The weather has been great here in the city and to the east of town if you enjoy dry roads and hardly any snow. Decembers sunny weather made it a great time to go east in search of the elusive Snowy Owls, which I know are around.
At the end of December my wife and I went east and our first encounter was a nice Rough Legged Hawk perched up on a utility pole along the detour, which will become part of the new Stoney Trail Ring Road. I stopped and turned around to have a better look. I got to a place I could turn off the highway and managed a single shot from the camera before he decided he didn’t like being watched through the lens of my camera.
Oh well, off down the road we went and a few kilometres down the road up on another utility pole there was another hawk. Another U-turn and the same result except this time I didn’t even get close to him, other then down the dirt road.
One thing about driving prairie roads is you never have to worry about being lost. They mostly go north to south; east to west with the odd curve on a correction line. We continued to drive for quite a few kilometres without seeing much of anything. We ended up north of the Trans Canada Highway where it connects to go south to Vulcan. This road runs along Sadler’s Slough going north–an area I have spent many a spring and summer day looking for Red Wing Blackbirds, Yellow Headed Blackbirds and a variety of shorebirds.
It was looking pretty bleak until we reached the old farm buildings where a couple of Hen Pheasants sat perched up on the derelict buildings. That is to say they were perched until I got out of the truck and then it was across the bulrushes, across the road and into an iced up slough full of bulrushes.
Well, I got back in the truck and continued down the road until we came to the correction line. Time to head back west. A beautiful day still, until you look in the rearview mirror and see the amount of dust you are kicking up even at 60 kilometres an hour.
We continued along the road slowing down and stopping from time to time to see what we could see. We stopped beside one large slough and I spotted the distinctive shape of a beautiful male Ring Necked Pheasant. The way the sun was shining on his breast he was bursting with colour. What a magnificent bird. With the reds, and yellows in his feathers, he was strutting out there like he owned the place. He walked over to the fence line with all the cockiness that only a rooster can muster. Then, as if by magic he suddenly melted into the bulrushes.
We watched and waited and suddenly he burst out of the bulrushes flew a short distance and disappeared again. No matter how many times I see this it is still such a great sight to see.
Further along we came to a dry ditch running between the rows of poplars opening out into a field of golden stubble and a number of large round hay bales looking like a bunch of muffets cereal, (do they still even make that stuff).
A closer examination of these giant muffets revealed a fox perched on one soaking up the last of the day’s sun; its coat a magnificent golden colour with a hint of red. I was out of the truck, round to the back and using the truck as a blind. I managed about three shots and suddenly when I looked back through the lens he was gone. Vanished into the trees and the dry ditch like a ghost or a mirage.
The car that had been following behind me a kilometre or so away probably wondered when they got there what I had been so interested in photographing.
Inglewood Bird Sanctuary has continued being a wonderful place this winter with birds that forgot to fly south. In early December, I was seeing one Rusty Blackbird, a bird I normally see here in early fall, into late December. In early January there were now two.
November and as late as the 22nd of December was another unusual visitor. The fish eating Belted Kingfisher. They do nest at the sanctuary but should have been much further south. Perhaps the fishing is good down south by the outlet from the water treatment plant (where the warm waters enter into the Bow) below the Calf Robe Bridge. It is just a short flight from the bird sanctuary.
Another visitor, which comes and goes in the winters here was a juvenile Northern Harrier (once called the Marsh Hawk). I watched this one as he flew within inches of the Mallards on the open waters of the lagoon and the Mallards just ignored him. I would see him later across the river, with that beautiful reddish body and his distinctive white rump patch, just skimming the ground like they do.
That same day I spotted a coyote with a pretty bad coat that was likely sporting mange. Mange can eventually kill them if not treated. The problem is that when they interact with other animals, like dogs, they can spread the disease.
There are thousands of ducks on the river this day, and of course this brings in the Bald Eagles. This year I have seen three juveniles (they get their white heads about 4 years of age) and two adults. It is sometimes just wonderful to watch these juveniles soaring at each other with talons outstretched, and from time to time, just barely grasping each other. Often if you know where to look, you will see an eagle or three or four perched on one of the trees looking at the menu down below.
Don’t forget to keep a keen eye out for the many Mule Deer that live within the sanctuary. There are many young ones as well as one good looking buck with four points on each rack. When I recently photographed him, he was only a matter of ten metres from the path, quietly sitting in the sun and chewing his cud.
Of course make sure that when you walk by those thousand or so Mallards you take a close look. This year, there has been one female who is missing much of her pigmentation; not an albino but different.
This year, the Great Horned Owls have not been too disappointing. There is one male who tends to sit in one particular tree on a fairly frequent visit, while the female is quite elusive. Of course by the time you get to read this they will likely have begun to nest. Even in Saddle Ridge where I live there are sightings of Great Horned Owls. Sometimes on someone’s roof, other times sitting on one of the light standards that go around Saddletowne Circle.
So if you are driving about the circle in the evening, take your time and take time to look up. You never know who or what you might see. In the summer you are likely to see the resident Swainson’s Hawks. I’ll write more about them after they come back from their trip to Venezuela. Oh yes and don’t forget the cute little Chickadees in the sanctuary but let them find their own food such as the seeds from the Black Water Birch.
