Winged beauty

Yesterday, I went on the annual Ghost River Watershed Alliance hike, held in the Benchlands area, NW of Cochrane (which is NW of Calgary). Erik Butters holds this very enjoyable day, taking us through the forest and meadows on his private land. Because spring was so late in arriving this year, there weren't that many wildflowers in bloom, but friend Darlene did a wonderful job of finding several mushrooms for me to photograph, including the little cluster of three in my next photo. Each cap was maybe quarter of an inch across : ) Other things we saw included a pair of noisy Red-tailed Hawks, quite a few beautiful Tiger Swallowtail butterflies (seen in image above), and Black Bear scat (that looked very recent to me!) and a Grizzly Bear footprint in mud along our path, that had been made sometime after a 4-wheeler went up the trail the previous night - i.e. very recent footprint : ) We also came across Coyote scat on our trail. When we got back to Eric's home afterwards, he had a delicious BBQ meal waiting for us. This is always such an enjoyable end to the event and is much appreciated by one and all (and the turnout this year was 60+ people). Amazingly, the sun shone and there was no rain, temperatures 12C up to 19C, so we were very fortunate. Thanks so much for the ride, Sandy!

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