Spring Trip 2010 – Day 24 – Danielson Provincial Park

Sunday, May 16th (which also happens to be my younger daughters birthday), we spent just hanging around…..by 10:30 in the morning it was already 20 degrees so we knew it was going to be a hot one…

Shantz was already laying in the shade….

I walked out into the middle section of the campground loop to get this picture of the dandelions ~ this type of dandelion was in full flower in the mornings, but closed up by afternoon…

Those Thirteen Line Ground Squirrels were active enough to entertain Shantz (Husky Television we call it)

Clay coloured Sparrows were very busy in the dandelions as well….

While temperatures were still cool enough to be pleasant, I went for a walk through the ‘closed’ part of the campground…

From the far end, there is Lake Diefenbaker….

Some people were in a boat fishing, which sort of helps with the perspective, size wise….

On the way back, spotted Swainson’s Thrush in the bushes growing in the campground…

Large numbers of these Chipping Sparrows continued to feed on the dandelion seed heads….

This one shows how they hold the seed head down with their foot while they get at the seeds….

Clay coloured Sparrows were also all over doing the same thing….

I don’t think most people realize just how important a feed crop dandelions are to birds and other wildlife!

another Clay coloured Sparrow, holding down a seed head…

and here, one of each…Clay coloured Sparrow and Chipping Sparrow…

Back at the campsite we spent the rest of the day doing some much need ‘dog grooming’ where we found ticks on both dogs, and on us, there was even one walking on the face of the clock on the camper wall!  By afternoon it was so hot we were all hiding inside with the fan working madly.  We’d gone from ‘snow’ to ‘sweltering’ which led us to another dilemma, where do we go from here?  The plan had been to head to Grasslands National Park….but there is absolutely NO shade there and with the weather this hot, that didn’t seem like a good plan (the website had said the roads were impassable if wet but that temperatures also climbed to extreme highs)….we also had the problem that the next weekend was the much dreaded ‘May long weekend’ and we knew we had to be settled in somewhere well before that arrived…but where?  Stay tuned!