It was a nice Fall day, so I decided to take another of my strolls through an open area of Ottawa’s Greenbelt between Kanata and Bell’s Corners. I was following wasps and butterflies from flower to flower and, of course, getting down on my knees from time to time to try and get the shot from just the right angle or to avoid a bit of grass between me and the bug that I was trying to photograph. I guess this behaviour seemed a bit unusual to a NCC staff member driving by, so he stopped his patrol car and came walking up behind me. The rest is history. That is all there is to the story. I didn’t shoot him with my camera and he didn’t shoot me with his gun but from the look at his body language, he was ready for a fight! It is sometimes tough to explain to people why I spend half an hour on my knees some days :-).
Enjoy the pictures.
Queeen-Anne Lace
Red Dragonfly
Blue Flax
Swallow Wort
Steel Blue Cricket Hunter
Great Golden Digger Wasp
Goldenrod
Black Swallowtail
After leaving the fields of Queen Anne’s Lace and assorted other flowering wildflowers, I headed into the depths of the shade and found a clump of Indian Pipe (Montropa uniflora) also know as Ghost Plant and Coffin Plant because of its white coloration. The Indian Pipe lacks chlorophyll and gets its energy from a relationship with a fungus. It is therefore able to survive and grow in dense shade and that is where I found this particular specimen.
Certainly happy that the officer didn’t find me on my knees in the dense shade :-). May have been tough to explain Indian Pipe to him!
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