Dawn Yow
ohhellodawn.bsky.social
Dawn Yow
@ohhellodawn.bsky.social
Shutter-depressor | Documentary photographer | Wanderluster | Unschooler | Artist-parent | Natural history nerd | Lover of museums | Burgeoning interest in history thanks to the offspring | Collector of organisms | Formerly Liverpool, UK & missing it so.
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
October 13, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Leni holds a tiny toad.
June 22, 2025 at 1:22 PM
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)
May 31, 2025 at 11:37 AM
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.
May 30, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Portraits of protest, Toronto, 2025.
May 28, 2025 at 12:09 PM
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/
April 29, 2025 at 12:59 PM
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).
April 27, 2025 at 1:31 PM
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/
April 22, 2025 at 12:54 PM
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.
April 21, 2025 at 1:33 PM
The horror, and the silence, and it keeps going.
April 6, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Portraits of protest.
April 5, 2025 at 1:22 PM
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/
April 3, 2025 at 12:06 PM
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.
March 28, 2025 at 1:10 PM
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/
March 17, 2025 at 1:22 PM
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/
March 15, 2025 at 12:26 PM
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).
March 5, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Temporarily abandoned toast, two days before Christmas.
March 2, 2025 at 3:48 PM
'Tis a sparrow.
February 25, 2025 at 10:51 PM
I'm a little belated with this, but I'm very honoured to have two of my photographs are currently on display at Pamenar Cafe in Kensington Market, as part of an exhibition featuring the work of photographers documenting the resistance. Check it out if you're in Toronto, as it closes soon.
February 22, 2025 at 2:38 AM
Leni peers at postcards and drawings on the wall through the red lens of 3D glasses. I don't think she's encountered 3D glasses before, so she had a grand time looking at all kinds of pictures and objects through the tinted plastic and urging all of us to do the...

www.instagram.com/p/DF7vi2MOY3c/
February 21, 2025 at 2:03 PM
Two summers ago, we took a little wander over to a neighbouring neighbourhood to gawk and gape at this house, famed for its front yard which had been lovingly (and at some parts, creepily) adorned with all manner of dolls. Many of the dolls are from bygone eras...

www.instagram.com/p/DFIW3DpORVf
January 22, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Throwback to early December, when we walked along an abandoned railway track on a warmish day.

Ares found a long branch that he thought would make a good sword. He'd broken it to reduce its length, but needed to shorten it further. Leni had found a loose rail...

www.instagram.com/p/DFDSzzCOYCQ/
January 20, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Just a pile of bird skulls on the kitchen island, waiting to be cleaned.
January 19, 2025 at 1:18 PM
A little bit stuck.
January 12, 2025 at 1:51 PM
This was how the last day of the year started, when Teen Kid accidentally broke one of her favourite bowls while washing it for breakfast. She was in tears; I would probably have been in tears too, if I wasn't preoccupied trying to console her (I say "would have"...

www.instagram.com/p/DESZUVsuZCh/
January 2, 2025 at 12:27 PM