Dusky Grouse, Wilson's Warbler (20140816) A pretty slim day out west.

I have always wanted the opportunity to capture ungulates during the stripping of their velvet off of their antlers. Jamie was fortunate enough to find some elk in that situation a couple of years back. So we headed out to my dreaded 1A route with the hopes of duplicating that encounter. Things were looking good early as we found a cow elk very early in the day and up the road just a couple of kilometers we found a young pine that had been worked over pretty recently. The trunk still had damp sap, so we had  high hopes. Unfortunately we were unable to spot any of the large males. On our last couple of klics we did spot this hen Dusky Grouse.

She had eight chicks with here. This is a shot of a young male that I was able to get pretty close to.

Here is a shot of Jamie with 5 chicks (can you find all of them?) and what I believe is Mom on the lower left.

We left them after a 15 minute encounter, a great experience! This was a life time first for Jamie, and my third encounter in the past couple of weeks. Our next stop was at the top of the Highwood Pass where we found some Fireweed.

There were some little yellow jobs floating around and so we stood and tried to get some images. Here is a shot of a Wilson's Warbler.

I also got this image of a mystery bird. When I find out what it is I will update the post. It could be a female Wilson's?

That wrapped up our day. It was a little disappointing, but we have been overly blessed on other occasions so we are willing to take a light day every now and then!
Turbo