Spring Trip 2010 - Day 11 Part 2 - Dinosaur Provincial Park

OK, so first I have to back track a little bit....I lied....I said that any flower pictures taken on our morning walk were still in my DSLR camera....which would have been strange since I actually prefer my Canon Powershot with it's swivel LCD screen for flowers ~ what had happened was that I had been interrupted while moving pictures around in preparation for up loading and thought I was finished...when I wasn't....
This is Early Locoweed. I gather there is also a 'late' locoweed.

and here are my Prairie Crocus....a close up of one of the open blooms....

another, side view.....

and here is a whole bunch of them growing on a steep slope ~ one thing we discovered about Prairie Crocus is that they seem to prefer north facing slopes....the steeper the better!

as close a picture of some of that grouping as I could possibly manage...there was a steel barricade in the way ~ that is how steep the slope was.....

and this is the little yellow 'Sand Bladderpod' I mentioned in part 1

and a more scenic picture featuring the inevitable 'Owl Clover'

There was an area of brush and trees growing beside the bridge in the campground that divided the 'open' section and the 'closed' section ~ there were always a lot of birds in this spot, including a number of House Sparrows that were obviously in nest building mode.....

Here is a male sitting on the railing of the bridge. I know that House Sparrows are sort of vilified as a nuisance introduced species, but they are actually quite attractive if you get them away from dusty fast food parking lots and they seem to prefer these hot dry climates....

Later in the afternoon I wandered over to the 'day use' area. It had actually been quite busy during the day with park visitors, but became less so as the afternoon wore on. This is a view looking westward, that is the Red River....there were some Pelicans down at the bend of the river...too far off for a picture....

from the same general spot, this time looking eastwards....

There were large numbers of White throated Sparrows, especially in an area that had recently been re-seeded.....

and this is just a nice photograph of Sandhill creek, adjacent to our campsite. Note the level of the water in the creek......keep it in mind in a few days time.....

That is a Canada Goose up on the hillside opposite the campground. We started calling him 'Sentinel Goose'.....I suspected then, and knew for a fact before this trip was over, that Canada Geese do actually nest up on top of various rock formations in these Badlands areas....this must have been 'daddy' standing guard....

In the afternoon, Shantz and Ernie went for the hike up over the formations behind the visitor's center. You can just make out the visitors center towards the top left of the picture - it was built in such a way to blend into the terrain, which it does very well...

here is another view of the 'badlands'.....

one of the many deer, peeking over a hillside.....

and another view, if you look way down there you'll see a trail running along the bottom...we'll be doing that trail later the next day....

and here he is, zooming in on the back of our campsite.....

That evening we finally discovered what had Shantz' attention in that creek - note the dark spot in the middle of the creek.....

a Beaver! I took this picture of him from my 'duck blind' otherwise known as our camper...he was up on the bank gathering vegetation.....

and there it is, looking very cute....standing up in the middle of the creek.....

Since it was so nice here, we had decided to spend another day or two but the water situation was now critical, despite the most stringent conservation efforts, we were basically out of water. That evening Ernie discovered that the washrooms attached to the visitor center had water, so took our empty emergency jug and filled it up and packed it back to the camper....a bit of a trek, but enough to keep us going at least over night and now he knew where he could get more.

With all the wandering we had done that day there is a fairly extensive bird list:

Bird List: Canada Goose - 4; Robins - at least 50; Mourning Dove - 3; Brewer's Blackbird - at least 30; Meadowlark - 2; Yellow-bellied Sapsucker - 6; Northern Flicker (red-shafted) - 2; Northern Flicker (Yellow-shafted) - 5; Yellow-rump Warbler - 14; Ruby Crowned Kinglet - 1; Magpie - 5; Ringbill Gull - 2; Starlings - 12; White-throated Sparrow - at least 30; American Kestral - 1; American Crow - 2; Pintail Duck - 1; Mallard - 2; Black Cap Chickadee - 1; House Sparrow - 14; American Avocet - 2; American White Pelican - 1; Junco (Slate) - 5; Purple Finch - 3; Pheasants - could hear at least 3; White-crowned Sparrow - 12