I love winter birds and I love photographing them in snow. I admit that I’m a fair-weather bird watcher. Worse, I’m a lazy, fair-weather bird watcher. I don’t like weather extremes, so when it’s very hot or really cold, it is hard to get me to leave the comfortable home. In summer, I only photograph hummingbirds (蜂鸟) in my yard, and in winter, I try to only go out on relatively mild (温和的) days. Most of my bird pictures are done within an hour’s drive of my hometown of Elmira. So it’s all about finding a balance that works.

The winter of 2021 was a great period for snowy owls (雪鸮) here in Woolwich Township. One day in early January, I was on my way home from work when I noticed a beautiful snowy owl sitting in a tree right at the crossing. I pulled over to admire him, and then kept heading home unwillingly.

Two hundred meters or so down the road, there were two more snowy owls in a field by a fence, and in the next field over, another on top of a fence post. I couldn’t find words to express my feelings at that moment. Thus I rushed home, took my camera and went right back out to get some pictures. It was one of the most magical local birding moments I’ve ever experienced.

When I’m looking for excellent opportunities to photograph snowy owls and other birds without spending dozens of hours searching for them, I head to the Canadian Raptor Conservancy (CRC) or the Mountsberg Raptor Centre. I’ve attended so many photo sessions at each of these fantastic places that I’ve lost count of.

Missing out on deep sleep can leave you feeling slow-acting and sensitive in the morning, but the consequences don’t necessarily end there. Over time, too little deep sleep may also do harm to your heart by contributing to high blood pressure, a new study suggests.

Healthy young and middle-aged adults spend about 25 percent of their sleeping hours in the stages known as deep sleep. This sleep stage has been shown to be important for memory and other mental performance. The new study adds to the growing evidence that deep sleep is also essential to our metabolism (新陈代谢) and heart health.

The research should be considered “exploratory”, and it doesn’t prove a direct link between sleep patterns and high blood pressure. But it suggests that an important aspect of successful aging is the preservation of good sleep quality”. Older people tend to get less deep sleep as they age, find fighting this natural decline —through healthy sleep habits, for example—could be an “extraordinarily important strategy” for heading off high blood pressure.

Sleep problems have been linked to high blood pressure before. Sleep apnoea, a disorder in which a person wakes up struggling for breath time and time again, is strongly linked to high blood pressure, though it’s not clear whether the disorder causes high blood pressure.

Susan Redline, a professor of sleep medicine, says going to bed and waking up at the same time each day, especially keeping away from alcohol and tobacco before going to bed and other good “sleep hygiene (卫生)” can help people sleep longer.

However, the researchers followed the men’s sleep only on a single nights, and they likewise measured blood pressure just once or twice. Therefore, the study failed to rule out factors besides sleep quality, such as diet or medical conditions, which may independently contribute to high blood pressure. More research will be needed to address these shortcomings, the study notes. Nor is it clear whether habitual sleep loss has long-term effects on overall sleep quality and deep sleep.