Tunkwa P.P. – Easter 2010 – April 3

Woke up Easter morning to high thin cloud, sunshine and no wind!  While we were having breakfast we watched a small flock of Swans land out on the ice in the middle of the lake…

I quickly took a picture from the window of the camper although needn’t have rushed as they settled down and stayed there the entire day, only taking off about 6 in the evening.

When breakfast was finished we set off for a walk around the side of the lake…as we approached the lake we saw a dark object on the shore, head off across the ice to the little island off shore…

Unfortunately by the time I got a camera out and ready it was already across the ice, but it was an Otter!  the first one we had ever seen there.  It actually crossed the little island and continued on across the ice to the far shore.  We had to go around…

down through the little dip where these geese were standing on ice that had reformed during the night…

past the slough…that I think is actually called something like ‘bluff lake’ – looking much better with blue skies behind it, but also freshly frozen over….

and over and up the little mountain where I stopped to take this picture looking back over to the campground…there was also an interesting crack in the ice here…in fact the ice was really creaking and groaning this day where it hadn’t the days before…

the whole south facing hillside was covered in Sagebrush Buttercups…

closer look at some of the buttercups…

and down the other side and then we spotted – yes! a Mountain Bluebird!

and then a pair (male on left, female on right).  Mountain Bluebirds were still here when we were last here at Thanksgiving (go back in archives) and here they were again. 

Off we went again, along the back of the little mountain, and the back of the slough, over to the aspen grove….on the way we had to transverse what will hopefully be a future aspen grove but from the looks of these poor aspens….

where every tip was chewed off – they were having a hard time of it.  The amount of deer droppings in the area explained who was doing the pruning!

and here we found another pair of Mountain Bluebirds…this is the male…

soon this aspen bird nursery will be alive because Mountain Bluebirds are one of the species that will be making their nests in cavities in these trees.

From here we circled back to the campground and lunch.  After lunch I took April out for a little private meander (about all she is capable of these days) and while I had her out I could hear all sorts of bird activity up in the back corner of the park, so later set out on my own…

That big mass of Robins was up there…..

they’re probably hard to see in this picture, but the ground was hopping!

this guy seemed rather curious as to what I was doing!

this was just one of the many Northern Flickers in the area as well – this one is a female.

and if you wonder what they were all doing – well look at the size of the worm this guy is pulling out of the now soft, un-frozen ground!

I learned a long time ago that one of the best ways to see birds is to just pick a likely spot and then sit and wait and see what shows up….this little ‘pond’ back in the forest was a definite ‘likely spot’…

this male Downy Woodpecker was one of the first to appear….another one almost landed in my lap before he realized I wasn’t another stump!

a steady stream of Robins came for baths…

another female Flicker joined the crowd…

and then a female Hairy Woodpecker arrived as well…

It was getting on by then so figured I should (reluctantly) head back to the camper….

on the way I got stopped by some Mountain Chickadees.  There were also some Golden Crowned Kinglets in the same spot, but didn’t manage any pictures, nor could I get a picture of the Marmot that dove into his culvert when he saw me approaching – not to worry – I’d get pictures the next day!

Trip to Southern Alberta 2008 – Waterton - 2

On our second full day in Waterton, we woke to  nice sunshine, so decided we would take a drive south to try and find the 3rd Campground we had heard about.  Waterton National Park abuts Glacier National Park in the U.S.A., so heading south meant we’d be heading to the U.S. border…but with no plans to actually cross over…

the road quickly climbed in elevation.  The first viewpoint gave this spectacular view of the foothills and the plains beyond..

this shot shows a bit more of the flat plains…a perfect illustration of the song about Alberta that has the line “east side flat, west side vertical”….

this shot has more emphasis on the ‘vertical’…

and this one shows the terrain as you get close to the border.  We turned into the campsite we had been looking for on the Belly River – it is advertised as being ‘primitive’ which means it is more our kind of site….this day, the 30th of August, it was pretty busy and hot and dusty, but bears investigation another time, perhaps in the ‘off season’.

this was just another view, looking west towards the mountains, taken about half way back to Waterton, where we stopped at the picnic area just before the gates, to stretch our legs….

Ernie and Shantz cooling off while I poked about looking for anything interesting to photograph…

I’ve done my usual ‘filing away’ of the results, but I remembered I had seen this Hairy Woodpecker there, so went digging in my ‘bird folder’ for it.

also remembered it was alive with Cedar Waxwings and found this shot.  By this time it was getting late, but we decided to drive around the Buffalo paddock to see if we could see any Bison….

and yes, there they were, looking for all the world like they were just out there roaming over the prairies…

as long as you ignore the fence!

as we left the Buffalo Paddock, we made one more stop at a rest area located just past the paddock entrance….

where I was thrilled to find these Liatris in flower.  As a gardener I was very familiar with this interesting flower, but it wasn’t until that moment that I realized our cultivated form was actually derived from a native wildflower!

Liatris were scattered all over this dry prairie…there is a good sized clump, still in full flower, in the bottom left hand corner of this picture.

Waterton is actually a fantastic place for wildflowers, in fact they have a week long Wild Flower Festival in mid June each year – something we discovered purely by accident on our second trip to Waterton, when we had actually been staying at the nearby Police Outpost Provincial Park (another fantastic small, primitive type campground), and had driven into Waterton just for the day.  For once I didn’t feel out of place parked at the side of the road, on my hands and knees taking wildflower pictures – cause everybody was doing the same thing!!!