A Green-Winged Teal at Flemming Park

The small bird shown above, swimming with a pair of black duck-mallard hybrids, is not their duckling. It's a mature, female green-winged teal, an entirely different species that that is North America's smallest dabbling (or surface-feeding, non-diving) duck, patrolling the beach at Sir Sanford Flemming Parkon the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour last month. Here's the same bird, distinguished by an iridescent patch on its wing, feeding in the same waters. Another size comparison: the female Green-Winged teal with hybrid black-duck mallard: As with so many bird species, the male is much more colourful. Here's a male green-wing, photographed a few years ago at Sullivan's Pond,...

Readers blow back on the NDP leadership race — with a correction

Within hours of my posting a prediction that NDP establishment candidate Dave Wilson would not win the leadership vote to be tallied Saturday, several readers pointed out that cabinet-minster-turned-pundit Graham Steele, who knows 10 times more about the provincial NDP than I ever will, thinks he will do just that. Steele's reasoning, as I understand it, is that moderates vastly outnumber lefties in the NDP. This may be true, but it assumes opposition to Wilson is based on left-right considerations. In my observation, the malaise in the party goes well beyond that. It's not just Howard Epstein's wing of the party that resented the...

Probably Zann, possibly Burrill, unlikely Wilson

  Unless everything I'm hearing is wrong, Sackville-Cobequid MLA Dave Wilson will not be leader of the Nova Scotia New Democratic Party when votes are counted Saturday, despite having been endorsed by almost every establishment figure from the Darrell Dexter Government. Or more likely because they endorsed him. By all accounts it's a three-way race among Wilson, Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River MLA Lenore Zann, and former Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley MLA Gary Burrill. So great is rank-and-file resentment at the Dexter Government's top-down style and lack of progressive substance, Wilson has little room to grow in any redistribution of second place votes. It didn't help when Wilson's campaign received a token fine for prematurely accessing a party voting list,...

The filth at the VG is nothing new

In response to those photos of maintenance problems and housekeeping deficiencies at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax, a prominent retired Nova Scotian writes: The filth at the VGH is nothing new. My husband suffered a heart attack in 1995...

A rare case of mice swimming toward a sinking ship

Last week on his Facebook page, retired journalist, restauranteur restaurateur, and civil servant Bill Turpin published photos of dirt and decay inside the troubled Victoria General Hospital. I reproduced a sample here. A loyal Contrarian reader whom I'll call "E" offers this telling addendum, snapped today in a cancer treatment room on the VG's 11th floor: And the closeup: E reports the mouse trap has not budged from the location where she first observed it in December. Not unreasonably, she asks: How do you catch a mouse with no bait? How do you wash the floor without moving the trap? The last point appears to be moot where the VG is concerned....

Capitalism fails again

  I drove up to the ordering kiosk, ignored the robot voice urging me to go ahead with my order, and waited for a human to come on the line. "Welcome to McDonald's. May I take your order?" "I'll have a cheeseburger meal with iced tea for a beverage, please." "Will there be anything else?" "No, that's it." "Your order comes to $7.05. Drive through to the second window, please." I think of the cheeseburger as the cheapest non-pastry item you can get at McD's, the thing to order when you just want a snack. How did it get to $7.05, I wondered. But then, I'm old enough...

Powerboat wanted — must carry cars and dogs

Weatherfear hype machine shrieks into action

Here's a Facebook post from CTV news that came across my feed shortly before noon. Two friends, both Nova Scotians, shared it, and within an hour, 1,000 other Facebook users had done so. It warns of a "major storm system coming to...

A brief history of invective, with special focus on Halifax Regional Council

Consider a few great moments in insult: Abuse vendor to man seeking an argument in Monty Python's Flying Circus: "Don't give me that, you snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings! Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type makes me puke, you vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert!" John McEnroe to a Wimbledon spectator: "What problems do you have, apart from being blind, unemployed, and a moron?" Sir Winston Churchill, when disturbed in his toilet by a call from the Lord Privy Seal: "Tell him I can only deal with one shit at a time." David Lloyd George on the Liberal home secretary: “When they circumcised Herbert Samuel, they threw...

A peck of purple pipers in Point Pleasant Park

A nicely camouflaged Purple Sandpiper resting on a rock along the shoreline of Point Pleasant Park in Halifax earlier this winter: Purple Sandpipers breed in the high Arctic and spend their winters along the Atlantic coast from the Newfoundland's South Coast to North Carolina. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology reports they have the northernmost breeding ground of any shorebird. We are their sunny south. Click on the image for a larger version. They love rocks, says photographer Joshua Barss Donham. I've never seen a Purple Sandpiper when that wasn't on a rock. There is always a small flock at Point Pleasant Park, varying in...