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I (Joel) usually carry my little digital point and shoot camera with me while hiking and snowshoeing.  It’s amazing what you come across out there in the park.  Here are my favourite wildlife shots from 2018.

White-tailed ptarmigan. In February, while snowshoeing in Yoho National Park with guests from Germany, we came across a white-tailed ptarmigan feeding on willows in a meadow. A shaft of sunlight came through the trees as it reached up for a bud.

 

Grizzly bear and cubs. In all the years of living here, we have only rarely seen grizzly bears while we’ve been out hiking in the park.  Imagine my surprise when I was out for a walk on the shore of Lake Louise in June, and in a field of dandelions right beside the Chateau Lake Louise, there was a grizzly bear mom (bear #142, for those who want to know) and her two young-of-year cubs.  Parks Canada staff had cordoned off the meadow, and I (along with several hundred other astonished visitors) got to watch them feed and play.  It was a magical experience.

 

Harlequin duck. This is one of Banff’s most beautiful birds.  Nadine’s brother and niece were visiting from Ottawa, and we were all out for a paddle on Moraine Lake.  This drake was roosting by the shore, and didn’t budge as we quietly drifted by.

 

Hoary marmot. This big guy poked his head up out of the rocks on the shore of Katherine Lake, at Dolomite Pass.  He seemed curious, so he wandered our way, giving me a rare close-up of the jumbo-sized teeth sported by these big ground squirrel.  And their feet look really neat up close as well!

 

Clark’s nutcracker. Visitors often see these birds at parking lots or popular viewpoints, mooching for food.  You forget how regal they look.  I spied this one at the Little Beehive, right near treeline.

 

Columbian ground squirrel. This was a truly funny moment.  On the shore of Lake Agnes, in July, we came across a juvenile ground squirrel (born in the spring), and a very annoyed looking adult.  We’re guessing it was mom or dad, and it was belting out the high-decibel “chip” call that these animals use to sound the alarm.  It must have been loud even for junior, who shut its eyes in response.

 

Porcupine. I was hiking on my own in August, coming home from a giant day hike in Paradise Valley, and I almost stepped on this porcupine.  I don’t know who was more scared.  It scurried a few steps into the woods, then turned to face me.

 

Pika. For me, it was the year of the pika: They kept popping up while we were hiking, and since they’ve got the market cornered on cute, I had to put this one in the mix.

 

Mule deer. In October, just after our season ended, we headed down to Waterton Lakes National Park, which had seen a major wildfire in September 2017. We watched a herd of deer feeding in the vegetation growing back after the fire. The phoenix was rising from the ashes.

And as we say goodbye to 2018, that’s a good place to end.  Happy New Year and all the best for 2019.

 

 

 

 

October 7, 2018
WATERTON LAKES NATIONAL PARK, Alberta

Nadine and I are standing above Galway Creek, on the eastern edge of Waterton, with our old friend and long time park warden Edwin Knox. In front of us, in the shaded snow, is a tableau of wildlife tracks. There are dozens of mouse tracks, and moving up in size there are the footprints of pine marten, wolf, deer, and most impressively, grizzly bear.

 

The bear tracks look very fresh, and lead to two big digs in the hillside. “Oh, yes,” says Edwin. “It looks like it’s after the hedysarum.” We peer into the hole, and sure enough, we can see the severed stalks and fresh greenery. In the dirt behind, there are unmistakable claw marks where the bear has scooped out the sweet roots.

 

We are visiting Waterton, where I used to work, for the first time since a ferocious wildfire – the “Kenow” Fire – tore through the park last September. We wanted to see for ourselves what the fire had wrought, and what had happened since. Before getting to our wildlife track bonanza, we’ve already seen the tracks of moose, elk and coyote, all in a section of the park that was completely consumed by flames.

 

Before the day is done, we will see a pair of moose courting in the burned-out timber, and a deer happily browsing on the vegetation that sprouted this summer. It is a picture of resiliency and recovery, with wildlife thriving in a landscape that was blackened one year earlier.

Next week, part two of this story, in which the we make (at least to us) an amazing discovery…

Canada’s national holiday was on July 1, and tomorrow, July 4, is America’s Independence Day. How can we say that these two holidays are for the birds?

Let us give you three reasons:

1. the Gray Jay, one of our favourite birds here in the Rockies, has recently been given its old name back: the Canada Jay. This was the name used from the early 1800s all the way through to the 1950s. Even celebrated bird artist John James Audubon used it in his 1840 publication of The Birds of America. In May of this year, the American Ornithological Society officially approved the name change, giving Canadians something to celebrate. So happy Canada Day, Canada Jay!

2. South of the line, today is the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which had originally been enacted by both the U.S. and Canada in 1916. This act made it illegal to hunt migratory birds (except for game birds). It also stopped the killing of birds for feathers, made it illegal to collect their eggs, and even made industries who killed birds accidentally change their ways. The Act is probably responsible for keeping a dozen species from going extinct. Unfortunately, like a lot of cross-border legislation these days, it is under threat, but its accomplishments are definitely worth celebrating.

3. It’s the “Year of the Bird,” as declared by National Geographic. As bird lovers, we can get behind this, and it turns out we all should. Thomas Lovejoy, “the godfather of Biodiveristy” said, “If you take care of birds, you take care of most of the environmental problems in the world.” Amen to that.

Happy holidays, everyone, and happy birding!

We’ve been doing a lot of birdwatching this spring. Now that we’ve passed through the migration phase and much of the courtship phase, it’s time for the nesting phase. And here we’ve got to tip our hats to the Canada goose, a bird that we’ve noticed is willing to nest almost anywhere, even if means claiming real estate that already belongs to some other member of the animal kingdom.

First up is a nest on a muskrat “push up.” I took this photo in May at the Cave and Basin marsh near Banff. Muskrats make push ups in ponds and wetlands in the winter, shoving up mud and reeds above the level of the ice. They are usually meant for one (muskrat, that is), but this top floor reno is very goose friendly.

Next up is a nest I snapped  in April on a beaver lodge in Minnekhada Regional Park, near Vancouver. We like how the goose actually ended up blending in pretty well. This lodge looks big enough for at least a duplex, but geese like a little bit of space between neighbours.

Finally, we’d heard that Canada geese will even try to take over osprey nests, but unlike in the case of muskrats and beavers, the existing tenants aren’t so keen on this. Last spring, at an osprey nest in Charlo, Montana, a pair of geese found out the hard way that not all real estate is up for grabs!

I am holding a stunningly patterned male Harlequin duck just above the fast moving water of the Bow River. When the signal is given, I open my hands and he launches himself downstream to land in the whitewater. So beautiful.On Monday this week, I had the opportunity to help band Harlequin ducks on the Bow River here in Banff National Park. They are listed as a species-at-risk in Canada.

It was a beautiful, warm spring day that unfolded at a careful pace. Herding and netting ducks on a river requires tactical precision and co-ordination.

First you’ve got to string a “mist net” across the river. Then you need to get multiple people positioned, in boats and on shore, to gently move the birds downstream. Finally, at just the right spot, you’ve got to get them airborne so that they will fly into the net – and not over it!

We successfully netted a new pair of birds. Cyndi Smith, our Harlequin banding specialist, took measurements and attached brightly-coloured leg bands. Moments later, I helped release the ducks. When they head back to the west coast for the winter, they’ll become part of an ongoing effort to monitor the population.

 

On the weekend, I took my friend Mark up to Bow Lake to go snowshoeing. It’s a dramatic spot, and there’s always at least a few wildlife tracks around. We saw traces left by snowshoe hares, white-tailed ptarmigans and pine martens, but there were also the signs of some other creature…

We found a trough in the snow, with pigeon-toed tracks running down the middle of it. Whatever left the tracks behind had to be relatively slow, and relatively heavy, and at that elevation, there’s only one creature that fits the bill: a porcupine.

I have to admire this one. We were at almost 2000 metres, and the snow was 165 cm deep. That’s one tough porcupine. I’m sure it is looking forward to spring, when it can switch from eating bark and the needles of evergreens to much more digestible leafy plants.

 

 

 

 

Spring is just around the corner, but last week we saw the official harbinger of this change of the  seasons. We saw a snow crane fly.  That’s right, even though it was below freezing, we saw an insect.  Just to remind you of how amazing this is, insects are cold-blooded, so when the temperature is below 0 degrees C, that’s usually the end of the line for any insect that’s out in the cold.

But snow crane flies are different.  They produce glycerol (a sugar alcohol) in their blood, which makes them tolerant of below zero temperatures… But not too far below zero!  If the temperature falls below about -7 or -8 degrees C, they risk “flash freezing.”

And this is why they are a harbinger of spring.  For most of the winter, our temperatures sit well below -7 or -8 degrees C.  It’s only when it starts to get warm that they can be out and about.

If you are out on snowshoes or skis at this time of year, watch for what looks like a spider walking across the snow.  Snow crane flies have to walk everywhere, because they are wingless.  This may seem unimpressive, but they’re pretty speedy: they can cover over a metre a minute (which is pretty good when you’re only 8 or 9 mm long).

Pretty soon our first migratory birds are going to show up, and our ground squirrels will pop out of hibernation, but until then, let the snow crane fly call out, “spring is here!”