An Unseasonable Day at the Spit

This darned weather. We’d been ensconced in stubborn snow for a few weeks and I’d gotten complacent. I needed desolate, frozen-over landscapes. I figured I could get them anytime. So of course the first opportunity in the new year is after a few days of unseasonability and all that stubborn snow has disappeared.

Pictured: bleh.

We make do! The brown expanse of dead plants still paints the picture of desolation and I’m sure we’ll get one or two more solid whalloppings of white before the season’s out to catch those visuals. 

This was a bit of a mercenary trip, filling in some unexciting visual gaps across a few episodes, but in that it was successful - just not thrilling.

Near the entrance to the spit, a red-tailed hawk also obliged me by perching on a tree directly above the pedestrian path, and being very patient while I ran around catching him from a few angles and focal lengths, especially important with my 400mm since the episode brewing about them has to do with eyesight.

The formerly frozen over sections of the lake had started to melt, offering more sheltered areas for waterfowl. But it seemed as though the waterfowl didn’t quite trust them yet. Most were still trying their luck far out on the open lake, too far out to be worth getting on camera. 

At the floating bridge, it was just a family of trumpeter swans and a lone beaver making the rounds. 

This is their album cover.

I took the opportunity to finally dunk the GoPro a couple times, a kind of POV of diving ducks. The intent of the episode is to suggest a world of easier winter food beneath the surface. As a first attempt, these short dives didn’t quite do it - the bottom looked desolate and rocky. Which of course it’s going to - it’s not like in the winter it’s still a garden of eden down there. But I’d love to find some spots that show what, exactly, all these waterfowl are rooting around for, even if it is scarce. I have a notion Humber Bay Park may be better for that.

And, no surprise, the GoPro gave up after about 5 seconds in the frigid water. I could bring it back to life by popping the battery out and back in, but I couldn’t count on more than the briefest dive with it. I guess this is just a hardware limitation? For a camera associated with a lot of winter sports, it sure is a wimp when it comes to temperature. It’s gotten to the point sometimes where I’m convinced something’s wrong with mine and then I go through all the steps of checking the firmware and factory resetting it and… nope. If this isn’t just ‘the way GoPros are’ my only other guess is that my third party batteries (which to be clear have held up great in any warm weather conditions) are especially susceptible to cold.

I took my time on the way back, waiting on the sun to go down since some of those visual gaps I needed to fill were nighttime-specific.

I stopped in at a cove reliable for trumpeter swans where it seemed that they’d also hunkered in for the evening - I’d never seen so many in that one place on previous trips. I caught some footage of them as well for the long-gestating, utterly unwieldy story of trumpeter swans in Canada that has been back-burnering for a couple years now.

I promise, guys, aaanny year now...

And with a few semi-successful time lapses and nighttime branches, I’d say trip successful.

I’m hoping soon to be able to hit a couple of other spots on opposite sides of the city - Ashbridge’s Bay and Humber Bay Park - rumoured to be pretty safe bets for hooded mergansers in the winter. And fingers crossed for at least one more significant snowfall - just enough to make everything nice and wintery, I mean.