Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: S of Bow Valley Ranch

Usually when I see Common Mergansers, they are far, far away, but yesterday I got lucky with this female when she swam past us, with her mate, on the creek in Fish Creek Park. Taken on 28 April 2013, near Hull's Wood. These birds sure can move fast .

Enjoyed watching this little Great Horned Owlet and its family yesterday afternoon. This is a different family, living just a short distance away from the other family in Fish Creek Park. The owlet in this image lives south of the Bow Valley Ranch. Three siblings at this nesting site, though I only saw two of them : ) Will be away from Flickr for the whole day - going searching for bears : ) Exciting - and my painful arm and shoulder will be so glad to get a break from mouse clicking! See you later!

This is one of the three Great Horned Owlets from the nest that is south of the Bow Valley Ranch in Fish Creek Park. Taken on May 16th, when two of the owlets had fledged and were in this tree, along with Mom, the other side of the path from the nesting tree. SInce then, of course, the youngest owlet has also fledged. Despite the way this looks in my photo, these owls were really high up in the tree. Amazing what full zoom and cropping can achieve, though the image is still horribly grainy. I was surprised that day to see Mom with half a large fish in her beak! I never knew that Great Horned Owls ate fish. but apparently, fish can be part of their diet. It's 6:15 a.m., so I have to dash and get ready to go out. Today, the second day of the annual May Species Count, takes part outside the city. The group I go with covers the Priddis area, SW of the city. I am so thankful that this is mainly a day of driving - well, being driven - as we walked for six hours in Fish Creek Park yesterday and I was exhausted : ) Wish I was a "morning" person instead of a "night owl"!!! I think this is perhaps the last batch of photos I can download to my computer, before doing some backing up to external hard drive and deleting. I keep saying how I must get down to doing this, but I keep running out of time. Later: the final result for the Count in just our area (2 cars carrying a total of 7 people including myself) was 65 species of bird, plus 1 Coyote, 2 Red Squirrels, 1 Muskrat and 3 White-tailed Deer. A pretty good day : )

A colourful American Robin that happened to be perched on an eye-level branch, south of the Bow Valley Ranch, two days ago. A handful of these birds do overwinter here, but now they are back in larger numbers, which always feels good. This morning, I went for a walk with friends in Weaselhead - not a huge number of birds to be seen, though we did have a very distant Great Blue Heron fly overhead. Two Swans flew over, high up, when we were standing in the parking lot, and we saw about six Swans down in the open channel of water, viewed from North Glenmore Park. A few American Tree Sparrows plus the usual - Black-capped Chickadees, Red-breasted and White-breasted Nuthatches, Blue Jay, Downy Woodpecker. Received an e-mail from one of my friends in England letting me know that 12 large boxes of belongings were collected from my brother's house today, ready to be shipped to Calgary. Not sure, but I think each box is about the size of a large fridge/freezer (30 cu ft)?! Can you believe that my friends have packed everything themselves (after going through everything that belonged not only to my brother, but to my parents, as well, and checking with me exactly which items I wanted to keep!)? It never went through my mind that they would do this. I had just assumed that a packing company would be brought in and would see to everything. One of my friends was with a packing/shipping company for 30+ years, so I was thinking that he would know exactly who to bring in. This means only one thing - I HAVE to get a move on and start sorting and clearing my basement. I have room for maybe one box at the moment, lol! Doing this sort of thing causes great pain in my body, so I know I can only do a certain amount at a time. Wish I could just keep at it until it's finished, but I have to spread it out. Also, very soon now, my brother's house will be up for sale, so I will have to deal with that, as well as all the arrangements and forms to be filled out in connection with Customs and the Bank. Soon, very soon, my amazing friends will be able to get back to their own lives - knowing that they have all done an unbelievably great job the last three and a half months. Their shiny halos will be dazzling! www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/american_robin/id Just checked out weather forecast before turning off my computer (12:15 a.m. midnight). OK, you can blame me - I washed my car today for the first time in months! Close to 10 cm of SNOW from Tuesday Overnight to Wednesday Overnight.