Tunkwa Lake – August 29, 2010

In real time it is a beautiful sunny November day but I’m about ‘walked’ out, so figured I’d continue on with our late summer trip.

Being the middle of the weekend, we decided to spend one more day at Tunkwa, before moving on…

It was another beautiful calm morning as we decided to take a walk over to Leighton Lake

Leighton, too was perfectly calm and as you can see from the few units at the far end, also sparsely populated.

walked along the shore line until it was time to head off across the grasslands towards June Lake.

Shantz has spotted something in the distance…

a group of horseback riders setting off on a ride….Shantz would have loved to have joined them!

up at June Lake, 3 Mule Deer took off – all good reasons why dogs, especially Siberian Huskies ~ should be on leads at all times!

June Lake, in late summer, was it’s usual uninspiring self…

at least until we spotted activity on the shore…

There were Killdeer – lots of Killdeer!  Seventeen of them to be precise!

Skirting around the lake and headed now over to the aspen grove and Bluff Lake….this pair of Chipmunks were busy giving either us, or each other, what for!

This Mountain Chickadee co-operated for one of the better pictures I’ve ever managed of these guys.

By the time we’d made it back to the campground (it’s about a 2 hour walk with lots of stops for pictures)…the weather was definitely deteriorating!

We’d only just made it back when the skies opened and it poured!

and then the system moved on…

a Northern Harrier was out checking the grass along the lake edge…

Mallards and Coots were busy preening after the deluge…

When it was all over I ventured out for a walk along the shore….the Baird’s Sandpiper were still there..

Here is another look at a species we don’t see all that often…

Looking southwards…the weather remain unsettled and stormy…

This Brewer’s Blackbird was the last picture I took that day before another rain squall sent us inside.

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!

Kentucky Allyene Provincial Park

In the last few posts I’ve made reference to Kentucky Allyene Provincial Park, so thought I’d go back into my pictures and post those I have of this lovely little provincial park.

The most straightforward way to get to the park is off of the Coquilla Connector (Highway 97C), turn south onto the old Princeton highway (5A), the turn off to the park is 11 km south of Aspen Grove.

The following pictures won’t be in any particular order although I may try to make them make a bit of sense…

This picture, taken on Feb. 27, 2005 remains as one of my all time favourite pictures…that is Ernie and our nosy little Brussels Griffon, ‘Willie’ checking out this bit of raft on a frozen Allyene Lake.

This picture, taken the same day shows the frozen lake, although there is no snow in the surrounding countryside.  It is too bad that on our ‘Spur of the moment’ drive last Sunday we didn’t pop over this way to see what it looks like currently. 

This is the earliest digital image I have of Allyene Lake.  This photo was taken on September 1st, 2003.  Although the west shore is quite forested, the remainder of the shoreline is open grasslands.

This picture was taken on October 2, 2004.  It and the one above are both taken from the main camping area on Allyene Lake.

and to give to proof to what I’ve said, that we often take drives up into this part of the country in the middle of winter…this was taken on February 9, 2006 and shows one of the campsites in the intermediary area between Allyene and Kentucky Lakes.  There are a couple of ‘pot hole’ lakes here, 1 of them is the snow covered area on the right of the photo.

on that same visit I had taken this pictures of the aspen trees that line the access road to the park.  In spring this area is always alive with birds, however, I noticed on our last visit that there are now signs up saying this is private property and to stay on the road……

One of the best visits we ever had was in Easter of 2006.  We took a week and initially went to Juniper Beach Provincial Park, then Tunkwa, and eventually to Kentucky Allyene where we, being virtually the only people there, had one of the spots right on the shore of Kentucky Lake that was still partially frozen.  The date was April 20th…unfortunately you can’t do that anymore, either, as the gate to Kentucky Lake’s campground doesn’t open until May 15th – one of my pet peeves – why???  They should be open all the time! We ‘retired’ and ‘semi-retired’ people with our RV’s can get by without water and pit toilets being available….just let us park!  We’ve been paying taxes long enough.

This was our campsite that visit and one morning we got up to sheer magic…..  There had been a light dusting of snow over night…

as the sun rose everything sparkled ….

with the rising of the sun the snow quickly evaporated….

but not before I managed to get out and shoot a few pictures like this one of a Townsend’s Solitaire…

and this, which is, to date, my best picture of a Mountain Chickadee, although the snow had disappeared in this sunny spot.

There were also a number of Barrow’s Goldeneye on the lake that trip.

This was also the first time we’d witness the ice coming off of a lake as we took this picture from about half way down the lake one day….and the next day, the lake was ice free.

This shot, taken on April 18, 2003 shows the extreme south end of Kentucky Lake.  The shores of this lake are forested but there is a walking trail the whole way around the lake.  There is often snow at this end of the trail well into May….depending on the type of winter of course.

This is probably enough for this posting….I’ll do some more next time.