Iain Leitch Photography

 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...

This past weekend, I was out for a bike ride and had passed by Sawmill Creek when I spoted a Great Egret. I decide to go back a couple of days later with my camera to see if I could spot it again, and I was not disappointed.  Great Blue Heron Through the Reeds. Song Sparrow Green Frog Great Egret Great Egret Song Sparrow  

Recently I went camping a Murphy's Point Provincial Park, which is my favourite park to camp in Ontario. In my opinion is far better than Algonquin and Bon Echo and even Killarney. I saw a bunch of wildlife and even added to my birding life list which now stands at 58 birds.  There was a lot of centipedes at the park. There were also a lot of mushrooms sprouting. Mushrooms growing on a downed log. White Tailed Deer, I saw on a hike. Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker. Song Sparrow. A mushroom city. Not sure what this is. A mushroom in a sea of green.  

For the Canada Day long weekend, I went camping at a park I had never been to. Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park. For those that don't know where that is, it is located 3.5 hours Northwest of Ottawa or 0.5 hours East of North Bay. Amable du Fond River from a bridge in the park. Northern Crescent Butterfly A nice fern I saw on a hike. Gem Lake  View from the top of a very steep hike. Calico Pennant sunning itself on my car. A Green Frog in the swamp. Another one off the life list, an American Redstart.  

 I was finally able to go on my first camping trip of the season this weekend. Ontario had just announced a reduction of the COVID rules which allowed Ontario Parks to open for overnight camping. I went to Driftwood Provincial Park which was a 2.5-hour drive from Ottawa. Along the way we stopped at a great little chip truck on the side of the highway in Cobden, I highly recommend it.  Overall the trip was nice and it was great to get out into nature again, and away from the city. The downside of the trip was that there was a fire ban in place which meant no campfires or smores, and due to the park just reopening for camping a lot of the trails hadn't been maintained yet as there was plenty of fallen trees across some of them making it impassible.  The campsite that we had was great though, as it had its own private beach area just behind the site with a little path going down. The park is located on the Ottawa River so it was quite nice to swim in it. During the stay, I w...

Recently there has been a family of rabbits that have moved into my backyard. There appears to be a male and a female, with the male rabbit slightly larger than the female. I'm not too sure which one is in the pictures but overall it is fairly cute. These pictures were taken one evening when they were out looking for food. I was able to walk right down to the grass and snap some photos, as the rabbit wasn't scared of my presence due to me being out when they are a lot of the time. This has allowed the rabbits to grow accustomed to me and my presence as they know I don't pose any threat.  This photo is of a female Ruby-Crowned Kinglet hence the lack of a ruby crown. I spotted this bird as I was walking along a portion of the Avon Trail near Stratford. It was only in the tree for a brief second before it flew away, but I was still able to capture this photo which I really like and have added to my portfolio which can be seen here .  Bloodroot is native to t...

Welcome to the final blog post about my trip to Cuba. It has taken me almost two whole months to post all of the pictures I wanted to but I managed it. If you want to check out Part 1 , Part 2 or Part 3 just click the links. This part of my trip to Cuba will focus on a trip I took to Varadero which is the town closest to the resort and will include some pictures I took around the resort as well.  I am also trying something new by putting captions under each photo instead of explaining everything up here.      The first picture in this post is of a classic old Cuban car and a church I saw in Varadero. I thought this was a very Cuban picture with the church and the car together in one picture.    The two photos are of lizards I saw while talking around the town. I am not sure what the first species of lizard is in the first photo. The second lizard is called Allison's Anole.  The photo of the old black car I took as I liked...