Dawn Yow

AHHHHH!!! I didn't know you were coming to Toronto. I'm in Toronto!

My daughter, who doesn't have social media, is writing an article on the expansion of Neotropic Cormorants in Ontario, Canada & hybrids between Double-crested & Neotropic Cormorants. She's struggling w/ resources on the distribution of pure birds or hybrids. Can anyone help?

#Ornithology #Seabirds

But at least those can be hemmed?

Massive congratulations, Nancy!!!

It was mostly calm, but couldn't wait to escape to freedom, haha.

Leni holds a tiny toad.

Lemon poppyseed muffins on 4 May to celebrate the 554th anniversary of the Battle of Tewkesbury, Ares' favourite battle.

For this, he made a banner and muffin toppers of knights in his favourite 15th century armour, his favourite helmet (the sallet), and a sword (all historically accurate)

A person cries during a speech about the horror and helplessness of watching children being burnt in their tents, during a demonstration in Toronto on 19 April 2025.

It's unfathomable and unconscionable that it keeps happening and no one with any power is doing anything about it.

Portraits of protest, Toronto, 2025.

Oh, that exhibition was... interesting. I didn't quite get it myself.

Leni works out numbers on a Japanese Soroban abacus, which we inherited from a friend, her oatmeal breakfast temporarily abandoned in favour of abacusing.

The first day she got it, we didn't know how it worked so she spent a long time fingering the plastic beads...

www.instagram.com/p/DJB_byaOixA/

I didn't know about this until recent years, when I moved to Canada. My teenager volunteers for them, collecting birds who've hit windows, both alive and not. Here's a photograph from the birds collected around the Toronto area in 2022: www.instagram.com/p/DATGnTAxsh3/

Raspberry holds an indigo bunting that had hit a window. She'll prepare it to be a study skin for FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Program).

I'm so grateful for the adults in my kids' lives who love them, care for them, and hang out with them playing board games, giving them unorthodox fist bumps, or plying them with Asian snacks. They're the proverbial village everyone talks about, and I'm grateful...

www.instagram.com/p/DIv46hMO267/

Detail from a camera photo, taken at this weekend's protest during a speech about the horror and helplessness of watching children being burnt in their tents.

The horror, and the silence, and it keeps going.

Portraits of protest.

7-year-old Leni, August 2023.

It's incredible how quickly the kids' faces change. Even in profile, I can tell Leni doesn't look like this anymore — her face seems older, and doesn't have the same baby-like quality that it had here. It makes me grieve the...

www.instagram.com/p/DH-9LsBOlGJ/

I knew what you meant! :) Thank you! It's so amazing. I wish I had things like this when I was a teenager.

My 17-year-old was just accepted to an ornithology workshop at Cornell University in New York state this summer. It's such an incredible opportunity and well-deserved, but we've been struggling with whether she ought to and can go. Any other year, it'd have been easy, but alas.

There's a Crayola crayon colour named "robin egg blue."

Well, thank you! 😁

On laundry day, Leni hangs the underwear in the bathroom to dry.

She and Ares often bicker about who gets to hang them. The other person has to hang the socks, which is, for some reason, the more dreaded task. At one point, Leni made a sheet about whose turn it...

www.instagram.com/p/DHTOs_ru2zq/

A few weeks ago, I felt broken, and I was terrified and confused as to why I felt that way.

After a bitter winter, the weather was finally starting to warm up and as a person who dislikes the cold, it'd ordinarily be a point of elation for me. However, I found...

www.instagram.com/p/DHLizXBOPFO/

Hmm, I can't find a way to do so. Maybe because I'm looking at it on the desktop?

Apparently, it's considered graphic media and won't be shown. :/

Oooh, one of my faves!

A knackered teen, after a day of birding and hiking in the snow (and also, the emotional and mental load that comes with slipping on ice and breaking your phone).

You know what? I'd have thought the same thing.

One day!