My Photo Journal: Bird Watching over Late Summer in Durham Region, Ontario

As the sunlit verdancy of summer artfully transforms into the gilded shades of autumn, a gentle symphony seems to envelop the natural world. A brief pause for a quiet listen to the air reveals that between the beautiful changes, the rustling leaves, and crawling breezes, small yet profoundly stirring moments are gracefully sprinkled everywhere.
― Marie Helen Abramyan

End of Summer
We've been tramping around
long enough
now the sun
falls in a faint
it's done in

The trees quit
the wave stops rolling
how ordinary things have become
how ordinary

I placed my bet
on this summer lasting
― Elisabeth Borchers, Fish Magic: Selected Poems

Gleaming rays gently shine upon nature. Summer has passed the seasonal baton onto Autumn’s cooling hands. But swirling lightly, between the changing leaves, hints of warm summer breezes softly linger in the air. Tender whispers of days under the blazing sunlight, when bees and butterflies danced for the sweet scent of ripened berries, and verdant leaves flourished on the Mulberry.
― Marie Helen Abramyan

Here are the three Ontario parks I visited to take the above photos:
(1) Pair of lovelorn swans were photographed at Kiwanis Heydenshore Park in Whitby, Ontario.
(2) Lone seagull who posed quite charmingly for me at Lakeview Park in Oshawa,Ontario.
(3) Solitary Canada goose paddling calmly was photographed through the foliage at Lynde Shores Conservation Area in Whitby, Ontario.
We are truly blessed with an overabundance of beautiful beaches, parks, trails and wildlife here in Durham Region!

Bird photography © 2026 FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

Printable Vintage Art: Landscape Study from Barbizon by Carl Larsson

Landscape Study from Barbizon, 1878
by Carl Larsson (1853–1919)

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.
Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality.
Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
― Lao Tzu

I wouldn't need to be so very different for sun to seem to be about sun,
for green to be about green,
for joy and boredom and anguish and terror and death to all be themselves,
beyond the need for any killing clarity,
and then this--this, the growing rings of light and water and stone--
would take up all of me, and be all the words I need.
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

You can download a digitally enhanced version of the vintage painting (as seen above) as a high-res 11” x 9” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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When there is no peace in your soul there is no peace in your heart,
when there is no peace in your heart there is no peace in your mind,
when there is no peace in your mind there is no peace in your life,
and when there is no peace in your life there is no peace in your world.
― Matshona Dhliwayo

Photo of Guildwood © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

Printable Vintage Art: New England Road by Childe Hassam

New England Road, c1902
by Childe Hassam (1859–1935)

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No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
― George Eliot, George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals

You can download a digitally enhanced version of the vintage painting (as seen above) as a high-res 10” x 10” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Photo of autmn woods by the pond © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.