Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: explore2014July13

These shorebirds are so hard to photograph - they move quickly in and out and through the cattails and other water plants. Always surprises me just how small they are - in my mind, they are larger. Saw this one and presumably its mate, SE of the city yesterday, 12 July 2014. These birds tend to be heard rather than seen, and I was determined to try and get at least one shot that was half OK. Well, I got more than half this bird before it ran past me through the water, showing nothing but a rear view. Took lots of shots, but most will need to be deleted : ) Happy to get any kind of photo, though. It was fun watching how they go about collecting insects for their young ones - they were hidden in amongst the Cattails and dense water plants, so I could hear them, but not see them. My first stop was at Frank Lake, where I saw a few more Eared Grebes with their quite large "babies". The light was really bad, so it was impossible to get photos that showed colour and details. Will lighten one or two of them and see if that works. Saw Soras again - love these little guys, they are so cute. A few very distant White-faced Ibis, but I lucked out later, finding a lone Ibis at a slough somewhere around the lake. Also saw a couple of small birds that I'm not sure of the ID for, along the country backroads. Posted one of them today and will upload a very poor photo of the other sometime soon. "A small, secretive bird of freshwater marshes, the Sora is the most common and widely distributed rail in North America. Its distinctive descending whinny call can be easily heard from the depths of the cattails, but actually seeing the little marsh-walker is much more difficult." From AllAboutBirds. www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/sora/id en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sora_ (bird)

Usually when I see a small bird standing on a fence post, it's a Savannah Sparrow. This bird seems to be lacking yellow "eyebrows" and has a white outer edge to it's tail feathers. The pattern on its cheeks does not look familiar to me, but maybe it's a female or a juvenile "something". I'm not good at Sparrow ID, but I checked my bird book and did a quick look on Google. Any help with ID would be greatly appreciated! It was seen yesterday (12 July 2014) , SE of Calgary, in the Frank Lake area. My first stop was at Frank Lake, where I saw a few more Eared Grebes with their quite large "babies". The light was really bad, so it was impossible to get photos that showed colour and details. Will lighten one or two of them and see if that works. Saw Soras again - love these little guys, they are so cute. A few very distant White-faced Ibis, but I lucked out later, finding a lone Ibis at a slough somewhere around the lake. Also saw a couple of small birds that I'm not sure of the ID for, along the country backroads. Posted this one today and will upload a very poor photo of the other sometime soon.

A lot of people have a photo of Bleeding Heart flowers in their photostream, but they are beautiful flowers : ) Saw these at the Reader Rock Garden on 25 June 2014. This garden is situated on a hillside and it often tends to be windy whenever I go there, lol, so these delicate branches of little pink hearts are a bit of a challenge to keep in the viewfinder. "Lamprocapnos spectabilis also known as old-fashioned bleeding-heart, Venus's car, Lady in a bath, Dutchman's trousers, or Lyre-flower is a rhizomatous perennial plant native to eastern Asia from Siberia south to Japan. It is the sole species in the monotypic genus Lamprocapnos. It is a popular ornamental plant for flower gardens in temperate climates, and is also used in floristry as a cut flower for Valentine's Day. It usually has red heart-shaped flowers with white tips which droop from arching flower stems in late spring and early summer. White-flowered forms are also cultivated." From Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamprocapnos Today and tomorrow are the last couple of days of the 10-day Calgary Stampede, and then life will return more or less to “normal”. For visitors to our city, especially, these days are full of excitement and interest. For many of us who live in Calgary, whose children have grown, the tendency can be to get in the car and drive in the opposite direction, away from the noise, the crowds and the smell of grease that fills the air down at the Stampede Grounds.