Good morning everyone! It is beautiful and sunny at the moment, though it changes rather rapidly from cloudy to sunny every few minutes it seems. And the cooler weather has returned with a temp of only 54F (12C) this morning, and the high is supposed to be around 64F (18C). Quite a change from two days ago, and it is supposed to stay cooler for the next two weeks.

Perhaps our hot weather is done for this summer. Well, I am sure we will get some more yet. Maybe. For me this is a bit on the chilly side. Kind of like “wearing a jacket” weather. Sigh. But the cooler weather will help slow down the forest fires anyway, and that is a good thing. There are presently 70 wildfires burning in NW Ontario, which is our area.

Grover the Grackle coming in for breakfast with his usual happy smile!

A lot of them are smaller fires, but they can quickly become large fires when the conditions are right. Among some of the larger fires are, 20,000 hectares (49,421 acres), 31,210 hectares (77,122 acres), 32,477 hectares (80,252 acres), 60,395 hectares (149,239 acres), and these are just some of the larger fires, there are several more. That is a lot of forest land being burned once again.

A male Evening Grosbeak enjoying his lunch.

There were not many fires last year, but 2 years ago was one of our worst on record as some of you may remember talking about those huge fires that summer. Wildfires happen, it is part of what happens in nature, however, there are natural fires and there are man made fires. Man made fires are preventable and should be, but unfortunately some people do not think that their little campfire can do any damage and they will light that campfire even when there is a restricted fire zone in effect.

A restricted fire zone means no open fires, period. But people are careless with other things too, like tossing lit cigarettes into dry grass. I have found some like that. If people would think, about half of our fires could be prevented. In a year like this millions of animals die in these wildfires, sometimes people do as well. And it costs millions of dollars every day to fight these fires.

A common House Wren sitting on a post. They are tiny birds, it took me 5 years to finally get a picture of one!

Hmm, I was not even planning to talk about the wildfires today. Just kind of got going. Oh well. It is a bad year, and not just here but right across Canada it is bad. I pray God will bring rain to those fires soon. It is cloudy again, just when I was going to head outside to try for some pics. It happens. I hope you all have a most wonderful day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2023 Steve McLeod.