Walk along a local pond

[Shortsighted]

When I awoke this morning it was only 16 degrees and therefore I figured that the mosquito menace in the park would be manageable, so I visited a local pond. I had never been there before so I didn't know what to expect. The pond itself was quite calm and only inhabited by a few Canada geese and a domestic duck. Soon after arrival I caught a glimpse of something white on the other side of the pond fall into the water with a loud splash. Whatever it was did not come up from the water, nor did it fly from the site, so I thought that it might be a large fish, such as a carp. If so, how did a carp get into a landlocked pond? Stocked maybe. If so, then where are the osprey? While I walked the short path back and forth I heard the same kind of loud splash three more times but the pond was not always in sight.
Anyway, a few birds were seen, including: American Song sparrow, Eastern kingbird, Eastern wood pewee, American goldfinch, Cardinal, robins, Gray catbird, and Barn swallows. All common birds because it is mid-summer after all. At least I didn't have to burn a tank-full of gasoline and leave a big carbon footprint in order to see a few birds.
There were a lot of bumblebees on the wildflowers and red berries all over the place, probably chokecherries.

[Dr. John]

Those look like chokecherries.  They make great pies (which are really had to eat with all the tiny pits) or a great sauce.

[Shortsighted]

I figured that they were chokecherries, although there are an astonishing variety of red berry bearing bushes in Ontario and I'm not well edified in the berry department. I guess that I should work on that. Anyway, I didn't know that they contained tiny pits so I would imagine that eating such a pie might burn more calories than are in the pie. There may be more than one kind of berry at the site because some looked opaque dark red while others appeared slightly translucent and egg-shaped.

[Ally]

What a lovely series of photos! I haven't gone out since church retreat. One of the SD cards just stopped working.

[Shortsighted]

You have more than one SD card in your T7i? When did that happen? My old T4i (650D) has only one. I call her Sarah and she goes on-and-on about how much I ignore her. For several reasons I haven't been out much either: too humid for my body type, every outing is like spending time at the mosquito farm, too few subjects to shoot in the vicinity without resorting to long excursions to parts unknown because I'm not feeling much like Anthony Bourdain these days. I did have a slightly surreal drive yesterday while on a concession road here in Pickering. Normally the roadside is bordered by bushes that periodically block my view of farms and fields but offering plenty of opportunity here and there to see far afield. Suddenly upon entering a shallow hollow the roadside verdure blocked all distant views, both left and right, and dead tree trucks stood tall in considerable numbers choked in Phragmites. The radio stuttered and went silent and my car slowed by itself, as if without helm-control, and time drifted into a sort of temporal molasses. I felt that I was on a dirt road through the Everglades. Just as suddenly the dirt road came out of the depression and the dead tress and Phragmites disappeared, the radio came back to life, my car sped up a bit and the strange feeling evaporated. DEE-dee-DEE-dee-DEE-dee. I must go back there some time.   

[Ally]

You have more than one SD card in your T7i? When did that happen? My old T4i (650D) has only one. I call her Sarah and she goes on-and-on about how much I ignore her. For several reasons I haven't been out much either: too humid for my body type, every outing is like spending time at the mosquito farm, too few subjects to shoot in the vicinity without resorting to long excursions to parts unknown because I'm not feeling much like Anthony Bourdain these days. I did have a slightly surreal drive yesterday while on a concession road here in Pickering. Normally the roadside is bordered by bushes that periodically block my view of farms and fields but offering plenty of opportunity here and there to see far afield. Suddenly upon entering a shallow hollow the roadside verdure blocked all distant views, both left and right, and dead tree trucks stood tall in considerable numbers choked in Phragmites. The radio stuttered and went silent and my car slowed by itself, as if without helm-control, and time drifted into a sort of temporal molasses. I felt that I was on a dirt road through the Everglades. Just as suddenly the dirt road came out of the depression and the dead tress and Phragmites disappeared, the radio came back to life, my car sped up a bit and the strange feeling evaporated. DEE-dee-DEE-dee-DEE-dee. I must go back there some time.   

Can I join you next time? I know it's never happening, but it's our tradition I ask and you say no.

[Shortsighted]

I've trained you well Grasshopper. I can't hear that word 'tradition' without conjuring the memory of Zero Mostel's singing voice as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Anyway, as you know by what I've previously stated, I don't plan (in advance) to go out because my time is not yet my own. Perhaps it will never be free and easy as I transition from one assignment of circumstance to the next one, which already scares the hell out of me. Moreover, I cannot concentrate when accompanied and would therefore be as unproductive and unsuccessful as full scale bankruptcy. In the field I fumble towards getting a photo when distracted. When solo, just me and my camera, I tend to enter a trance state relying on a sort of intuition as to what to do next, or what direction to tread. This happens even more so when I'm looking for non-bird subjects, whether in a park or in the thick of urban congestion. Any distraction that I can't ignore, such as a photo-buddy, and I simply don't see things in a photographic way anymore. The creative spigot slams shut, the creative juices cease to flow and I revert back to my normal useless state. Besides, your incandescent enthusiasm would blind me and then I would have to hide under a bush. Oh look, a spider ... I'm going to need flash. This is not how I expected my day would unfold, under a tree, in the shade, with an arachnid. I bet Ally has already filled one of her SD cards.

[Dr. John]

I figured that they were chokecherries, although there are an astonishing variety of red berry bearing bushes in Ontario and I'm not well edified in the berry department. I guess that I should work on that. Anyway, I didn't know that they contained tiny pits so I would imagine that eating such a pie might burn more calories than are in the pie. There may be more than one kind of berry at the site because some looked opaque dark red while others appeared slightly translucent and egg-shaped.

The arrangement of the berries and what I can see of the leaves seems consistent with chokecherries.  They turn almost black when fully ripe.  You can eat them raw, although they are quite astringent (hence the "choke" part of the name).  They are mainly pit, with a thin sliver of flesh and skin.  When putting them in pie, they are usually not pitted.  So eating a mouthful of pie involves endless working the flesh off the pit and spitting the pits back out on the plate.  It can take me 15-20 minutes to eat a slice of pie and you have to do this in company that tolerates spitting stuff onto your plate.  When making sauce, I can pass them through a barrier that retains the pits while smaller bits of flesh and skin can go through.  People also make jelly - Forbes Wild Foods sells a nice version.

[Shortsighted]

Seems like a lot or work. All that straining and stuff. I do most of my straining sitting down in a special room designed for that purpose. I don't suppose you've tried to ferment chokecherries to make a wine, of sorts. If the juice is so profoundly astringent it must need a lot of sugar and all that sugar is not without caveat. I've never seen anyone harvesting parkland berries, although I did see a couple of dickheads illegally engaged in picking fiddleheads in Colonel Danforth Park during April. One of them even took off shoes, rolled up their pants and waded across the creek to get to the other side, which is normally inaccessible terrain since there is no path on the east side of Highland Creek. I imagine that the water was ice cold so early in the spring. Bracing stuff!

[Dr. John]

I don't suppose you've tried to ferment chokecherries to make a wine, of sorts.

I have never seen chokecherry wine, but I'm sure people make it as that seems to be the case for anything that can be converted to alcohol.