Back to the Dempster, 2011 – Part 3 b

The weather hasn’t gotten any better here in real time, so back to Kiniskan where we woke up to not a bad day…cloudy and showery from time to time but not bad considering…

Ernie and Don headed out fishing….

and this time he actually caught a fish…we won’t say how many Don caught.  Our thing is photographing anything to do with nature….theirs is fishing…’nuff said!

back at the campsite April had discovered there was a real ‘house’ here….would somebody please let me in???

Later we set out to go for a walk along the trail that runs beside the lake…Shantz was the one that spotted this Spruce Grouse family right at the entrance to the trail…mom on the right, one of the youngsters on the left…

think this was another of the youngsters….saw 3, there may well have been more…they are very good at hiding..

the trail runs along the lakeshore headed away from the campground…

ending at this open area…

There were quite a few Shorebirds here…including this Least Sandpiper…(Ernie took this picture)

and a Solitary Sandpiper…

some Loons out on the lake but that big raft of them seen the day before was gone…

in my quest for berry pictures….here were some nice ripe Black Currants…

and here was where we first spotted this white flower…it’s name is ‘Northern Grass of Parnassus’ – a rather long name for quite a small flower.  The ‘colour’ is ‘Bastard Toadflax’ and we’ll be seeing a lot more of this plant…

another flower here, although past it’s prime was ‘Sitka Burnet’

and the fungi here were these ‘prickly’ puffballs which again…aren’t in the book we bought…they were growing in the gravel right at the edges of the road.

and we’ll end the day with some more birds…these are young Tennessee Warblers… We spent a total of 2 nights at Kiniskan…tomorrow we’ll be moving on…

Back to the Dempster – part 3

In real time it is such a horrible day that I have to escape somewhere, anywhere, so even though the weather wasn’t great back on August 15th, it was better than it is here on January 4th!  Everyone who RV’s has a favorite spot – for those that know us, you know ours is Tunkwa Lake….for our friends in Terrace – it is Kiniskan…so the plan was that we would give them 24 hrs to pack their 5th wheel and then we would meet at Kiniskan Provincial Park, which is the middle one of the 3 campgrounds on the Stewart-Cassiar Highway….since they had a long haul from Terrace we figured they wouldn’t arrive until late so we took our time getting ready to leave, and then, we didn’t think there was any sense going out to Stewart, but we did head out that way to see the Bear Glacier….

We’d forgotten just how far along that road it was….

and there it is…getting smaller and smaller all the time…I remember being here when the ice was almost right beside the road…

at this point we turned around and headed back to the highway…this was another small glacier beside the road….and see…sunshine!

up on the hillside just a hint of fall colour – maybe there is hope after all!

Continued on through Bell Two where we stopped for fuel because in this country you buy fuel when you find it….through Dease Lake until we reached…

the rest area with two names….neither of which I can remember at the moment!

There were some very pushy Ravens here….

Shantz tolerated them until one decided to grab her crust of bread…(Shantz loves bread – don’t ask me why!)

they did give me an opportunity to get the best Raven pictures I’ve ever gotten – not sure what this guy planned to do with this stick…

back on the road and pulled into the campground at Kiniskan….just got backed in….

and our friends pulled in right behind us…that is us in the background..

this was taken the next morning…I was standing in the door of the camper…it shows how close all the campsites in this campground are to the lake…

speaking of the lake…Ernie took this picture just after we pulled in…those were all Common Loons out there…we never saw that many again…

and I’ll continue with Kiniskan a bit later….

Back to the Dempster, 2011 – Part 2

In real time it is a pretty wet, miserable day, so might as well continue on with the telling of this trip…although as I recall the weather at this point wasn’t a whole lot better!  We left Beaumont P.P. in the morning and headed west, our destination being Terrace B.C. where we planned to visit friends…rain or drizzle most of the way. 

Stopped at Seely Lake P.P. to give the dogs, and us, a chance to stretch our legs….this is such a nice little campground, although tiny, squeezed between the highway and I guess, Seely Lake.  It had been extremely ‘birdy’ when we had stayed here in late May, 2 years before, and was just as ‘birdy’ on this day, the 11th of August…also there wasn’t a soul camped here…

This is one of a family of Northern Flicker that were in the campground…you can see from the mark on the nape of the neck that this family was mixed – Red-shafted and Yellow-shafted.

Continued on to Terrace where we spent the night, leaving in the morning, in the rain….headed back to the Stewart Cassiar Highway…

This is the Skeena River as it runs along the highway…Terrace would be back there as we are looking west in this picture…

Rained the whole day and was still raining when we reached Meziadan Provincial Park in afternoon…after a drive around the fairly large campground, we headed back up into the same campsite we had stayed in 2 years before (yes, we are creatures of habit)

By the time we were set up the rain had slowed enough for me to get out for a wander….there were lots of Robins here….including lots of young ones like the guy above…

This Downy Woodpecker was really working on this tree trunk…

I had wandered down to the lake side and found this spot that was just full of Warblers…

Looked down at my feet and there was a Wilson’s Snipe standing there! 

by this point the rain had stopped and I decided to go back to the camper to get the DSLR camera in hopes of getting photos of what I was pretty sure was a Magnolia Warbler….on the way…saw this Downy Woodpecker and Red-breasted Sapsucker sharing the same tree….I was actually surprised to see the Sapsucker but after checking the field guide, they are expected to be here.

another thing that surprised me were the berries.  I had expected, in fact hoped to find lots of different berries…but the lushness of these Thimbleberries really surprised me.  Back at home Thimbleberries never look like this come berry time.

Red Elderberries were in good supply too – all these berries were at least one of the reasons for all the birds…

Back at the campsite we found these fungi interesting….in fact this was just the start of something we hadn’t expected….we’d hoped for Fall Colours, Berries, and Wildlife (except for squirrels, non existent to this point)…we’d never thought about Fungi but as it turned out that would prove to be one of the most interesting aspects of this trip!  Since returning from this trip we’ve bought ourselves a book on Mushrooms…but I still don’t know what kind this one was….

another matter of interest were the numbers of Rufous Hummingbirds in the Fireweed….before this trip I never would have associated the two together….this was now the 12th of August…I’m giving dates just so you get a sense of when  birds can be expected, even this far north.

This was a young Warbler of some sort…I never did get photos of the Magnolia Warbler…by the time I returned, an RV had pulled into the spot that backed onto this area (the campground was over half full) and since I resent people invading my space when camped…I certainly wasn’t about to do the same…even for a bird I’d never seen before!

That evening Ernie decided to make use of his fishing license since it was the first time he’d bought one in several years….it didn’t do any good…he didn’t catch anything.  Shantz found the whole thing rather amusing anyway…

Should include this…one of a number of young Northwestern Crows in the park…. and just for interest sake, when we had been here in I think late May…there had been lots of Flycatchers of a number of varieties….they obviously arrive early and leave early as there were no flycatchers to be seen this trip…but certainly lots of other species!

Might as well throw this picture in…Ernie testing out his new combination stove and grill and Shantz helping…or something…

Back to the Dempster, 2011 – Part 1

It has taken me a while to post this trip.  I had initially decided to do a book on the trip for Christmas presents and I had started one, but wasn’t pleased with it…so decided to just blog it…and I guess you could say, ‘better late than never’!

We started the trip in a convoluted manner…going first to Vancouver Island to visit the children and grandchildren, then headed back over to the mainland, traveling up the sea to sky highway, spending our first night at Nairn Falls Provincial Park just outside of Pemberton.

A nice enough campground I guess, but really we should have pushed on and stayed somewhere along the Duffy Lake Road…

Scene from a viewpoint on the very twisty winding Duffy Lake Road.  It was a long haul from Nairn Falls to our next stop, equally uninspiring…the campground at Lac la Hache

This squirrel was about the most exciting thing there…but then it was just somewhere to spend the night…and next day we made it through Prince George and turned west…

arriving at Beaumont Provincial Park on Fraser Lake, in the late afternoon…

now we were starting to feel like we were actually on a holiday…

and finally now there were some birds to see…..like this young Cedar Waxwing ….

This mother was still feeding these youngsters…this was in early August.

another look…..

there were also American Redstarts here….

and here…I think a young male….these birds never hold still…making it very difficult to get decent photographs..it was also very windy that day as the weather was about to change and not for the best!

found a White-throated Sparrow – if it looks a bit weird it is because it has a Saskatoon berry in its beak…there are a lot of Saskatoon bushes in this park and the birds were making full use of the ripe berries!

A young Sapsucker – a Red-napped I think…

and a Red-eyed Vireo…

The aim of this trip was to be a search for fall colours…unfortunately it wasn’t ‘fall’ here, yet, but the plan was that it would be fall by the time we got up on the Dempster highway…here it was at best ‘late summer’…

so we documented the colour we could find…like these Asters at the entrance to our campsite…

and this Northern Goldenrod.