Bird Watching - Pokemon Go IRL

I cannot recall the moment I decided to get interested in birds, but over the past couple years I have slowly been working on my bird watching skills. I am still very very novice, but this has become a truly fulfilling and fun hobby.

(American goldfinch in my neighbours' crabapple tree)

I continually tell people who raise an eyebrow that birding is basically playing Pokemon Go in real life, but with a near infinite number of Pokemon to catch. You can even gamify it using an app like Audubon, or a simple paper checklist, to record all your “catches.”

(Tree swallows have hemmed and hawed over our bird house for two summers but never moved in)

Previously I, like many people, just saw birds in the background. While it might be pretty amazing to see a deer or a fox “in the wild”, I didn’t register that it could be just as exciting to observe birds in their natural (or slightly unnatural, such as at a feeder) habitat. Once that switch flipped, I not only had a challenging new hobby but a simple way to practice mindfulness nearly anywhere I went.

I don’t know if there’s a “best” way to start birding but what I did was get a bird book, and then just started taking pictures of birds, especially those I couldn’t identify. I’d use the photos and the book to ID them when I got home. I also print out a picture of each species and put it in a photo album, which serves as my “bird collection.” It helps to have a camera with a high zoom and not just a phone. For more affordable camera options, Canon’sPowerShot Elph line is great as it has pretty high zoom capabilities and fits in a pocket – you’re not going to get magazine quality photos, but definitely good enough to ID a bird that’s fairly far away. I also have a DLSR with an 18-250mm telephoto lens, which I’m thinking about upgrading to something more powerful as a grad present to myself, but this is more of a luxury than a necessity. You can also just use (cheap) binoculars but I may be too entrenched in the “pics or it didn’t happen” generation because I prefer to have photos.

(Got to watch this baby learn to fly in our yard over a two week period, do I have a thousand pictures of it? You know the answer to that question)

I am pretty lucky because there is a storm pond about a block from my house which attracts a lot of bird life. I can usually ID between 10-20 different species on a 30 minute walk around the pond, and I’ve yet to go there and not see something new to me (who knew there were soooo many different kinds of ducks??). It’s also pretty amazing what can happen if you put a feeder in your yard – even though our area is very “newly developed suburbia” with no mature trees and the bird life is 95% house sparrow, we’ve also had a relatively wide variety of other birds show up on our property  – American goldfinches, house finches, slate coloured juncos, tree swallows, cedar waxwings, American robins, one yellow warbler, chipping sparrows, brown headed cowbirds (which laid an egg that the chipping sparrow had to raise), black-capped chickadees, Brewer’s blackbirds, and the occasional crow or raven. It’s also not uncommon to see pelicans soaring around right over the deck, which gives my tiny suburban yard a bit of a tropical feel.

(Chipping sparrow mom feeding brown headed cowbird baby)

When I recently travelled to Bologna, Italy for a conference, I was pretty struck by the lack of green space and bird life in the city (other than pigeons). After traveling I often come back jealous of cities that aren’t designed around worshipping the Almighty Car, but this time I did realize how lucky we are in Saskatoon to have all the green space we do, especially our urban forestry program.

(Great blue heron coming to say hello at the storm pond)

There’s probably a bird out your window right now – can you identify it? What's it doing, and why? These simple questions are all it really takes to get hooked!

(We won't talk about what happened to this baby killdeer shortly after the photo was taken)

(We cannot end on such a morbid note, so here's a pelican that appears to be the leader of a flock of geese, Chappell Marsh)

Reflections on Grad Studies

Tomorrow I will defend my thesis for my Master of Science in Community and Population Health Science at the University of Saskatchewan. At the end of this stage of my career, I would like to reflect on what a great experience it’s been.

In 2017 I had a great job with a large company. I’d worked there for nearly seven years and it had provided me with many amazing opportunities and challenges, but I was starting to feel like something was going off track. While the work was still exciting and challenging and I loved my co-workers, I was getting tired. My mental health was declining and I couldn’t quite put my finger on the root cause, but knew I needed to take a step back and sort it out. I began looking for other opportunities and settled on academics.

I spent a couple of months working as a research assistant in the lab where I’d do my masters’ project before starting the academic program in fall 2017. It was totally different from what I’d worked on previously and presented many new frustrations and challenges, but overall I can’t say enough good things about the experience.

I learned how to do research, which gave me a whole new lens for looking at problems. Aside from my first semester where I took four classes (plus two weekly seminars), the program allowed a lot of flexibility and I was able to get back on track mentally. I am not sure I’m ever going to be cut out for traditional full-time employment again, but during my schooling I also worked at two different casual positions and am thinking I’ll be pretty happy with the consultant life going forward.

I had the best supervisor I could have asked for, and learned so much from her - not just about how to be a good researcher but how to be a professional, inclusive leader when you have an extremely diverse and ever-changing team. In industry, you hope your team stays the same as long as possible, where in academia you know people won’t be around longer than 4-5 years. As such you have to get to know people quickly and start working hard out of the gate.

A friend who had taken a similar path, i.e. left a big corporate job for an academic “break” a couple years before me provided the advice to just “apply for everything” during the program. “There’s a lot of travel funding that less people than you’d think apply for” she said. And she was right – I had the opportunity to attend six conferences over two years, three of which were paid for by non-academic sources that I applied to. I travelled to Italy (twice!), New Orleans, Minneapolis, Vancouver, and Quebec City, where I presented my work, met interesting people, and gained new perspectives about how different industries and countries solve problems related to occupational health and safety.

There’s so much more I could mention, but we’d be here for weeks. To say this experience was life-changing barely does it justice – it honestly impacted every nook and cranny of my life in a positive way. While it’s time to move on, I hope to keep my foot in the door of academics, and will look back on this leg of my career as extremely formative. I’m so glad I did this.

Local Fruit and Vegetable Roundup

Summer is ending. There is much to be sad about at the end of a Saskatchewan summer, such as realizing you'll have to start wearing socks again soon, the last trip of the year to The Lake, and waking up when it's still dark, but one of the great things about the end of summer is the amazing bounty of local produce available. Since I started this blog a little late in the season, I don't really have the time to dedicate an entire post to each of my favourite fruit and vegetable producers, but I want to share my list. Maybe next summer I'll dive more in depth to each one.

I will note in Saskatoon, two major farmers' markets are operated in the summer months - the main Saskatoon Farmers' Market at River Landing, and the Community Farmers' Market of Saskatoon, which operates on 8th St two days a week and 51st St one day a week. Many of the larger producers attend both markets.

In no particular order, I highly recommend the following:

• Kaleidoscope Gardens out of Dundurn, for specialty vegetables. Everything these folks grow is excellent quality and so unique. My favourites are the padron and shishito peppers, but I also frequently purchase their eggplant, squash, and kale. They run out of the Saskatoon Farmers' Market and may be attending the Community Market later in the season. They are also exceptionally nice people who take the time to get to know their customers' names and favourite products.
• The Strawberry Ranch for sweet corn. It's been a bad year for corn and sadly theirs isn't available this year, but it's always the best tasting corn around. I hope next year they have better luck!
• Little Quail Ridge Orchards (no website, but here's a brief profile from a local food blog) for BC Fruit. This orchard sells directly at several farmers' markets in Saskatchewan, including both major Saskatoon markets. Best tasting fruit around and great deals on case lots.
• WorldAway Farm (no website) for delicious fresh asparagus all spring long! They are at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market and sell other produce, including garlic, later in the summer.
• The Garlic Garden out of Yorkton for all garlic-related products. They no longer attend the Saskatoon Farmers' Market but are at the Community Market on Fridays. Awesome garlic, though last year I bought a bag from them and planted my own so I won't need to buy any this year. They cautioned me that it's not seed garlic, but I had great success with 41/42 cloves growing into full heads, which are now all curing in my garage. Previously I'd buy a bag of rounds, which lasted a bit longer through the winter than normal cloves.
• Rhodes' Raspberries and Blackcurrants just off Valley Road, for u-pick (or pre-picked) haskaps, saskatoons, raspberries, and blackcurrants! Their prices are great and the owner is the nicest. They also had the biggest and juiciest saskatoons I've ever picked. They've got black and golden raspberries as well as red, if you've ever wanted to try different varieties. Sadly no blackcurrants this year.

(These are my own backyard raspberries, but when I want more than a small bowl I go to Rhodes'.)

• I really love Robertson's Valley Farm on Valley Road, though they are effectively a new business this year as they're now operated by Spring Creek Garden. Robertson's had amazing quality produce, but Spring Creek is no slouch either! They mostly grow the same items though I do miss the gigantic kohlrabi and Spanish onions Robertson's had. Their greenhouse (still operated by the Robertsons) tomatoes are my favourites. The onion bunches are a steal, and they grow great broccoli and cauliflower.
• Speaking of brassicas, I got the most giant cauliflower I've ever seen in my life from G&R Gardens (main market) a couple weeks ago for FOUR DOLLARS. It was easily 2-3 times the size of a standard head from the grocery store. Who says the farmers' market is too expensive? G&R are also the only producer who appear to have large kohlrabis this year.
• Grandora Gardens is the place to go (both markets) for fresh and local greenhouse produce year round. Their cucumbers are my favourite product; they seem to last a week or more on the counter, and they are usually cheaper than the grocery store (though you can also buy their produce at the Co-op). They also sell a variety of hot peppers and tomatoes. While I'm personally not in love with greenhouse tomatoes, it's nice to have the option to buy from a local producer when I get a January craving for Greek salad.

(All-local beet borscht ingredients ready to throw in the pot.)

I know there are tons of other great producers I'm missing. It can be overwhelming to attend a farmers' market in Saskatoon in the summer because there are SO many farmers with wonderful looking products, so the best strategy I've found is to pick a couple producers whose quality I like and stick with them, as most of the vendors at the markets are pretty standardized on the prices of produce. If you have a favourite fruit or vegetable grower from the Saskatoon area that I haven't mentioned, please leave a comment! At some point I'll do a post on my favourite local meat producers as well.