose the name because she felt that we couldn’t just generically refer to “the duck” or even to “Momma” duck. I guess that it just wasn’t proper to be on anything but a first name basis with someone who has chosen to raise their kids (well, eggs) right at your front door.
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Tags: Great Outdoors

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Yesterday, driving into Calgary in the afternoon to pick up the kids at school there were the most amazing cloud formations over the foothills. It isn’t too uncommon to see various unique kinds of clouds, such as wave clouds or lenticular clouds, forming as the westerly winds come over the Rockies towards the prairie. However, the clouds yesterday were so impressive that I had to stop and take a few pictures:

These shots really don’t do justice to the sheer scope of the cloud formation. There were at least 35 bands of the lenticular formations starting well north of the city continuing to the far south horizon. I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, but it would be really interesting to see a satellite image of southern Alberta at the same time (about 2100 UTC on 4 June 2012), the best I could find is this low resolution image for all of western Canada which doesn’t have enough detail along the western edge of the continental divide:

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So, I open up the front door today and step out side when, all of a sudden, there is this wild commotion in the shrub right beside me. Scared me out of a year’s growth! (Something I can ill-afford as there is an outside chance that my eldest son is contemplating being as tall as I am. It’ll never happen!)

Anyway, the next thing I see is a female Mallard duck flapping madly into the air from behind my irises. Once my pulse returns to normal, the answer to the question, “GAAH! What was that?!” becomes fairly readily apparent. 7 eggs nestled together in a nest under the spirea. We will have ducklings in the yard in about 3 or 4 weeks.

Update: Here is a picture of Momma duck and a shot of the nest on Saturday (3 June). I found out that Mallards typically lay 10 to 12 eggs, 1 per day. There was no new egg on Sunday, so maybe 10 will be it. Although the duck is still skittish, we can come and go through the front door as long as we make our way in and out without making sudden moves or noises.

Tags: Great Outdoors

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