September 2006 Archives

I think I owe some of you an apology because of the way I worded last week's quiz post. I used the words "American Southwest" in describing where you might find a Bushtit (the correct answer) when actually they have a much greater range and can be found as far north as British Columbia as well as alll the way down to Central America. Some of the answers came back "Wrentit" which is a bird whose range is restricted to the Pacific Coast chaparral of California and Baja California. I am sorry if my choice of words led to any confusion.

Now on to this week's quiz and this little gem I found flitting around in the firs and pines near the Maligne River in Jasper National Park last week. Good luck!

Cavell Lake and Mount Edith Cavell

After 4 attempts I finally got the clear morning skies I was looking for yesterday as the rising sun just lights the 11,034 foot (3,363 m) summit of Mount Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park. The temperature was just below freezing and things were a bit nippy while we (Roxie and myself) waited for this moment. It was worth the wait.

Internet access being what it is here in Jasper National Park I haven't been able to get anything posted since arriving last Thursday afternoon (other than the bird quiz, that is). The weather has certainly been a bit better that it was a couple of weeks ago. Friday we were out driving around checking things out and we came upon something I'd only seen from a distance last time and that is this Bighorn Ram. Nice to own a big lens so that it is possible to get close-ups like this without fear of being on the receiving end of a head butt from this guy. What a beautiful animal. I've also had a chance to shoot some younger rams on this visit also (along with more ewes and lambs).

Saturday morning looked like it might be good for some scenics so I gathered Roxie up early and we took of for Mout Edith Cavell to see what we could do with a little recent snow on her summit. Unfortunately there was a big cloud hovering over said summit so I settle for making an image or two of the icebergs floating in the lake at the toe of Cavell Glacier. I've since discovered a beautiful location to try and get a shot of the mountain at sunrise and, weather permitting, I'll get the chance before heading south Friday.

The elk rut is in full swing and we have spent quite a bit of time shooting bulls who are a bit hormonally unbalanced right now. They bugle quite a bit and are certainly massing their harems. Spent close to 2 hours with this one, watched him run off a couple of other bulls, and ran when he decided he didn't much like the dozen or so photographers that were hanging around. I didn't think I could move so fast at my age but adreniline is pretty effective when you realize 1000 lbs. of elk is headed your direction.

Yesterdaymorning was spent with the elk again but in the afternoon we went looking for other stuff and ended up back at Medicine Lake where I had found the Pika's a couple of weeks ago. In the course of shooting them again I caught a few fleeting glimpses of a Least Weasel and went back today in hopes that it would be around agin today. While waiting I took some shots of some turning leaves that were still wet from the morning's rain. Had to give up in the weasel when the rain got serious again but will try again before leaving Friday - a really cute little animal for being so ferocious . . .

Last week's non-avian Bird Quiz was an America Pika I found with a mouthful to store away for this coming winter near Medicine Lake at Jasper National Park. This week's bird would be really lost had it been photographed in Canada. This is one that goes back a couple of years and is a bird found in the American Southwest. Good luck!

Wood Bison is wearing.

On an otherwise drizzly day we came upon the Wood Bison at Elk Island National Park sporting this stylish head gear. As it was I was lucky to get a shot at all - 2 school buses loaded with kids who had been on a field trip to the park came blasting by and ran the bison off into the woods.

My friend Ric has now joined me for the next week or so and we will be trolling around Jasper National Park. There is a bit of new snow in the high country which should be nice once the front moves out and the weather clears this weekend.

I had planned to do this more often but other distractions have kept me from it. Some of this nonsense goes all the way back to when I was in North Dakota which was what, nearly 3 months ago? Actually the accompanying photo goes back even longer than that and I’d forgotten I had it. Since it didn’t show up in a quick review of the blog’s archives, here it is. I shot this somewhere in Chippewa National Forest (Minnesota) which would make it sometime back in June. Don’t ask me, though. All I know is somebody nailed some boards to some trees and strategically placed a toilet seat on them, clearly visible from the road with no sign of a curtain or something that would afford a little privacy. At least it looks like they used a wooden seat that fits with the surroundings. I think a white one would have been a bit to bright and not fit in well; much more natural this way.

I had promised to talk about this way back in notes #2 and it also fell by the wayside, I think. In South Dakota the state bird is the Ring-necked Pheasant. Fine. All states seem to have official state all kinds of things. Usually, however, they are something native to that particular state. Ring-necked Pheasants are not even native to North America, they were introduced (from Asia if I remember correctly) so that “sportsman” could hunt them. From the state’s website I give you this:

It was introduced to South Dakota in 1898 and is easily recognized by its colorful plumage. It is also known for its delicious meat. Since it is primarily a Midwestern bird, pheasant is considered a delicacy in many other states.

Great reasons for a choosing a state bird, eh? “Delicious meat” and "a delicacy”. This from a “red” state in which you can probably still find “freedom fries” in some of the small towns. Oh dear.

This morning I dropped mom off at the airport in Calgary and she is now back home in (much warmer) Southern California. We spent most of her last week with me in and around Jasper National Park in Alberta. As has been the norm for the past 6 weeks, the weather was less than spectacular with clouds and rain. The first wildlife we encountered was a small herd of Bighorn Sheep down by the highway not far from the east entrance. Several ewes and a few lambs were hanging out in a pullout until some idiot honked his horn (apparently unhappy that people were slowing down/stopping to look – like this would be unexpected in a national park?) which caused them to scurry across the highway in front of oncoming traffic.

The mountains of the Canadian Rockies are beautiful to say the least and quite different in appearance (in my opinion) than the portion of the chain south of the border. This is an image of the north face of Mount Edith Cavell, taken in a rare moment with a little blue sky. Named for a World War I era British nurse, her’s is an interesting story you can read here. There are 3 glaciers on this face of the mountain: Angel Glacier is just visible at right center, Ghost Glacier is very small and is almost perfectly placed in the center of this image, with Cavell Glacier is all but hidden by the two ridges in the foreground.

I had read online that Elk were a common sight at the Whistlers Campground though had to listen to mom make her disappointment known that they were not in our section. At least until the last day we were there when a rather large bull showed up right outside my trailer while I was in town running an errand. He’d moved on by the time I returned but was still close by. The trailer in the background was two spaces over from mine. Of course in putting together a collection of photos from the last 6 weeks for her I had to include photos of “her” elk.

We had hoped to put in a little time visiting the Banff and Lake Louise areas but the weather put a stop to that. This is an “aim and shoot out the front window” picture I took as we were crossing Bow Pass Wednesday in Banff. We’d hit a little snow along the Icefield Parkway near the visitor center but then it starting getting serious a few kilometers down the highway. Once we dropped in elevation a little it turned back to rain and that is what we endured all day yesterday in Calgary when we would have preferred a little more sightseeing. Roxie and I are now in Edmonton where I plan to lay low for a couple of days. Next week has Elk Island National Park (east of Edmonton) on the schedule followed by a return next weekend to Jasper. I should be back in the “Lower 48” around the end of the month.

Okay, I've decided to do something different this week for Quiz #13. Primarily because I didn't run into many birds this past week at Jasper National Park (I'll talk about the park in my next entry), so have fun with this little furry-instead-of-feathered creature. And last week's bird was a (multiple choice: hatch year/first summer/juvenile) Mew Gull.

While putting together this week's quiz I decided to create a category just for the quizzes on the blog page and, in doing so, discovered that the sequence of quizzes contained a duplication - there were 2 #5's. So no, you haven't missed one - last week's quiz was really #11 and the answer was Black-legged Kittiwake. And, since a few of you deemed it to easy, here is one that you may have to work at a little. Another confusing "non-adult" plumaged gull (after this one we'll leave the gulls alone for a while). Good luck!

Not long after crossing into British Columbia from the Yukon Territory we encountered a sign warning of wildlife on the highway. Sometime later we found them, an obstinacy of Wood Bison were grazing along the highway's edge so, naturally I stopped to make a few images. Wood Bison are found only in Canada and are a subspecies (Bison bison athabascae ) of the American Bison. Wood Bison are slightly heavier and have a darker coat than the cousins the Plains Bison. We would later encounter a second group but in a location in which I had no place to park and make images.

A couple of hours later we came upon another subspecies as the highway took us through BC's Muncho Lake Provincial Park. Ovis dalli stonei , commonly known as Stone Sheep, are a subspecies of Dall Sheep that are found in British Columbia and in parts of the Yukon Territory. The Dall Sheep of Alaska and the western Yukon are completely white while the Stone Sheep are gray to grayish-brown with white patches. (Just to confuse the issue more, a third subspecies called Fannin's Sheep can be found in parts of the Yukon which are intermediate between the other two.)

If they had been kind enough to hang around the day would have had a "subspecies trifecta": As we were about to leave Stone Mountain Provincial Park a cow and calf Mountain Caribou crossed the highway (safely) in front of us but, unfortunately, disappeared quickly into the forest before I could get stopped (let alone get pics). All in all a good day for wildlife along the road to Jasper later in the week.

Making our way along the Alaska Highway in the Yukon we were treated to some beautiful scenes today as the coming of fall is in full swing (even though the Autumnal Equinox is still a coulple of weeks away. At the higher elevations especially things are changing rapidly. Aspens are glowing a brilliant yellow and the birches are flaming red; most of the Fireweed that was blooming in shades of purple a few weeks ago when we passed through have now lost their flowers and the leaves and stalks are changing to bright red. Two nights ago in Tok (Alaska) I could hear the soft calls of shorebirds flying overhead as they made their way south - another sure sign that the weather is changing.

These two images were made just west of Whitehorse and, as we moved more to the south, things hadn't advanced quite as much; most stands of Aspen were still green but the leaves are not quite as bright as they had been and will soon be turning, too. Hopefully the color changes will be reaching into the Canadian Rockies when we arrive there later this week.

Spent some more time with image files from last week's trip to Hallo Bay and, in addition to bears I have a couple of others. This is one I shot while waiting for the coffee to finish brewing on the first morning at camp. Just a few hundred feet of the beach is this rather large rock formation - I walked out to the edge of the camp to get a look at the sunrise and found it silhouetted against a pretty cool looking pink sky. Unable to resist I ran back to the cabin and got back to the scene in time - this was the only one of 5 exposures that didn't have little black specks (gulls) moving across the frame. . .

Just before our group arrived at camp one of the guides came upon a family of these little guys (or girls). What is it called? Good question. The guides at camp referred to it as a Short-tailed Weasel but it is also known as Stoat as well as Ermine. Whatever you call them they were hard as hell to photograph because they rarely stopped moving - one second it would pop up behind a log and before you knew it the thing would appear behind another.

And here are four more shots of Brown Bears (from the second session - Tuesday morning):

You may remember, a couple of weeks back we made an attempt to drive the east section of the old Denali Highway in search of birds. That turned out, of course, to be one of those totally miserable rainy days that also included a little snow fall. Well yesterday, following a long drive north from Homer, we arrived at the other end of that highway with a little late afternoon sun in our pockets. Time was short but I dropped the trailer as quick as I could and went looking for some nice scenes to shoot.

As you can see with these first 2 images - though it was only September 2nd - things around this part of Alaska are starting to take on the look of Fall. In the first image a creek is surrounded by yellows, reds, and golds while the tundra plants on the mountains in the background add still more red to the scene. In the next shot a little snow remains on top of the mountain; a reminder of what will soon come to this landscape. In a couple of months these locations will be all but inaccessible since the state will not plow the road (trust me, it may have been a "highway" once but even calling it a road is far too kind . . . ).

The reason for visiting this area was to spend a little time at Denali National Park. Considering the way the weather has been as well as having heard that "the mountain" is usually only visible about 40% of the time because of clouds, I was careful not to get my hopes up. "Pleasantly surprised" would be the best way to describe how I felt when I found the skies completely clear upon waking this morning. I slugged down some coffee and gathered up mom, Roxie, and my cameras then went looking for a good view. Denali is the native name for the mountain and the name officially recognized by the State of Alaska; you probably learned in school that it is Mount McKinley and that is the official name as far as the U.S. government is concerned. No matter the name (I pefer Denali . . .), it is one huge mountain.

Other than quick looks there has not been much time to fully sort through the bears from Hallo Bay though I did manage to get through most of the images from the first afternoon at camp. Here are six of them:

I left Homer Monday afternoon for the adventure at Hallo Bay Camp. The camp itself is a privately owned piece of land that lies within the boundaries of Katmai National Park. Following a short flight across Cook Inlet we landed on the beach a couple of hundred feet from the camp where we had a brief orientation (which included a discussion of bear safety), were assigned our “quarters”, then we headed out with our guide for a first visit with the bears.

The weather was positively perfect on Monday afternoon and continued Tuesday morning (which is when I made these first two images) and the bears did not disappoint either. There were sub-adult males and females, adult boars, and mothers (sows) with cubs (some second-year and some “spring” or first year). Most often feeding on the abundant salmon, sometimes playing, sometimes sleeping, or, in the case of a big boar nicknamed “Ted” by the guides, just strutting their stuff.

By Tuesday evening the rains moved in and Wednesday – with some heavy winds thrown in with the precipitation - was a complete washout; we never left the galley/eating area for the entire day. The clouds and occasional rain showers stuck around Thursday but we went out anyway and would not be disappointed as far as the show going on. At one point our guided counted 13 bears from our vantage point, some a couple of hundred yards away, some less than 100 feet away. This sow – either Ursula or Nancy depending upon which guide you talk to – captured most of our attention Thursday morning since she was at one section of the stream with her 2 adorable spring cubs.

She would alternate between feeding herself and providing the cubs with some tasty salmon, always on the alert for other bears approaching the area (boars will sometimes kill and eat cubs). Not long after this image was made she even allowed them to suckle right next to the stream and we were close enough that we could hear the cubs “purring”. That all came to a quick end when the aforementioned Ted came around and she and the cubs disappeared into the woods.

Though not exactly primitive, amenities at the camp are limited and all I really did there was copy files to my hard drive and, for this entry, I quickly gathered up a few images to share. Over the next few days I have a lot of editing to do and hope to share a few more as we make our way north and east back to Canada for the final leg of this portion of my travels.

Last week was a bit of a tricky one that I even had to check a couple of different guides to be certain with my first thought being Surfbird but after thoroughly studying the bill decided that it could only be Black Turnstone, probably a juvenile (hatch year) bird. This week's is a gull I found mixed in among the Glaucous-winged and Mew Gulls on the beach at the Homer Spit.