One or two ducks

Spot the killdeer:

A late egret:

The lake is down, most leaves have fallen, but it was 12 C today and there are still a few wild flowers blooming.  Quite a nice day; nothing spectacular, but the White-throated sparrow, Northern Pintail, and both of the above were all notable in the season.

The ducks, well, winter has come; the long-tailed ducks are back on the lake in the distribution that makes it seems as though long-tailed ducks may well continue to the ends of the world, where there are not rafts of scaup.

there was some fall colour

Not a whole lot—much too spread about by the temperature and the day length being out of customary alignment—but there was some.

Almost

It doesn't work.
The focus is off, just for starters -- just too far back, so that front leaf is a bit out of focus and that really doesn't help -- and there isn't any kind of real isolating angle (one can only do so much with DOF, and I'm lawful enough to Stay On The Path) and the camera can't really see like eyes, so while the purple isn't, surprisingly enough to me, all that far off, there's not enough wide for the whole sudden disjunction of the strange purple forb between the yet-green and the already-entirely leafless bits of bushy plants, there's no way to get the whole "whups, Faërie" sense of the thing out of the screen.

Which is a great pity; despite labouring under the disadvantages of manicured lawns, far too much paving, an appalling excess of dogs, and very traditional formal gardens, High Park retains some memory of the oak savanna and the edges of Lake Iroquois, and such moments are, if not easy to come by, not shocking for their existence.

Her majesty the kitten

Taken when she was on the very top of the bookshelf; that background is mostly plaster ceiling in the Italianate swoopy/swirly style.  Also taken about three weeks ago, so her winter coat was still coming in.  She's back to being all sleekit now, and there is rather less demanding of brushings about the head.