Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: explore2014June22

Am adding the description from other photos that I have posted already of this beautiful Black Bear. It will save my painful arms and shoulders being used any more than necessary. Just ignore if you've seen it before : ) The first thing I'll add here is to say that I use 48x zoom on so many of my photos (probably most), no matter what the subject, from butterfly to bird - and especially Bears! Like the typical Black Bear that we might be lucky enough to come across, this one was just busy eating and checking out what was growing around it that looked good to eat (i.e. grasses, roots, not people., ha). My photos are taken from the safety of the car and the bears look much closer than they really were. Friends, Cathy and Terry, and I, don't stay for more than a short while, watching very carefully, to make sure that the animal shows absolutely no sign of discomfort or stress. The Bears we do see just slowly walk on by, feeding as they go, and don't attempt to approach the vehicle. One bear was so totally relaxed that it decided to have a quick roll in a large puddle not far from the edge of the road! It lay right down on its side and seemed to be enjoying the coolness of the water. Daytime temperatures of these two days were much warmer than we've had in about eight months. The sun shone and we couldn't have had better weather. Can't remember if it was the very first bear we spotted, we were of course thrilled at the distant sighting. And then, to our horror, we saw a photographer walking towards the bear, that was walking towards him!! The guy had parked in a small pull-off and was some distance from his vehicle. I'm still shaking my head that someone would do such a foolish thing. So unfair towards the bear, too, as it's always the animal that pays the price (i.e. having to be destroyed), if an attack takes place. Over the two days, we had 7 bear sightings, with three definitely different Black Bears (no Grizzlies), and possibly four. The rest of the sightings were of Bears we had already seen. We had left Calgary early morning on Wednesday (14 May 2014) and I think it was around 12:15 a.m. midnight (Thursday, 15 May 2014), that my friends dropped me off at home after two long, wonderful days in the Rocky Mountains, west of the city. Wednesday night was spent in a spotless motel, in a place that had so many Mountain Sheep roaming the streets, lol! Though we were hoping to see at least one Bear, I was happy as can be to see absolutely anything beautiful : )

This photo was taken along one of the backroads SW of the city, on 7 June 2014. Such a "cooperative" guy for a few brief seconds, which I really appreciated. Usually, I find these Red-winged Blackbirds fly to the next fence post as soon as you pull up slowly beside them, and then do the same if you pull up beside that post. "One of the most abundant birds across North America, and one of the most boldly colored, the Red-winged Blackbird is a familiar sight atop cattails, along soggy roadsides, and on telephone wires. Glossy-black males have scarlet-and-yellow shoulder patches they can puff up or hide depending on how confident they feel. Females are a subdued, streaky brown, almost like a large, dark sparrow. In the North, their early arrival and tumbling song are happy indications of the return of spring." From Cornell's AllAboutBirds. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-winged_blackbird/id?utm_s... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-winged_blackbird Looks like we are in for about a week of isolated showers, but the heavy rain seems to have come to an end, thank goodness. Hopefully, southern Alberta river levels will start to go down, avoiding any further flooding. Eerily strange coincidence that this is exactly the same time as Alberta's Flood of the Century last year, 20 June 2013.