Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: early morning sun

On 31 August 2017, I went with 16 birder friends on a day's outing east of Calgary. What a full, rewarding day we had, with 83 species seen! I have added our leader's final list in a comment box below, mainly for my own interest/record. Thanks, Andrew! There were many species that I did not see, as they were too far away, but I was delighted to see three or four species that I hadn't seen or photographed before, including a Black-bellied Plover and Baird's Sandpipers. It was yet another smoky day (which we've been getting all summer, from the wildfires in British Columbia and, to a much lesser extent, Alberta), but the temperature was more bearable (got up to around 25C) than most of our summer. Early morning was quite chilly, in fact. While at the meeting place, I took this photo - all the smoke we have been having for many weeks produces this kind of sunrise and sunset. I read that the dreadful Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, that started well over a year ago on 1 May 2016, is finally completely out. After meeting in the city, we car-pooled in five cars east to Langdon. Our first stop was at Weed Lake; first the south end and then the east side. All the birds were far away, so any photos I took were group shots or a single, very distant lone bird. This kind of birding is very different from when I go out anywhere on my own. It involves a lot of very careful study of each area we stop at, with binoculars and scopes, and it provides very important information on all the bird species. When I go out by myself, I am looking for any kind of bird that is close enough to photograph - usually, the closer the better, of course. I never count bird numbers and I don't make lists. I simply look for anything beautiful - and that often includes old barns, scenery, wildflowers, insects, and so on. From Weed Lake, we continued east, eventually reaching Eagle Lake and Marsland Basin. I always love going to the latter location; a great place that is called 'home' for our friends, Lynn and Sue. They have a wonderful wetland on their property. After looking at the distant birds, I wandered around the grounds, finding a beautiful, tiny butterfly (Checkered Skipper sp.?), Sunflowers in the garden with a pair of American Goldfinches feeding on the Sunflower seeds, and the two donkeys. By the time we reached the Eagle Lake area, I wasn't sure where we were, each time we stopped. I'm hoping I can remember where I saw at least some of the birds in my photos. A thoroughly enjoyable trip - thanks, Andrew, as always! Many thanks, too, Lenora and Dick, for letting Dorothy and me carpool with you. It was so much appreciated.

Posting just the one photo today as I got up much too late and have a pile of things that I have to start seeing to. Looks beautiful outside, sunny and plus 7C!! Feels so good to be out of the deep-freeze, when windchills got down to as low as -34C. This is a fully zoomed image, Focal Length (35mm format) - 1200 mm, and cropped very slightly. This is a photo from my archives, taken on 28 March 2013. This Great Gray Owl was the first of four that I was lucky enough to see that morning, two closely and two far more distant. At the moment, I'm feeling a bit 'owl deprived', ha, ha, because I'm having no luck finding a Snowy Owl or a Short-eared Owl, except on the one day when they were so far away, you could barely even see them. So, last night, I took a look at one of my very old owl folders and picked this photo, to remind myself of just how lucky I have often been, when it comes to owls of any kind : ) The year 2013 was a great year for seeing these magnificent birds. Getting up really early is always so hard for me to do. I'm a night owl with atrocious sleep habits, so getting out of bed at 5:00 a.m. (alarm was set for 4:15 a.m., though!) was not my favourite way to start the day on 28 March 2013. Funny, when I have to meet friends for various early-starting trips, I can do it (but don't like it), but when I go off on my own, there is no deadline to meet, and I just never get round to doing it. I headed out of the city, wanting to see if time of day made any, or much, difference to seeing wildlife. Who really knows? I have seen these beautiful birds of prey at all sorts of times of the day, but of course the light is always different each time. I was also lucky enough to see three other Great Gray Owls, my first Mountain Bluebird of the year (always such a wonderful flash of brilliant blue), a Pileated Woodpecker, and an American Robin (always takes me by surprise when I see a Robin out in the middle of nowhere). A beautiful female Ruffed Grouse helped make my day, too. Guess I can say I was definitely rewarded for getting up so early, even though I might have seen all, or most, of these birds later in the day, too : ) All about luck and timing. "Although the Great Gray Owl is the tallest American owl with the largest wingspan, it is just a ball of feathers. It preys on small mammals and has relatively small feet. Both the Great Horned and Snowy owls weigh half again as much, and have larger feet and talons. The oldest recorded Great Gray Owl was at least 18 years, 9 months old and lived in Alberta." From AllABoutBirds. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Gray_Owl/lifehistory en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Grey_Owl

This was the lighting and colouring early yesterday morning, 18 October 2014, when I joined a group of friends for a few hours of birding. We started off at Frank Lake but didn't go to the blind area at all, for safety reasons. We just drove along the short road that goes from half way down the east side of the lake to near the edge of the lake. The last half of this backroad is so very deeply rutted that it's impossible to drive, so we had to walk the last part. This is where I took the photo above. It's a zoomed-in shot, hence the heat distortion. Also, our beautiful mountains look much closer than they really are. It's hunting season and we could hear the shots being fired. We were totally disgusted by the hundreds of empty shells that littered the ground!!! Too bad the hunters don't have such a huge sense of guilt at killing these beautiful birds, that they end up picking up their empty shells out of a sense of guilt! Yeah, right! From Frank Lake, we drove (carpooled) north to Carseland and stopped at the Reservoir, where we saw a beautiful Double-crested Cormorant with wings spread out to dry. Also spotted a Loon way out in the water and several Grey Partridges on a distant slope. The rest of the day was spent driving the backroads east of the city. We called in at Eagle Lake and another lake - I never drive to this whole area, so I'm not sure exactly where we saw what. Leader Andrew Hart's detailed list will provide me with the answers - am adding the link to his very detailed account and list here, but will also add the actual info here, just as a reminder to myself. He always does a superb job of his reports, as well as taking us all out on a very enjoyable day. Weather-wise, it couldn't have been more perfect. Thanks so much, Andrew! Link to Andrew's very detailed account and list: groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Albertabird/conversations/mes... Actual account of the day: "Fifteen participants set off on this trip. The weather was beautiful. The temperature rose from about 10 deg C to 20 deg C by the middle of the afternoon. Sunny all day. Generally light breezes but extremely windy at Chestermere Lake. The original plan was to spend most of the day in the Frank Lake area. But I had not accounted for the impact of the hunting season. Under the auspices of the Alberta Conservation Association 17,000 pheasants are released at approximately 60 sites in Alberta during October. One of those sites (and the only one in its immediate area) is, of course, Frank Lake. The advertized release dates for Frank Lake are October 15 to November 12. So the scene at the parking area near the blind today featured far more vehicles than usual and many hunters with dogs, all wearing red fluorescent safety gear, and systematically moving to flush pheasants, and whistling as they went. So a couple of problems if you are birdwatching. First you sure need to have your own highly visible safety clothing, second the large number of hunters, dogs, and gunshots tends to scare off the birds. Just, to be clear, I recognize that the hunting community probably contributes much more to the upkeep of areas like Frank Lake then the birding community does. On my scouting trip yesterday I spent some time in fascinating and educational discussions with some of the hunters. But there are just some days when the two do not mix. So we headed off down to the SE corner of Basin 2. No hunters in immediate evidence, but dozens of spent shotgun cartridges on the ground. We did see some duck hunters, who do not wear fluorescent safety gear, and heard several shotgun blasts. The hunters employed several decoys (both audible and visible), but they had little impact on the majority of birds on the lake. The highlight here was three late Marsh Wrens found and photographed by Jan Roeseneder. Next we headed to Carseland, spotting two Rough Legged Hawks en route. At Carseland we parked above the weir. The campsite is still closed but we could see several boats across at the boat launch area. From there we went to the SW corner of Eagle Lake and had lunch. Looking further east we saw several hundred (at least) Greater White-fronted and Snow Geese, which appeared to have been flushed by some wind surfers. So we headed one RR east and went down to the lakeshore there. There were about four wind surfers having a great time, no geese in sight. The windsurfers only occupied a very small area of the lake. Ken Burton spotted a female White-winged Scoter flying across the lake. Our next stop was Alkali Lake where we were hoping to see the large flock of Snow Geese reported yesterday by Bill Walker. We stopped at another slough about half a km short and saw a huge cloud of Snow Geese rising from Alkali Lake and flying away. As far as we could tell there were no blue geese and no Ross's Geese in the flock. They did not come back! We went on to the lake anyway and saw the reason why. There were at least two hunters in and around the lake, who had presumably fired at the geese. Our final stops were along the east side of Chestermere Lake. We were unsuccessful in locating the Red Throated Loon. We were the "other group of birders" that Mark Conboy mentioned the Little Gull sighting to. After meeting Mark we looked carefully at the the gulls, but could only identify Ring Billed, Franklin's and Bonaparte's. The wind at Chestermere was really strong making solid ids challenging on many of the far off water birds. Apart from the Great Horned Owls, Harriers and the Rough Legged Hawk, we did not see any raptors. And we did not see any of the 17,000 pheasants that are being released! This did spare us the ethical challenge of deciding whether or not they were countable. The closest we came was some Gray Partridges at Carseland. However, a very enjoyable day. The complete checklists, which likely underestimate most of the waterfowl numbers, are summarized below. Number of Checklists: 6 Number of Species: 49 Checklists included in this summary: (1): Frank Lake--Basin 2 (Southeast Corner) Date: Oct 18, 2014, 9:15 AM (2): Carseland Weir Date: Oct 18, 2014, 11:15 AM (3): Blackie Date: Oct 18, 2014, 10:45 AM (4): Eagle Lake SW corner RR 250 Date: Oct 18, 2014, 12:20 PM (5): Alkali Lake Date: Oct 18, 2014, 2:20 PM (6): Chestermere Lake Date: Oct 18, 2014, 3:25 PM 750 Greater White-fronted Goose -- (4) 2750 Snow Goose -- (4),(5) 21 Canada Goose -- (1),(6) 4 Trumpeter Swan -- (1) 40 Tundra Swan -- (1),(4) 10 Trumpeter/Tundra Swan -- (5) 43 Gadwall -- (1),(2),(4),(5) 150 American Wigeon -- (1),(4),(5) 129 Mallard -- (1),(2),(4) 1 Blue-winged Teal -- (1) 11 Northern Shoveler -- (1),(4) 28 Northern Pintail -- (1),(4) 6 Green-winged Teal -- (5) 302 Canvasback -- (1),(4) 100 Redhead -- (1) 2 Ring-necked Duck -- (1) 32 Lesser Scaup -- (4),(5) 1 White-winged Scoter -- (4) 50 Bufflehead -- (4),(6) 55 Common Goldeneye -- (2),(4),(6) 1 Hooded Merganser -- (2) 82 Common Merganser -- (2),(6) 180 Ruddy Duck -- (1),(4) 15 Gray Partridge -- (2) 5 Common Loon -- (1),(2),(6) 4 Horned Grebe -- (1),(4) 6 Eared Grebe -- (1),(4) 9 Western Grebe -- (1),(6) 1 Double-crested Cormorant -- (2) 6 Great Blue Heron -- (2),(4) 3 Northern Harrier -- (1),(4) 1 Rough-legged Hawk -- (3) 350 American Coot -- (1),(4) 13 Killdeer -- (1) 1 Greater Yellowlegs -- (2) 3 Wilson's Snipe -- (1) 106 Bonaparte's Gull -- (1),(4),(6) 1 Franklin's Gull -- (6) 1333 Ring-billed Gull -- (2),(5),(6) 23 Rock Pigeon (Feral Pigeon) -- (1),(2) 2 Great Horned Owl -- (1) 13 Black-billed Magpie -- (1),(2),(5) 1 Common Raven -- (1) 3 Marsh Wren -- (1) 12 European Starling -- (1) 20 American Pipit -- (1) 13 Lapland Longspur -- (1),(5) 12 American Tree Sparrow -- (1) 10 House Sparrow -- (1)" Andrew Hart ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not sure what I did in the last two or three days, but the very painful inflammation of the rotator cuffs in my shoulders is back in full force. I can barely lift my right arm even an inch, which makes it impossible to do most things, once again. All I can think of is that I went food shopping and finally bought a pack of bottled water (12 small bottles?), I had avoided doing this for months, because of the weight. I always like to have one pack in the house in case of "emergency". Hard to believe that just this one heavier thing would be enough to end me right back at the beginning with many months of healing ahead, though, but I can't think of anything else that might be the cause. Once the snow arrives, I'm not going to be able to clear the snow off my vehicle, which is one of my biggest concerns. Last winter, I had to stay home and miss so many things for the same reason. Argh!!!

Happy SPRING, everyone! Rather like a joke, I awoke this morning to a world of white - and a cold wind! It's only -2C (windchill -10C) but it looks so unpleasant out there. Hard to imagine anything further from a beautiful, sunny, first day of spring day, with flowers blooming and birds singing. Here in Calgary, though, we know that March is still winter, and is often the snowiest month, according to statistics. I finally have my new COMPUTER up and running (kind of) after four weeks of total computer stress, complicated by the computer store mess-up, and surgery. Now I am discovering "the good, the bad and the ugly" of Windows 7! Definitely, the"ugly" would apply to the inability to manually rearrange photos in the order you want / need them!!! I am totally amazed and horrified that you can't do this. I searched the Internet and found forums full of endless complaints about this ridiculous issue, many going back to 2010. So, they still haven't changed it, after all this time. I would have thought it would be such a simple thing for Microsoft to change. Every time I want to find a photo, I have to look through many dozens, or more likely many hundreds, of tiny photo icons, trying to find the one photo I need. I would say that being able to arrange photos in the order I (and most photographers, no doubt!) need is one of the most important, necessary functions, so this is not good. If anyone has discovered a way to get round this or has any ideas to make it easier, I would LOVE to hear from you! THANKS! Later today: I've just phoned to switch from Lite Speed to High Speed 25. Holy smokes, what a difference (that I can see so far). This is another winter scene taken on 5 January 2014. These are winter backroads that I never, ever drive on, lol! In fact, I think I have only driven outside the city once this whole winter. As you can imagine, it's so difficult or impossible to know just where the road ends and the ditch begins along some of the roads. However, Tony, driving just a small car, did brilliantly, when three of us spent a whole day driving in such conditions and worse, searching for birds to add to our list for the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count. We covered one quadrant of the large circle around the town of Nanton. As you can see, the weather was bright and sunny for us that day. What you can't see was that it was brutally cold that day! On the hour-long drive south of Calgary, we hit -34C (-29.2F)!!!!! It did eventually warm up a few degrees and thankfully, there was no or very little wind, which makes all the difference. The only walking we had to do was when we called in at various farms and homesteads. One backroad in particular had too much snow on it, so we had to leave that one out. Also, there was just too much snow in many of the farmyards, so we weren't able to check out all the trees and bushes as thoroughly as we would like to have done. I absolutely love the scenery on this Count. Not sure where all the Hawks and Owls were hiding that day, but we did see 2 Golden Eagles and 2 Bald Eagles, plus various smaller species. After driving (being driven, for me, which was pure luxury) the backroads from about 8:00 a.m. till around 4:00 p.m., we returned to the wonderful home of the Truch family. Not only do Bill and Leah Truch and their son, Mike, always welcome everyone with open arms, they also provide a much-appreciated breakfast snack for us and then, at the end of the day, a delicious supper. Have to say that I love travelling these scenic backroads, but I also really enjoy getting together with everyone afterwards to thoroughly enjoy a delicious supper. This is one of my favourite Bird Counts and perhaps the most favourite. Thanks so much for doing all the driving, Tony, and thanks, Leah, Bill and Mike for all the effort and time you put into your warm welcome! Can't wait for next Christmas! www.flickr.com/photos/annkelliott/13289196035