Manning Park, mid August

 

One of our favourite places to visit is Manning Park.  Just an hour and a half from home puts us in the center of the park. August 15th we headed up to the park with our truck and camper.  The time proved to be perfect for ‘birding’!  The Saskatoon Berries were ripe and the birds were gorging themselves!  I’m going to be uploading pictures in no particular order – so please bear with me as I’m attempting a new ‘system’!

  

Cedar Waxwings were one of the species seen at Cold spring Campground – where we spent the first two nights.  We like this particular campground, which is situated on the main highway, just before you reach the Manning Park Lodge, because there is a lovely ‘Canyon Walk Trail’ that you can access, which you can either walk as a loop, or use to access other trails in the park.

Chipmunk were every where, busy stashing food for the winter.  This little guy was in a rock slide area along the Canyon trail.

 

This shows our campsite at Cold spring.  The area used to be a lot more ‘treed’ until the pine beetle did it’s thing.  They have since cleared out all the dead trees making a very ‘open’ campground, however this has encouraged the growth of bushes like the Saskatoon’s which has benefited the birds.

 

Dark Eyed Junco were another species enjoying the feast – this particular fellow had a lot of white in it’s tail and also had some white on the wings, making me wonder if it was ‘white wing’ hybrid.

Evening Grosbeak, were, by far the most frequently seen bird this trip.  There must have been hundreds of them.

Here a male enjoys the feast!

While here a female indulges.  Females and juveniles can be hard to tell apart, but that wasn’t the case with the fledglings that were still at the begging stage and creating a real fuss.

Here is another male….he’s lost his real brilliant breeding color.

Another species that was seen were Yellow-rump Warblers.  Warblers are insect eaters so weren’t interested in all those berries.  Here is a female.

While here is a very young fledgling!  I thought it surprising to see so many really young birds in mid-August.

When we moved to Mule Deer campground which is at a lower elevation, we found several of these Flycatchers.  I will leave it to some of my more experienced birder friends to identify!

This Ground Squirrel family was living across from our campsite back at Cold spring.  Mom or dad is on top of the log with the youngster at the base. 

At Mule Deer, besides the Saskatoon berries, there were large thickets of Red Osier Dogwood and it was obviously that these were the berry of choice for thrushes.  I’m pretty sure this is a, probably young, Hermit Thrush.  This picture was taken from our camper’s ‘bedroom’ window.

This speckled fellow is a young Dark Eyed Junco.  This guy was at Cold spring, but there were young juncos in both campsites.

Also at both campsites were the Yellow rump Warblers.  Here, at Mule Deer a very young fledgling was following ‘daddy’ around, begging for food.

This is our campsite at Mule Deer.  This campground hasn’t been effected by the pine beetle, most of the coniferous trees are firs, so this campground is still well treed.

This little guy is a Pika.  Remember that trail I mentioned at Cold spring and the rock slide where the Chipmunk was?  Well there were also Pika in that rock slide and I was so thrilled to finally be able to get a picture of one of these elusive little guys!

Back at Mule Deer, Pine Sisken were also gorging themselves on the Saskatoon berries.

There were also a number of these young Red-naped Sapsuckers.

and Western Tanagers!  This is either a female or a juvenile.

All in all it was a very productive couple of days in the birding department.  From Manning Park, we headed home for a day or so and then were off to Vancouver Island.  Hopefully I’ll get that trip and our quest to find shorebirds, updated in the not too distant future!