Iain Leitch Photography

Near the start of July I had a free day on the weekend and the weather was quite nice so I took the opportunity to get out to some local hiking areas that I had been meaning to check out, nearish to Ottawa. I went first to Marble Woodlands, then down to Baird Community Forest, then over to Purdon Conservation Area.  Marble Woodlands My first hike of the day was to Marble Woodlands, which is a Mississippi Madawaska Land Trust property that is open to the public. There is a small parking lot at the entrance, which isn't signed from the road. You start off the hike going through a long grass meadow that had amazing wildflowers, dragonflies, and butterflies. The trail then transitions to a mixed forest. At the complete opposite end of the property there is a little patch of Hemlock trees, which was an interesting find. Near the end of the trail you transition back into a tall grass meadow and the trail leads you back to the parking lot. It was 3.3km long and took me 51 minutes to compl...

Our latest camping trip was to Murphy's Point Provincial Park on June 19–20. We stayed at site 197, which we'd stayed at before back in 2021. Murphy's Point is great as it's about a 1.5-hour drive from my home in Ottawa, and it's a well-managed and well-kept park. I find there are always people around, but it never books up fully, and the sites are spread far enough apart to make it feel private. We like site 197 as it's a bit on its own, and is right beside a water tap and a short walk to the vault toilets, or a bit longer walk to the comfort station if that's more your style. Once we had camp all set up, we wanted to go for a hike before it rained, as it was calling for scattered storms later that evening. Since my wife and I had been to this park before, we had done most of the trails except for Loon Lake (which is a loop) and McParlan House Trail (which is a there-and-back trail that branches off the Loon Lake Loop). My wife is pregnant, so we wanted som...

During the month of March, I went out twice to take photos, though only one trip produced anything worth posting. The second trip was more of a bird identification outing. I was hoping to add some new species to my life list, but came up empty.  The first trip, however, was more successful. The opening photo was taken at Rideau Falls in Ottawa. I've visted before on my bike in the summer, but this was the first time visiting in the winter and with my camera. It would have been nice to have my ND filter and a tripod along, but made do with what I had.  The remaining photos in this post are from Bates Island, which straddles the border between Ontario and Quebec. It is a well known spot for surfing during the summer, due to the standing waves, which is what the second photo is of. The third photo is of a Bald Eagle. I had been scanning the water for birds and the trees for owls, when my wife spotted a large bird perched at the top of one of the trees. After circling the tree for...

 This New Year's I set myself a goal of taking photos once a month, as I had noticed that I hadn't been as into photography the past little while as I had been in the past. I thought that this goal would help with that, and it sure has.  The photo subjects have been mainly birds during the months of January and February as they are the easiest colourful thing to find and photography in what are normally quite grey months of the year.  The unfortunate thing about this strategy is that you end up taking photos of a lot of the same species each time you go out, as only so many birds over winter here in Ottawa. Nevertheless you get what you can this time of year and make do. I took most of my photos these past two months in two locations: Fletcher Wildlife Garden here in Ottawa, and then out in the countryside southwest of Barrhaven. The countryside was where I found the more winter-specific species to the region such as the Snow Bunting, Snowy Owl and Lapland Longspur, ...

 Recently my wife and I went to Voyageur Provincial Park for the first time. We just did a short one night camping trip but quite enjoyed ourselves, and will happily camp there again.  We left work early on Friday and made it to the park by 2:30. It is just an hour drive from Ottawa for us, so we only needed to take half a day off.  Once we got to the site we were informed that there was a fire ban in effect as of that day, which was disappointing as we had planned to cook hotdogs over the fire for dinner but were able to adapt, because thankfully we had brought a little one burner stove to heat up water for coffee the next morning. This meant we were able to use a little frying pan to cook the hotdogs in, which really saved our dinner. As disappointing as a fire ban is, I completely understand why one was in effect because it was bone dry. The earth was super hard and compacted and some of the plants looked quite wilted and thirsty, not to mention that it was a humidex o...