Imprintings

Did you know that some young animals, especially birds, will imprint on a parent, follow them around  adopting behaviours and even look to that parent for migratory reasons. Some birds imprint on humans in captivity where they never learn to migrate. One last final fact, the human stage of imprinting occurs when the baby remains unborn but recognizes his or her mother and father's voices. I know when I first heard the term yesterday I thought about the twilight book when Jacob imprints on Renesmee (it was different as it was more a sexual imprinting) but still similar to the selection process and somewhat natural. I'm no scientist but I do believe that we, as humans naturally select our mates. The saying goes, "you can't help who you like," and others will go on about "animal instincts," these are very real.

I teamed up with another amazing and fun friend yesterday around 10:00am, we ate breakfast in the car and headed to the Halton area to do a hike at the Mountsberg Conservation. We were greeted by mr. rabbit hopping along in the garden. There were a few others around the corner of one of the barns as well, they also had goats and sheep.

This conservation has a bit of a bird of prey sanctuary. I had the pleasure of snapping some shots of these beautiful beings, most of the birds have imprinted on humans and never left the conservation.

From left to right in the first row there is a Long-eared owl (not easy to see or take a picture of), a Peregrine falcon (saw these in NS when I went tidal bore rafting), a Bald Eagle, and a Snowy owl. The snowy owl was making a hooting sound, all the others were pretty quiescent.



From left to right in the second row are: a Gyrfalcon, a Barn owl, a Red-tailed hawk, and a Kestrel. The Kestrel kept moving to the back of his cage and quickly puffing his feathers each time I'd visit him, it was cute.


Justyna ("JK") and I really enjoyed our time walking through the forest and catching up. We have a huge year ahead of us, including, her wedding! It's so nice having a friend in a similar industry so you can get some work frustrations out as well as discuss future plans/ideas. I'm exciting and so happy she asked me to be part of the wedding, I believe she's picked the best girls ever :) Here is a pic of us from the observation tower (one of them) overlooking the lake.

It was a great day, the trails were a little muddy in spots and the mosquitoes were attacking a bit. I forgot to mention that the Mountsberg Conservation is also home to swallows in the summer, they have a "neighbourhood" as JK would say, or "community" of swallows on the Lakeside trail, and a bunch of nests along one side of a massive play barn at the head of the trails where the visitors centre is. See below for some of the pictures, up close these swallows were very pretty with their blue and white markings. The two that sat on the welcome sign almost looked like the preachers or leaders of the congregation :P There were at lease 50 bird houses on posts in the ground here.
There was also a rooster and a hen, well multiple hens, running around. But this rooster in particular was guarding the one hen. he would cock his chest up and alarm whoever was approaching that they were not to get any closer. It was a lot of fun chasing him around the grounds to see where he'd follow the hen to.

After we hiked the trail we went to a local cafe that had sandwiches, soups, salads, pizza and ice cream. It felt a bit like home in NS to be honest, a little community in the Town of Milton called Campbellville. It was quite busy when we arrived so we thought the cafe must have had something to brag about that is served to customers. Not to be disappointed, we each had the special which was a California wrap with Chicken gumbo soup (yum)!

I took a picture of the wrap, it had guacamole, bacon, chicken, tomatoes, lettuce and honey mustard in it. Very tasty indeed!

Today is Father's Day, so I should ensure I write to say Happy Father's day to the two in my life. I would not be who I am today if it wasn't for either of them. Hopefully they'll get the chance to log on and see this, if not I'll still phone and try to see one of them :)

Before I go, I wanted to note that I watched a documentary the other night, Sound City, it was created by Dave Grohl, famously known for being in Nirvana and Foo Fighters, amongst other things. The movie was great, it was about the famous recording studio "Sound City" where people made legendary albums, such as Stevie Nicks beginnings with Buckingham Nicks, Tom Petty and others. The film centered on how this one studio would capture the sound in the recordings like no other and a lot had to do with the famous Neve board, how digital took it away, and  how Dave bought the board and refurbished it to use in his own studio. I enjoyed it, there is nothing like kicking it old school, and it's like they say, "if it's not broke, don't fix it" perhaps this is why the latest foo fighters albums have such a great sound. I would think it has something to do with it. In the movie Tom Petty talks about how when you're in the studio producers and other people will always want the perfect sound, the perfect composition then he says something that correlates to a lot in life, "You know…Music really isn’t supposed to be perfect; it’s all about people relating together and doing something that’s really from the soul. It must come from the soul."
My question would be, how good was anything in life when it didn't come from the soul?