Fort Whyte walk and some birds

Had a great walk at one of our favorite destinations today. The weather was perfect and I got a few pics of some birds before the battery in my point'n shoot camera went dead. Wish I knew what kind of birds these were. I think the top one is a Downy Woodpecker and the bottom two are American Goldfinch?

The number of people with SLR cameras wandering around was astounding. It looked like everyone was itching to try out their cameras on the wild life. I saw a guy snapping away at a water muskrat another told me he was looking for warblers another was sneaking up on some geese with a little gosling following them around. Fun.

Trolley breaks while being transported

Trolley breaks while being transported, originally uploaded by mdcellphoto.

The trolley that was constructed for this weekends performance of Danny Schur's stage show Strike! broke while it was being driven to location.

The special performance is going to be held in front of City Hall on Saturday.

There was a bit of a tense moment right after it broke, but they soon realised that the damage could be fixed.

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Would love to take the hardware home

Would love to take the hardware home, originally uploaded by mdcellphoto.

Except it's decaf.

I'm at the gold medal game for the National Aboriginal Hockey Championship being held at the University of Manitoba Max Bell Centre.

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The Adventure of the Red Tailed Hawk Release

This past week I was witness to probably the funniest event ever.

Now, before I go any further I want everyone reading this to know that I love animals (except if you are an off-leash dog running at me... then all bets are off). I love photographing animals. I love the fact that there are groups who help injured animals. Injured wild animals.

The Wildlife Haven is one of those groups. Really nice people and they also know what they're doing. And it was a brilliant PR idea to invite our humour columnist to go out there and release a rehabilitated bird back into the wild. Everything our humour guy touches...well it kinda becomes bigger than anyone ever would think it could.

This event was a prime example.

You have to watch the video, but let me just say that you can't script this kind of stuff.



There is no way the people at Wildlife Haven could have known that when you invite our humour columnist to do something, well you are going to get humour. Even if it is scary dark humour. The kind of funny that makes you realize you are going to go to hell for laughing so hard.

The video could have included the bit where you see the bird fly into the barn and hit a beam and falls to the ground. It could have included more astonished and emotional outbursts from the humour columnist that were snort-your-coffee-out-your-nose-funny...

But it doesn't and that's probably a good thing.

We don't want people to think that we would laugh at the possibility that an innocent animal released by our humour columnist almost immediately broke its neck. It was fine.

It could have happened to anyone, just because it was our humour columnist doesn't mean anything. Really.

Winnipeg Goldeyes Open House

Winnipeg Goldeyes Open House, originally uploaded by mdcellphoto.

David Rubenfeld the balloon guy handed out around 200 balloons at the Open House tryouts for the Winnipeg Goldeyes at CanWest Park.

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Have you ever seen...?

Have you ever seen...?, originally uploaded by mdcellphoto.

A freezer full of Rats? How about three of them?

They were all food for animals that were being rehabilitated.

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Canadian Geese and everything you wanted to know about them

Went out to Fort Whyte Alive earlier this week hoping to get a good stand alone image and maybe a video of the Bison, but was persuaded to cover the Canadian Geese angle.

I shot a video and here it is... enjoy!

Breezy Point

Breezy Point, originally uploaded by mdcellphoto.

Got sent out to Breezy Point at the last minute today. Didn't even have time to pick up my rubber boots. Yuk.

The media circus was escorted to a strech of Breezy Point where some of the houses were heavily damaged. We were not allowed to leave the road and go onto anyones property without permission of home owners so it seemed like the trip was going to be very boring until some came home. As we were wrapping up and heading back to the cars someone drove up and got out of her car. Yay!

Lots of mud on my shoes, that's ok I needed new ones anyway.

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