Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: animals

After all the stress the last nine or ten days over a photo of me being posted on Facebook, I was absolutely desperate to get out for a few hours on 5 March 2019, even though I really didn't feel like going. After losing so many hours of sleep for over a week, I would happily have climbed back into bed instead, even more so once I hit the highway south. There were so many huge semi-trailer trucks and at times they seemed to be in competition with each other. I don't remember it usually being this bad. Anyway, I headed south-east of the city, though I would have loved to go east instead. The whole Facebook mess has left me feeling like I shouldn't go in that direction, though, needless to say, plenty of people are still going out there. The weather was beautiful and milder than the last 6 or 7 weeks of deep-freeze. First of all, I did the usual drive around Frank Lake - and saw nothing. After driving a few roads north of there, I again saw no birds, other than four Magpies. Feeling totally uninspired and my heart just wasn't into it at all, I ended up calling in at the Saskatoon Farm on the way home. A plate of delicious quiche, a few potato wedges, fruit salad and a much-needed cup of coffee were so welcome. After that, I asked if the huge greenhouse was open. When I tried to get in, I couldn't and had to ask someone to drag the extremely heavy door. Someone must have closed it sometime, as when I went to leave, after spending time with two pigs, lots of chickens, turkeys, domestic Helmeted Guineafowl, two bunnies and lots of House Sparrows, I couldn't budge the sliding door. Same thing with the other three doors. It was ages before someone heard my banging on the door and I was so thankful when a young man turned off his snow-clearing machine and yanked the door open. I told him that I had visions of having to sleep there overnight!

"Shortly, the Calgary Zoo is moving its three female Asian elephants — Kamala, Swarna and Maharani — to the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C.. The lone male Asian elephant, Spike, was relocated to a Florida Zoo last fall. (Note: not sure which adult female elephants are in my old photo, but the baby was baby Malti, who very sadly died a few years ago, when just a matter of months old). This photo was taken on 23 March 2008. They will be reunited with a couple of elephants that two of them lived with at an orphanage in Sri Lanka more than 30 years ago. Donald Moore, an official with Smithsonian's, says they'll be studying them to see if the elephants remember each other and how they'll react. "We think they'll remember each other, and we are in conversation about how to study that along with some university researchers in psychology and communications," he said. "So it's going to be a very exciting time for these elephants in Washington, D.C." Zoo officials said they did an extensive international search and this accredited facility met their stringent criteria to take care of the three female elephants. Listen to an interview with Calgary Zoo curator Colleen Baird about the move: www.cbc.ca/1.1323590 The move was made in the best interest of the animals and not because of recent flood damage (i.e. June 2013) to the zoo, according to officials. The decision to move the animals was made last April, before the floods, because the island that houses the zoo cannot accommodate a large herd, and elephant welfare is better served by being part of a larger social group." This is a link to a wonderful, informative pdf article on the Calgary Zoo elephants in the Calgary Zoo magazine. Tells you about the individual personalities of these amazing animals and their history: www.calgaryzoo.com/sites/default/files/pdf/Wildlife_Sprin... This photo is in the following SET: CALGARY ZOO www.flickr.com/photos/annkelliott/sets/72157632014191699/

"Shortly, the Calgary Zoo is moving its three female Asian elephants — Kamala, Swarna and Maharani — to the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, D.C.. The lone male Asian elephant, Spike, was relocated to a Florida Zoo last fall. (Note: not sure which adult female elephant is in my old photo, but the baby was baby Malti, who very sadly died). They will be reunited with a couple of elephants that two of them lived with at an orphanage in Sri Lanka more than 30 years ago. Donald Moore, an official with Smithsonian's, says they'll be studying them to see if the elephants remember each other and how they'll react. "We think they'll remember each other, and we are in conversation about how to study that along with some university researchers in psychology and communications," he said. "So it's going to be a very exciting time for these elephants in Washington, D.C." Zoo officials said they did an extensive international search and this accredited facility met their stringent criteria to take care of the three female elephants. Listen to an interview with Calgary Zoo curator Colleen Baird about the move: www.cbc.ca/1.1323590 The move was made in the best interest of the animals and not because of recent flood damage (i.e. June 2013) to the zoo, according to officials. The decision to move the animals was made last April, before the floods, because the island that houses the zoo cannot accommodate a large herd, and elephant welfare is better served by being part of a larger social group."

This dog and its playmate (a Corgi) came out to greet us when we pulled into one of the farmyards during the annual High River Christmas Bird Count on 17 December 2013.

This photo took about half an hour to upload. When I then tried to upload the next two images, neither worked and, two hours later, still won't upload. On 12 May 2012, I spent a wonderful (17 hour!) day of scenery and bears, thanks to friends Cathy and Terry, who so kindly invited me along with them! We even spent some of the time in B.C. (British Columbia), the next province to our west, and were so lucky to see six bears in total, including this Black Bear and her two gorgeous cubs. As you can see, one of her little ones was a Cinnamon Bear, which you don't see very often. Our first Bear was a Black Bear that looked rather like a huge rock in the distance. The second sighting was an adult Cinnamon Bear, after which we saw an adult Black Bear. The final sighting was this beautiful family of Mum with her two cubs. None of the Bears approached cars, hoping for food. They quietly went about their feeding, for the most part without even lifting their eyes from the ground. The usual "thoughtless" people were there, too, getting out of their cars and approaching, so that they could get closer photos. Of course, these cubs were so cute, but all these Bears are wild and wildlife tends to be unpredictable. You really would think that people could keep this in mind and not approach, but stay safely in their cars - and give the animals plenty of space and respect. The weather was so good that day, but the sun was very harsh and played havoc with my images. Perhaps I should add that I probably used full zoom (my Panasonic FZ40 had 32x), lol, and this series of photos was taken from the safety of the car!!!

My youngest daughter and I love to go and see Momma pig and her piglets at the Stampede Grounds during Stampede. There were 11 of these beautiful little pink piggies and they had just been fed/ They love to climb over each other and snuggle into a huge heap of hairy bodies : ) Posting ridiculously early this morning, as I have a long, long day of botanizing east of the city, at Horseshoe Canyon today. This amazing canyon is near Drumheller, in the Badlands of Alberta (dinosaur country). Something like a two-hour drive to get out there.

On 6th June, a few of us did a day's hike to see the northernmost limit recorded for Balsamroot , Balsamorhiza sagittata. Then, on 11th June, we went down south towards the US border to just west of the Head-Smashed-in Buffalo Jump area and were delighted to see hillsides covered in these bright yellow flowers. We could see them from the car - we didn't have to take one single step to find them - so much easier than our long day of hiking to see them, LOL. When we pulled into one ranch driveway to see if we had the right address, we saw these two Mule Deer amongst the Balsamroot. Just looked so pretty. "Balsamroots are native to western North America. There are about twelve species plus many common hybrids.... Native Americans used the sticky sap of this plant as a topical antiseptic for minor wounds. The large taproots produced by Balsamorhiza sagittata are edible and were harvested, dried, and ground into a starchy flour by Native Americans when other food plants were scarce. The entire plant is edible and nutritious, but not necessarily enjoyable because it contains a bitter, strongly pine-scented sap. The plants large taproots are reported to be very palatable and far less bitter than the above ground parts of the plant. The plant grows on dry hillsides and dry open meadows throughout the Mountain West of North America." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsamorhiza

We passed this herd of Mule Deer towards the end of our Christmas Bird Count in the Cochrane Wildlife Preserve/Water Valley area on 29th December. Not sure I included all the deer - a lovely sight as we drove past them.

...but oh, so adorable : ) I'm still picking out the odd image I took of these Red Fox kits that day. Most of my photos came out far too blurry, for some strange reason, but I'm still finding the odd one or two that are just about fit to be posted. I wonder how these little guys are doing now. Maybe they have already dispersed?

On my way to the end of Elbow Falls Trail (west of the city) this afternoon, this group of 15 Mountain Sheep decided that they owned the road and led a convoy of vehicles at a very slow pace for quite a distance. Strange that they didn't move off the road. It was good to see that not a single driver lost patience and forced these animals to move out of the way.

Highwood Pass is the highest drivable pass in Canada, at 7239 ft. (2206 m.) This road is Highway 40 in Kananaskis Country, Alberta south of Calgary. The road is closed from 1st December to 15th June to facilitate elk, big horn sheep, deer and moose doing their spring grazing during that time. As well, with spring babies being born, predators are attracted to the area.

1. White-tailed Deer, 2. Red Squirrel in winter, 3. Coyote, 4. Coyote, 5. Coyote, 6. Bighorn Mountain Sheep, 7. Coyote on the prowl, 8. Mother and child, 9. White-tailed doe & fawn, 10. Kananaskis Coyote, 11. Mule Deer, 12. Red Squirrel, 13. Feeding the birds?, 14. Cougar, 15. Grizzly Bear, 16. Mountain Goat, 17. Moose, 18. Richardson's Groundsquirrel, 19. Snowshoe Hare, 20. The last nut, 21. Zigzags, 22. White-tailed Deer, 23. Richardson's Groundsquirrel, 24. Who are you?, 25. Columbian Ground Squirrel Created with fd's Flickr Toys .

African Wild Dogs are also known as Painted Dogs. Their habits are similar to those of the Wolf. Their numbers have been declining in the wild in Africa and they are now the rarest large carnivore in the whole of Africa. The Calgary Zoo has a pack of six males, named Watson, Waldo, Weasley, Warner, Wilson and Wheaton.

On 25th June 2004, around 5:30 p.m. on a quiet evening walk in Fish Creek Park, this is the scene that I came upon. This must have been an almost new-born fawn, it was SO tiny. I was SO excited that I could barely remember how to even turn on my camera, and I'm sure I was trembling with awe, so the image is not as sharp as it might have been. And that annoying piece of grass! Also, though I was at some distance to them, I was extremely careful and very conscious of intruding on such a special moment. The mother stood still for a while, allowing her fawn to nurse, and I felt very privileged.