Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: 2014

Lol, those of you who know me know that I love photographing mushrooms. The one mushroom that is on my Wish List is the bright red Fly Agaric, which we don't get here. Ours are either yellow or orange-yellow with the white flecks - still beautiful to see. Needless to say, my youngest daughter, with her brilliant ability to choose gifts that are exactly right for each person, succeeded in finding this perfect one for me two Christmases ago. It stands maybe 2" tall and is just so cute. This is just a very quick shot I took. I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas has had a lovely few days. Here, we had roughly 7" of new snow, so we definitely had a white Christmas. It was also very cold. This morning, 27 December 2016, it is only -1C (windchill -7C), which is good, because there is another Christmas Bird Count today, SW of the city. According to the weather forecast, we should have a few days of these milder temperatures and then we plunge back to very cold again.

Lol, those of you who know me know that I love photographing mushrooms. The one mushroom that is on my Wish List is the bright red Fly Agaric, which we don't get here. Needless to say, my youngest daughter, with her brilliant ability to choose gifts that are exactly right for each person, succeeded in finding this perfect one for me (along with various "owl" things!). It stands maybe 2" tall and is just so cute. I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas is having, or has had, a lovely day. Here, the forecast snow didn't arrive yesterday, so we are having a "brown" Christmas. Makes things so much easier, especially for those who have to be out on the roads today. For many people, Christmas is a very difficult time, for various reasons. My thoughts are with them and, as always, with those who for one reason or another will spend Christmas alone. To those of you who don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a happy day, anyway. Wishing you all a HAPPY CHRISTMAS and all the very best in the New Year! If you will be on the road, please don't drink and drive!

Posting late today, as I needed to sleep as long as I could last night, having stayed up ALL night the previous night! I have to be up about 4:00 am tomorrow morning as I will be out on a very long Bird Count day east of Calgary, in the Drumheller Badlands area for their annual Christmas Bird Count. After that, I am hoping to "collapse" - oh, and get the last of my overseas Christmas cards and letters done and go food shopping, etc.! Snow is in the forecast for Christmas Eve day and Christmas Day and a few days next week. I do have a few photos to post in the next few days that are not the same colouring as the last 13 or so images that I posted, lol! Winter plus bird counts tend to be like this, unfortunately, but add in a gorgeous hoar frost and everything in sight turns white. Normally, I would add an odd brightly coloured photo in amongst them, but this time, I am so short of time and I'm trying to get all the "better" count photos posted here so that I can send out a link to my High River Christmas Bird Count album. Since 16 December, I have also spent a day looking for Snowy Owls on 20 December, and a long day yesterday (21 December) on the Nanton Christmas Bird Count. There was no hoar frost those two days, so I won't have "white" photos to post. This photo was taken on 16 December 2014, which was the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count for the town of High River. This town is SE of Calgary, roughly half an hour's drive from the southern edge of Calgary. My small group travelled in two cars, 8 people in total, and we covered the SE quadrant of the Count circle. Below, I will add the report compiled by our leader, Gus Yaki. As usual, there were several of these sightings listed that I, myself, did not see. I ended up with poor photos of most of the things that I did see - the day was absolutely beautiful, but the light was even worse than I had realized. The amazing hoar frost, that covered everything, surprisingly lasted pretty well the whole day - usually, it lasts only a very short time. So, even though the light wasn't good for photos, the hoar frost beauty stayed with us all day long - breathtaking. For our drive down to High River, we had fog which, in patches, was quite thick. Wondered if we would see anything at all when we reached our area, ha. It was cold and damp, as well as foggy. In addition to that, some of the birds, such as the three Snowy Owls (I only saw two of them) were SO far away, there was no chance for photos except just for the record. Only 35 species were seen in the total for the complete Count circle. Of course, as always happens, I just had to take photos of anything else that caught my eye, including several barns, cloud formations, farm cats, an old truck, scenery and so on. This was the barn where the beautiful little kittens (2 photos already posted of them) were hanging out. Pink is a very unusual colour for a barn here! At one of our stops, we were looking in the bushes/shrubs at the edge of a farm, where a Northern Saw-whet Owl had been sighted last Christmas Count. No luck with an owl, but one of the birders spotted a male Merlin very high up on a power pole. A short while later, it was spotted just down the road, perched on a fence post. Such a beautiful bird - but such lousy light! We had finished our count by 5:00 pm, by which time it was, of course, completely dark. A few of us stayed for the delicious pot luck supper, mainly provided by the generous birding people down in High River. Lorrie and John gave a slide show of their recent trip to Africa. So many great shots of beautiful bird species that I have never seen. Thanks, Lorrie and John, for spending time going through all your slides at home and choosing a lovely selection for us. Many thanks, too, for driving Shirley and myself all day long! "HIGH RIVER CBC, SE quadrant, Frank Lk; E of #2, S of #23. 0830-1700, 16Dec2014. Overcast, heavy fog, created great hoarfrost on everything. Winds, variable direction, 10-15kph. -7°C. Ground mostly bare of snow; Little Bow River 95% frozen. 1. Mallard-1 f. 2. Scaup sp.- juv or f, likely Lesser-1 3. Gray Partridge-7 4. Ring-necked Pheasant-2 5. Bald Eagle-3 ( 2 ad/ 1 juv.) 6. Merlin-1 m. 7. Rock Pigeon-8 8. Great Horned Owl- 5 [an additional one seen N of Hwy 23, just W of Frank Lk exit at 16:56 pm.] 9. Snowy Owl-3 10. Downy Woodpecker-2 11. Northern Flicker-2 12. Black-billed Magpie-83 13. Common Raven-15 14. Horned Lark-20 15. Black-capped Chickadee-7 16. Common Redpoll-155 17. House Sparrow-669 18. 17 species of birds MAMMALS: Deer Mouse-1, deceased. White-tailed Jackrabbit-1 Mule Deer-25 White-tailed Deer-44 Total Km by car-111; by foot- 3. Total hours by car – 6; on foot-2.5 Gus Yaki"