Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: furry

Now I can start posting photos taken in the afternoon of 16 May 2018, Day 10 of our holiday to Point Pelee (Ontario) and Tadoussac (Quebec). After a morning walk, we spent a little time watching and photographing some of the birds that visited our friend's garden. We also had lunch, ready for driving down to the dry dock. This was going to be a big day for the people of Tadoussac, as it was going to be High Tide, which happens twice a year, and the water was going to gradually overflow the entrance gate and flood the dry dock. Everyone was busy making final preparations on their boats for this event, and everyone was eager to see whose boat would be the first one to become afloat and make it out of the dock into open water. One of Anne B's brothers and his wife had a small boat and it was just about at the furthest point of the dry dock. Slowly, the water rose, and after maybe two hours (?) Alan and Jane's boat was ready to sail out, making them the winners. It felt so good to see a small community come together in this unusual, friendly contest. While we were waiting for the tide to be at its highest, we had fun watching a beautiful little Magnolia Warbler feeding frantically on the ground, not far from our feet. All the birds who migrate had only just arrived on the coast, after flying across a huge body of water. They were exhausted and so hungry. Same thing at Point Pelee, Ontario, the week before.

The other four deer in this group of Mule Deer had already jumped this fence between someone's garden and Bebo Grove in Fish Creek Park. This young one stood and stared at the fence, then suddenly plucked up the courage to leap! It's amazing how deer can jump from a complete standstill to clearing a high obstacle. I guess this is the time of year when their coats are looking very scruffy, changing from winter to summer coats.

This young Mule Deer, along with four others, had hopped a fence into someone's garden that edges one of the local parks and was contentedly grazing the lawn. Must have tasted SO good after surviving the winter on dead, dried up leaves and twigs!! This was the young deer that I caught jumping the fence a few minutes later (uploaded on May 4th) : )

The background bokeh has to have been created by all the bushes in the background, but the colour did take me a bit by surprise. It felt so good on Sunday afternoon, 31 March 2013, to see these beautiful Catkins. I was on a walk with friends in Weaselhead, along a different trail from the usual one, and we had a lot of bush-wacking to do and walking in mud, lol. Quite a work-out.

Two of the Red Pandas at the Calgary Zoo were asleep in the snow on my last but one visit about a month ago. This little guy, curled up on top of one of the tree houses, opened his eyes for a quick second and then was back in zzzzz... land. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda

This is the young Red Panda at the Calgary Zoo - the face has more white on it than the adults have. These Red Pandas are such crowd-pleasers, for children and adults alike. Not the easiest of animals to photograph, though : ) "Every time a red panda is born, and particularly every time the cub is raised by its mother, it's an important achievement, because the mortality rate for red panda cubs is as high as 74 per cent. Since 1994, nine red cub pandas have been born at the Calgary Zoo. "It is important to continue to support conservation and protection of red pandas so that some day we see a natural increase in their populations," said Tim Sinclair-Smith, curator of the zoo's Eurasia section. "There is still a long way to go to this end, but this new birth will have a positive impact on captive population growth and genetic diversity of the species." It's estimated there are fewer than 10,000 mature red pandas in the world. They're classified as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List." From CBC News, Calgary.

...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?

This little guy, seen at Reader Rock Garden over two weeks ago, seemed to think that if he kept really, really still, we wouldn't be able to see him, LOL. Beautiful little thing.

Yay, spring IS here! As you can see by the blue sky, today has been a glorious day, only about 13C but it felt warmer than that to me. A perfect temperature for walking. After watching a couple of far off Tundra Swans and several distant Canvasbacks on Glenmore Reservoir this morning, I took a few shots of these beautiful catkins from a Laurel-leaved Willow (North Glenmore Park). Hard to tell from this photo, but the stems are brilliant, glowing red. Very pretty.

Not the best of photos - much too blurry for my liking - but it's a bit different from the other, more "usual" photos of Prairie Crocuses that I took yesterday. It was a very overcast afternoon and quite windy - not good for photographing thousands of tiny, gold hairs, LOL. However, I had just been to get my Taxes done and this location was nearby, so I wanted to at least try and find a few of these wildflowers. So great to have them finally in bloom! Oh, and by the way, I placed something dark behind the flower head to make it show up against all the tangle of dried grass in the background. I'll post one of those "messy" photos another day : )

I went searching for a particular wildflower on Sunday, after a friend had given me directions on where to find several. Well, I'm not always the best at finding things, so I still haven't been able to see and photograph these flowers. After climbing quite a steep trail - and I think it was about 21C on Sunday!!), someone kindly called out to me to let me know that there was a female Mule Deer with her two youngsters nearby. The light was very bright, not the greatest for photos, but this mum was so elegant. She eventually jumped a fence to get nearer to someone's garden and it was quite amusing to watch as one of the young ones stared at the fence as if not quite sure how it was supposed to leap such a high hurdle. Managed it just fine.

She was the dearest little thing, lying curled around in the deep snow this morning. When we stopped to admire her, she got up and eventually, very hesitatingly came towards us. Her face and expression were so gentle. "The white-tailed deer is Alberta's most abundant cloven-hoofed animal. Its coloration changes from reddish-brown in summer to greyish brown in winter. White-tailed deer are slightly smaller than mule deer. White-tails possess excellent senses of sight, smell and hearing. They are extremely wary, and when alarmed they move rapidly, bounding away in smooth, graceful leaps." From www.srd.gov.ab.ca/fishwildlife .

A few days ago, we came across this young, female White-tailed Deer lying in the snow just off the park trail. She was so cute - her face seemed a little rounder than I usually see : ). She got up to her feet and eventually walked over to us.

I had been photographing a group of Mule Deer this morning at the top of a hill. When I started the steep climb down, the deer were already coming behind me and cutting across the hill instead of going down. I noticed this buck following the rest of the group and assumed he would just follow them. I just happened to be partly concealed by a low bush, when suddenly the buck came trotting down the path where I was. Not sure who was more surprised! I know, this photo makes him look rather funny, with his antlers that are beginning to grow, and his enormous ears.

Came across this little guy/gal when I was on a walk in a local park late this afternoon. Out of the sun, its hair turns out grey, but when the sun shines on it, the hair, especially on the tail, turns a bright orange-red. I always like to see their big, dark eyes, surrounded by the white eye-ring.