Coyotes are changing

This week a young folk singer died after being mauled by a pair of coyotes. Hiking the Skyline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, 19-year-old Taylor Mitchell, of Toronto, was airlifted to a hospital in Halifax but died from her extensive injuries.

To put us all at ease, editorial writers like Paul Berton, of The London Free Press/Sun Media, are telling us, "unlike wolves, coyotes tend to be solitary and do not travel in packs."

Not according to the Nova Scotia Department of Resources that has posted pertinent information on the department Website. "Coyotes do travel and hunt in family units or packs, generally there is a dominate pair with young of the year."

Berton continues to mislead his readers by writing that coyotes "are smaller than medium-sized dogs and not designed to take down large prey..."

Not according to the Website All Points North which states that whitetail deer are the "primary diet for the eastern coyotes in the Adirondacks."

If you are thinking that deer are rather large prey to be downed by something smaller than many family pets, you're right to wonder. Truth is, according to Project Coyote, folks like Berton are confusing the coyotes found in the west with those found in the east. The eastern coyote is a much bigger predator. A 55-pound female eastern coyote was radio-collared in New England. Large males of almost 50-pounds have been reported in Nova Scotia in the area where the young hiker was attacked.

Why are these coyotes so large and why are they hunting in packs — possibly because they are not purebred coyotes but a product of a "canid soup." The most plausible scenario is that the Eastern coyote is often a hybrid between coyotes and a small type of wolf — the red wolf, although some believe the grey wolf may also be part of the mix. DNA sampling of coyote tissue in the Northeast has confirmed the presence of wolf DNA.

The Nova Scotia Department of Resources believes the Eastern coyote has significant wolf and dog characteristics resulting from interbreeding and producing an animal "twice the size of . . . the western coyote." This is not an animal to be lightly dismissed as simply looming "large" in "the human imagination" as Berton writes.

It was not until 1977 that the first coyote was trapped in Nova Scotia. Since then they have dispersed across the province. The danger coyotes pose to people is not great, that said, there have been three recorded incidents of people bitten or attacked in Nova Scotia since 1995. Newspaper articles record that across Canada between 1998-2008 there were 24 incidents resulting in injury. It must be noted that these were mostly scratches or puncture wounds. Until this week, there were no deaths.

It is much the same story in the States. Attacks on joggers, hikers, cyclists and children are increasing, especially in southern California. A rash of coyote attacks on children in 2008 led to the closure of a park in southern Cal. "People cannot be ambivalent about coyotes," said Harry Morse of the California Dep't of Fish and Game.

Most injuries are minor but one victim of a coyote attack required 200 stitches.  And back in 1981 a Glendale, CA, girl was attacked and killed while playing outside her home.

In areas where aggressive coyote behaviour has been reported, people are wise to take note. In most cases, simple precautions are all that is necessary. The following, based on advice given by the CBC seems prudent.

•  In areas where coyotes have been spotted, be prepared. The best defence is a good offence. Carry a whistle, flashlight and/or personal alarm. This is especially important for small children who play outside or walk to school.
• If confronted by an aggressive coyote, stand your ground. Stay put and look it in the eye. Do not look away and never run as it is more likely to consider you prey, give chase and seriously harm you.
• Be aggressive yourself by waving your arms, stomping and yelling loudly in a deep voice. You are trying to deter it from coming closer.
• Don't walk alone in areas with known high coyote activity. Walk with a companion and stay together.
• Don't lure coyotes with food. Coyotes are scavengers and will be attracted by food left outside for pets, meat scraps left in compost buckets and garbage bins that do not seal tightly.

There is little reason to fear coyotes but there is no reason not to have great respect for them. The coyotes in eastern Canada are a dynamic, evolving species with a changing genetic make-up.

For another take on coyotes in Ontario see Anatomy of a Coyote Attack by Harold MacGregor. Be warned, he has posted pictures which some may find difficult to view.

Bad genes may cause bad driving!

An editor at Digital Journal turned me on to this story and so I'm just linking to my take on the report out of Irvine, California.

I'd be interested to know what Olivia Judson would say about this study.
Photo by Steve Zylius / University Communications

UCI neurologist Dr. Steven Cramer, who studies brain repair after stroke and brain remodeling, published a study suggesting that bad driving may in part be genetically based.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Art isn't 9 to 5

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound? If an artist creates a body of work and no one is there to see, is it still art?

A friend, Sheila, in Montreal is a truly fine artist but somewhat private and secretive. She is driven to quietly create. Photography, pencil sketches, oil paintings, wood sculptures and more are all in her remarkable and extensive repertoire.

Name an artistic endeavour, such as film making, and you will discover that she's tackled it, done it, and filed her completed work in her bulging portfolio.

This is a woman for whom everything is art. Everything demands, and receives, creative attention. A simple lemon pie in her hands becomes a work of art exhibiting culinary creativity. At the very least, her pies are works of fine craftsmanship, beautiful to behold.

Wonderfully tart, thanks to fresh lemons and a bit of lemon zest, this is a pie that owes nothing to Shirriff lemon pie filling. Her pies are truly her pies.

Nosing about Sheila's kitchen, I came upon the cookbook she gave her husband. Each page illustrated with a pencil sketch. The drawing above the challah recipe, a traditional Jewish ceremonial bread, was a strong, stylized image. Then I came upon the lasagna illustration and I gave a loud gasp. From the other room I heard, he's found the lasagna recipe, and then laughter.

This woman has been creating art her entire life. Since her graduation from art school decades ago, she seems to have never taken a break. Except for her 9-5 job, she has dedicated her life to the pursuit of the real. (A Hans Hofmann reference-.)

My wife went to the Ontario College of Art. We have two of her works from that period on our walls. But when she left the college, for the most part, she left her personal involvement with art behind.

I attended art school in Detroit and I got a degree in filmmaking from Ryerson in Toronto. Ask me how many of the students in my classes actually went on to work in art or film. The answer is not many. This is not uncommon.

One thing that one learns in art school is that art is tough. Art is not just lines or colour on a stretched canvas. I would argue that a lot of fine art is the culmination of the artist's thoughts on the subject at hand and the artist's visceral reaction to the work as it takes shape.

Sheila spends weeks thinking about her art, planning, anticipating, and then modifying her approach continually while she works. Once she has the statement complete and on display in a finished piece, she creates another work building on a different visual riff on the original theme.

For instance, think of her rich, complex, series of flower paintings. One theme in these works is the fleeting nature of time; flowers bud, bloom and shrivel. This is a powerful theme and the organic, swirling flowers are steadied, grounded by the repeated visual riff of different, large geometric shapes in each piece in the series.

Sheila deserves a show. She has earned one.

Cheers,
Rockinon

Tar spot on maples

Today's blog is a rip-off of a report from Guelph University by W.A. Attwater. I think it is best to ensure accuracy and so I am leaving this report essentially untouched.

Whenever I've seen round, black dots on maple leaves, I've wondered what they were and what should be done. If you have thought the same, read on.

These distinctive round to irregular black, spots found on infected maple leaves are known as tar spots. Not noticeable until late summer, tar spots are caused by two species of Rhytisma fungus.

The first, Rhytisma acerinum, produces black, tar-like spots about 1.25 cm or more in diameter on the upper surface of infected leaves. The second species, R. punctatum, produces patches of small, 1mm wide spots and is often called speckled tar spot.

The thickened black spots are fungal tissue called stroma. Red, silver, Norway (including the varieties with red leaves) sugar and Manitoba maples as well as others are affected.

Both fungi survive between seasons on the fallen diseased leaves. In the spring, spores are produced within the black stroma and are carried by air currents to young maple leaves where they start new infections. Unlike many other foliar diseases, Rhytisma spp. do not continue to cause new infections throughout the summer

Infections first show up as yellow or pale green spots on the leaf surface in the early spring or summer. The black, raised tar-like spots develop within these spots in mid to late summer. Severely infected leaves may be shed.

Although tar spots are conspicuous, they are seldom so injurious in home gardens to justify spraying with a fungicide. As the strong visual appearance develops late in the growing season, the overall health of the trees is rarely affected.

To reduce the amount of disease overwintering, rake up fallen leaves in the autumn and destroy or remove them from the yard.

Is this the giant killer?

I've been remiss in my handling of this blog lately. I still have been posting daily stuff but not here. As you may know, I am a retired photojournalist and have some strong feelings about the direction that our news media is heading. For the past few days I have been immersing myself in some citizen journalism.

The site is Digital Journal and it purports to be a place for citizen journalists to post news and even get paid for it. The truth, and I am sure the people running the site realize this, is that this site is providing a framework for professional journalists to work outside the confines of media owned newspapers, etc. (Even their reporters who have never worked for a paper, or other media outlet, show a degree of competence that says professional.)

Why would a journalist want to do this? Well, maybe the big paper contracted in size and the cutback cut the journalist's job. There are a lot of trained, talented people out there who, if they knew about Digital Journal, might be keen to file stories, real news stories, to this Internet site.

I have made three postings. (And I was not responsible for the art accompanying the story. I believe these are wild turkeys!) All my stories were inspired by the mainstream media (MSM) but I backwards engineered my pieces by going to the press releases or reports or whatever that the original stories relied on and worked up my stories from there. My stories and the MSM stories look very similar but because we shared common sources and not because I simply ripped them off.

I was chatting with a fellow who worked for Canada's major papers. He was telling me that when they went online it was so complicated at first that the best brains in the newsroom spent more than an hour attempting to post the day's news, and failed.

I'm sure it is easier now but a person I chatted with at another paper told me just recently that it took the better part of half an hour to post a story. This is nuts. Who writes their software?

I can post a story on Digital Journal with a simple click. I can spell check before filing with a couple of clicks. I can return and edit a posted story with a simple click. The Digital Journal is slick. Where this Internet media experiment will lead, is anyone's guess.

But my gut feeling is that we are seeing the birth of a new way of providing us with our news. It is not the gonzo free-for-all method of pure citizen journalism; it is more like a cooperative effort of independent, capitalistic, professional journalists working free of the restraints of the present media giants.

Is Digital Journal supplying the framework that could prove to be the giant killer?
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Remember, for neat pictures taken in the London area check out Rockin' On: London Daily Photo.

Shoot fast, shoot often, shoot well

Think of this as a guest column from Rockin' On: Photography. I love the pictures and I think the advice is worth giving to everyone and not just budding photographers.

Cheers,
Rockinon
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When I was a news shooter for The London Free Press we never shot just one image from an assignment. One picture leads to another. This angle leads to that angle. The opportunities seem almost infinite.

In the film era there was a check on our drive to shoot just one more picture - the film. You had to pace yourself or you would run out. You only shot the stuff that seemed truly good. You learned to be somewhat discerning. I say somewhat because I still recall seeing photogs returning from assignment with six or more rolls of exposed film.

Well, film is history and the check on our trigger finger has been removed. This is both good and bad. Often pictures that didn't seem that great at the moment they were taken, prove to be brilliant when properly cropped in the enhancement process. There's no excuse for letting a picture opportunity slide by today.

Well, there is one excuse. If you shoot way too much, you'll run the risk of missing some good stuff in the editing process. The room for digital images on your disk may seem infinite but your time isn't. It is still wise to be somewhat discerning.

All of that said, if you get a chance for a picture, take it. And let it take you.

Saturday I was on my way to the mall to buy some jeans. I saw a couple of hot-air balloons and stopped for a quick picture - the image of the balloon with the apartment building in the foreground.

I liked the picture so much that I decide to chase the balloons. They were drifting over the southwestern edge of the city, heading for the open fields of the countryside. I might get a nice hot-air balloon at sunset shot, I thought.

Shooting with a six-year-old Canon SD10, a point and shoot with a fixed wide angle lens, it's work finding images. When one balloon dipped low and near, I pulled my car over, jumped out, leapt the water-filled-ditch and ran into the field. I shot quickly. Composing and recomposing my images. The result is on the left.


 I thought I might be able to capture something even better. As the balloon rose slowly to clear some distant trees, I jumped into my car and sped off in search of the next country road taking me to the balloons.

At one point, I thought I was too far away to get a picture but it looked as if the balloon was landing and the fun was at an end. This isn't film, I thought - shoot something. The basket below the balloon was skimming about two or three feet above a field but it did not make a clear silhouette because of some a dark grove of trees immediately behind.

I waited. The balloon didn't touch down but moved past the trees. I had my shot. Click!

Within moment the hot-air balloon touched down and the fun was over. I headed home. On the way home I stopped for the picture of the fall coloured trees reflected in the still pond. I never did stop for new jeans.

The lesson: shoot fast, shoot often, shoot well. Oh, and have fun!

Are there still words best left unsaid?

Maybe I see newspapers differently that you do. To me newspapers are special. I invite a newspaper into my home. It sits with me every morning at my breakfast table and shares stories with me, brings me up to speed on what has happened over the past 24 hours, while I drink my coffee, eat my cereal and just generally wake up.

I find it jarring when my friend asks me, "Why didn't he go after the writer of this crap...?" I change the conversation, I turn the page.

"She pisses off the wrong customer...," my friend, the newspaper, continues.

Now, the word crap I can take but I don't need it bandied about at the breakfast table. But the word piss has no place in day-to-day conversation. This is not the language of someone I want to wake up to. I'm not a prude, honest. I just recall what these words once meant.

One of my favourite columnists at The London Free Press likes to entertain and enlighten me with witty conversation and wise words. He makes me think and laugh at the same time. Ian Gillespie is a fine fellow with whom to share breakfast. He may offend but he is rarely offensive.

Ian has a grasp of English that seems to escape some of his superiors — in rank at the paper, not in class or writing abililty. P. J. Harston likes to throw around the term "wanker". He put the word to good use in his on-line piece, "Earth Day? Screw it!" (P.J. boldly used another questionable word right in his headline.)

Thank goodness for the redesign. Many of The London Free Press links are broken. You will be unable, at least in the short term, to read the Harston piece. (Harston the interactive manager must take some of the blame for all the broken links. I imagine if Harston was looking for a term to describe an interactive manager who cannot get his Internet code correct, he might reach no deeper into his rich vocabulary than the previous paragraph.)

Years ago I knew an English girl, Liz, who was staying with a girlfriend in Detroit. Liz brought the album Hair into her friend's home, but when her girlfriend's father, a Detroit policeman, heard the lyrics Liz was on the way home. I thought he over-reacted.

I would not have expected him to run out and buy the album or get tickets to the musical. Nor would the folk behind the production of Hair be surprise to learn that he was not to be counted among their audience. The Hair folk were not interested in having people like our Detroit policeman among their fans.

Why is it that The London Free Press appears not to be interested in having people like me among their fans?