Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: explore2014January03

How good it feels to look back and remember one of the great days I had in the summer of 2013, between the devastation of Alberta's Flood of the Century last June and the long, hard winter that we are dealing with now, lol. The weather is crazy, not just for us in Alberta, but in so many places on this Continent and around the world. Today, the snow is falling yet again! Talking of snow, CBC News reported on 21 December 2013: "December SNOWFALL in Calgary has broken a 112-year record according to the city. The City made the announcement in a tweet Saturday morning after weeks of on-and-off heavy snowfall left many residents complaining about the lack of snow removal in parts of Calgary. "A total of 43.8 cm of snow has fallen in Calgary this month. We haven’t seen this much snow in 112 years!" tweeted the City." By the end of December, I think we had had about 52 cm for the whole month of December. Five of us had such a great day on 21 July 2013. It was a bird outing at Bow Valley Provincial Park, west of Calgary, at the foot of the very eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. I knew that I would be looking for wildflowers, insects and so on, as well : ) When we got to the meeting place in the city, the leader pulled out a poster for the Parks Day event that also happened to be going on at the park at the same time. To my absolute delight, it mentioned a Bird of Prey exhibit! After our first walk, which was the Flowing Waters trail, we returned to where everyone had parked and we had an hour in which to wander round the various exhibits. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a row of owls of different sizes - a tiny Burrowing Owl, a Short-eared Owl, a Barn Owl (which we don't get in Alberta), a young Great Horned Owl with enormous eyes, a Turkey Vulture and a Golden Eagle (seen in my photo above)! They were tethered along the edge of the trees and needless to say, there were plenty of other people taking photos, but despite the mix of shade and harsh sunlight, I got the chance to click to my heart's content : ) Thanks so much to the people down at the Coaldale Bird of Prey Centre (near Lethbridge, down towards the Canada/US border) for bringing your gorgeous birds of prey for us to see! I have been south to the Centre three times I think, and always long to go back again, but it's not somewhere I can drive to, so this was such a treat! I have seen several Golden Eagles in the wild, but always from a great distance. Seeing these bird Ambassadors gives people such a wonderful chance to really see what they look like. This Golden Eagle's name is Spirit. He was found injured and starving, shot gun pellets were discovered, and remain, in his head and chest, and so he is a permanent resident at the Centre. He is about 10 years old. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/golden_eagle/id www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=golden%20eagle&amp...

Almost embarrassing to say that I think this snowman was the highlight (for me) on yesterday's Bird Count, lol! The sun was shining exactly on it, while the surrounding area was in shade. Yesterday, 1 January 2014, was the 21st annual Fish Creek Park New Year's Day Bird Count and, as you can see from the blue sky, it was a gorgeous day out there. Sunny, calm, -8 to -5C, with 5cm new snow that had fallen overnight. We walked from 9:00 a.m. till noon, and my small group covered the area from Bebo Grove to bridge 6 and back. Twenty people turned up for the Count in this part of the park, so we split into two groups. Other small groups covered other parts of the park and just after noon, some participants met at Tim Horton's for coffee and lunch. Always tastes so good after being outdoors for a few hours : ) Always feels so good to meet up with friends and spend a few hours in this way! Results for my small group (the other half of the group had very similar results, also with a total of 11 species) are listed below. As you can see, nothing spectacular or rare, though we did look in vain for the Three-toed Woodpecker and kept our eyes open for one of the tiny Northern Pygmy Owls that had given us so much pleasure two or three winters ago. Downy Woodpecker-8 Hairy Woodpecker-3 Northern Flicker-1 Black-billed Magpie-4 Common Raven-20 Black-capped Chickadee-37 Boreal Chickadee-1 Red-breasted Nuthatch-1 White-breasted Nuthatch-5 Townsend's Solitaire-2 Bohemian Waxwing-300 Talking of snow, CBC News reported on 21 December 2013: "December SNOWFALL in Calgary has broken a 112-year record according to the city. The City made the announcement in a tweet Saturday morning after weeks of on-and-off heavy snowfall left many residents complaining about the lack of snow removal in parts of Calgary. "A total of 43.8 cm of snow has fallen in Calgary this month. We haven’t seen this much snow in 112 years!" tweeted the City."