This woodchuck groundhog built its home a few meters away from Billings Bridge Mall, corner of busy Bank and Riverside streets. Generally herbivorous, groundhogs subsist primarily on wild grasses and other vegetation, supplementing their diet with berries. Partially omnivorous, groundhogs will also eat grubs, grasshoppers, insects, snails and other small animals. Groundhogs are excellent burrowers, using underground burrows for sleeping, rearing young, and hibernating. In Ottawa, it's common to see such wild animals such as hares and squirrels on neighbourhood lawns and parks. This groundhog came out of its domain to watch people stroll by, and then continued to munch its vegetarian brunch.

This swam is a descendant from the white swans given by Queen Elizabeth 11 in 1998. They find refuse on the Rideau River flowing through the city of Ottawa, capital of Canada.

These twin camels waited patiently for me while I was getting lessons from the guide on how to ride a camel. At SHAPOTOU, 20km west of Zongwei Ningxia Province at the fringe of the Tengger Desert (Gobi Desert west), there's hardly any vegetation yet this city attracts many retired citizens. Camels are precious animals contributing not only as transportation to the nomadic life, but also for milk and hair for survival. They look docile and innocent but they seem to be mean when they don't feel comfortable towards their rider. By the way, the rocky movements of my camel twisted my spine for 2 hours.

While visiting Chengdu in the Sichuan province of western China, I stayed one whole afternoon observing the pandas at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, the largest of the world. Without protection by the government, this breed would rapidly becomes extinct; the female ovulates only for 2 weeks once every two years. They freely roam within a 50 hectares forest being fed twice a day with bamboo leaves, their favorites. Although they seem so cuddly and huggable, they prefer and protect their space when they're not sleeping. The panda puts the branch between its teeth then slides it, thus obtaining a mouthful of leaves. About the size of an Canadian black bear, giant pandas stand between 60 to 90 cm tall at the shoulder (on all four legs), and reach 130 to 200 cm long. Males are larger than females, weighing up to 120 kg in the wild. Females rarely reach 100 kg. There are only about 900 left in the world.

This robin waked me up one morning at my mom's place. As I looked out the window, I told him/her, "You create harmonious music and you're beautiful. Wait till I fetch my camera". Three minutes later, he/she was still waiting. When I told him/her, "You're in the shade, I want to see your bright chest", it moved in the sunlight. Click!

For about 15 minutes, I watched these birds as they seem to be flirting all the time. Then they lived up to their nickname: kissing. In this bird refuge, the Keoladeo Ghana National Park (Bharatpur, Rajasthan province, INDIA), thousands of birds reside or stop during their migration. Bicycling down the narrow road is a an ecstatic experience of harmonious sounds of bird songs. These "kissing birds" (commonly called love birds) though are poor singers sounding much like cockatiels' croak. Kissing communicates much better!