Nature Conservancy of Canada Honor

For the second time in 4 years NCC has selected one of my photos to use for their "holiday card". Blog visitors would have had a sneak peak, as I posted the image here back on April 6th. NCC also requested permission to use the image for their 2013 calendar, to which I of course replied "sure!".
I feels pretty good to be able to find the odd image of mine that has enough quality to be published. Perhaps in another couple of years I will get another request:)
I hope that everyone has a super wildlife weekend.


Turbo

Elk red fox, moose, RLH, Pine Grosbeak --What'll we see today? (121208)

With Jamie out of town, I checked in with Kerri, and she was up for a "look and see" type adventure. We really didn't have a lot in mind for targets with the exception of the Northern Hawk Owl I had found a couple of weeks ago. So heading out with an open, hopeful mind we headed out to GVR. We cruised into a side road well before sun-up and only spied a single Muley doe, until we got out to the main drag. I estimate this herd to be between 200-250 head.

We grabbed our first coyote with these elk still in the background. A GREAT start to a mystery day. We found a little honey hole all at once, fe found this little red fox hunting.

I will apologize for the poor quality, it was still very early, he was a long way off, and the skies were heavily overcast.  While discussing an approach to see if we get the fox closer to us Kerri spied these two moose.

A nice healthy cow and this young healthy bull.

We had expected very poor light conditions, but hey improved as the day wore on. Here is a capture of one of the five different Bald Eagles we spotted through out the day.

Whitewinged Crossbills, more coyote's and Rough legged hawks all made appearances as we were wrapping up the first half of our mystery tour.

Our Search fo the Northern Hawk owl from two weeks ago was unsuccessful, but we did happen to find several Bighorn Sheep.

We swung though some other Moose and Great Grey country, but didn't fine anything of note. Kerrie shared one of here favourite RLH areas and we caught this willing subject as the light was fading.

As our gfinal target we decided to see if we could find the Luecistic RLH that has been seen for the last couple of weeks, but we had to settle for this male Pine Grosbeak.

There was a female there as well, but I didn't get any acceptable shots. I think we did alright for not having a significant plan. All in all a very was successful day. My thanks to Kerri for being a terrifc travel partner.
Have a great wildlife week.
Turbo

GHO, woodpecker, buck on a Sunday Snow day(121202)

As Tim was unable to make the Sunday morning walk I decided to fill in for him. It was cool heavy overcast and threatening snow any minute, that would be more than a threat by end of the walk.
We started with a very hard to find GHO.

Walking under a small flock of Whitewinged Crossbills we spotted this monarch out for a stroll.

In a different area of the park, we found another very well hidden Great Horned Owl:)

The food moochers were out in full force, althought this the first time that I have seen a Downy Woodpecker feed from a human hand.

Of course I have to post an image of Canada's favourite bird.

We got pretty close to this female Hairy Woodpecker, should we call her a Harriet?

As the snow started fall heavily we found this rather grumpy looking juvenile Bald Eagle, it seemed to be just endouring the weather, and looking for it to end.

We had luck on the river seeing Goldeneyes (both common and Barrows) some Merganzers and Canada Geese. I hope everyone has a great wildlife week!
Turbo

Rdpolls, and a Northern Shrike prove that Ya gotta hang in there! (121201)

Sitting at 233 birds for the year, I offered Dan to try and find him a Sharptail Grouse to bump up his score up to 234 for the year. We headed off in the foggy, frosty morning. I grabbed this shot while waiting for Dan to arrive @ 7:01, with the help of a neighbours headlights.

After waiting for Muley to cross the road in downtown Okotoks, things just went down hill. We found some Whitetails, Ravens and Magpies but the Sharpies were no where to be found. Finally I told Dan we were headed east to more open country to find his birds. A Northern Goshawk flew across the road in front of us but it didn't land anywhere where we could get a shot.  We found a large (~250) Redpolls.

I thought that I would throw in a second shot here.

We spied a coyote and had a fly-by Northern Shrike.  Just up the road was a second Shrike sitting in a tree up the road. We grabbed a couple of initial shots, as we weren't getting a lot to shoot at today so then I spied an area wher ewe could get closer, and pulled in.  Dan said he had to take a leak, he had been watering fence posts all day long, with just one coffee? So he left his camera in the truck while I started to see how to get closer to the Shrike. Next thing I hear is "Grouse", Dan had his hands full so he didn't get a shot off, but he saw 15 versions of the bird we had been looking for all day. Success!!
We snuck over to get a look where they landed but they flushed again almost right away. While we were over there we flushed a Prairie Falcon (my first of the year), and the Shrike returned chasing a Redpoll, and gave the opportunity to fire off a couple of snaps.

This Juvenile was quite cooperative.

And one final shot, with his mouth open, no crop!

On the way home we also spotted our first of the season Snowy owls.  It was very skittish, so we didn't get any shots. A great day, for birds, but no light so the shots look terrible.
Turbo

Mountain Chickadee, Crossbills, Norther Hawk Owl, GGO make for a Great outing. (121124)

I was a little energenic on Saturday morning and cut Zel's sleep short on him. He was great about it and didn't complain too much all day. We started the morning with a GGO that we spent about an hour with. We saw it hunt successfully twice and seemed to be continuing to hunt as the sun got up.

While we were shooting this one, another owl made an appearance as did Dan and Lauren. While we were checking out the the second owl, Zel says he spotted two more owls in flight. I didn't get to see them, but it made it a great morning, and it was only 10:00 a.m. An hour later, after bumping to to Kerri and Jamie, we found one of the birds I was hoping to find in the area, some White Winged Crossbills.

In the same flock we also spotted a couple of Red Crossbills mixed in, they were all males which I appreciated as I love the reds in the winter months.

Of course there is nothing wrong with the female clouring either.

While we were waiting for these guys to come back after being spooked by a vehicle, I grabbed my first ever shot of a Mountain Chickadee, so that made the day as far as I was concerned.

Now that I have my first, I will have to work at getting some closer shots:)  We observed that the deer had been significantly absent for the day when we spied this long distance buck who had a young lady in his company. It was a great sunny day to roam about the fields with your girl.

Zel and I decided that we would grab a burger in Canmore and take a look at the Spray Lakes route on the way home. We are usually certain of finding Rocky Mountain Sheep in that area, none found this timne around, but we did spot this Northern Hawk Owl, another first for Zel.

We grabbed lunch then headed back home. There was far more snow than anywhere else we had been today, and while we found tracks-critters were hard to find. We did managfe to find this large cow moose that was in one of the parking lots licking road dust off the cars there.  It was really quite interesting, she did not seem to worry about the folks loading and unloading thier vehicles.

As we got closer to the highway, we managed to find a little more sun and this trio of Pine Grosbeaks, which added the final bit of colour to our day. 

That wrapped up a great day out in the mountains and woods of beautiful Alberta. I hope everyone has a great wildlife week.
Turbo

Moose, Grey Partridge, Bucks on a Sunday morning Shorty (121118)

I took a quick (short) ride on Sunday morning as I didn't want to burn too much of the day. I left home @ 7:00 a.m. and was home by 9:00, so you know I didn't venture too far. a quick count leaves me with: 2 moose, 4 eagles, 14 Grey Partridge, 2 Whitetail bucks, two Muley bucks, one rooster pheasant, many Doe deer, and a northern Flicker. What a great part of the country we live in.
My first first nice Whitetail buck was too early in the morning to get a shot. As I eased into the "backend" of my planned track, I found a moose, a doe Muley and this little (?) covey (14) of Greys.

As I moved along I spotted an immature Bald eagle flying over head, again low light prevented a decent image from being taken. Heading back out with a little more light I was able to get this shotr of a pair of cow moose, they look like a cow and her yearling daughter.

These two ladies took to running, as you can see from here, regular height fences are little obstacle for them to navigate.

One of my many side roads produced this muley buck with several does hanging around the edge of the field. They were a long way off.

As I was headed down another of my roads I happened on three matue Bald Eagles. They were cruising over the Bow checking out the many waterfowl that were in floatilla's on the river. They kept an eye on me as I got out of the truck to shoot these images.

To finish up this post I'll include this shot of a little fork horn Muley popping over a rail fence.

I hope everyone has a great wildlife week.
Turbo

Looking for Snowy's finding game birds.(121116)

Zel and I headed out on Friday morning looking for snowy owls, with no luck.while it wasn't terribly slow, we didn't see alot of deer, whick was disappointing. We flushed this covey of Sharptail grouse.

About 30 kilometers up the road we found a similar sized covey of Grey Partridge, or Hungarians. This group of 12-15 Huns flushed then landed on a snow covered hill, we had a tough time finding them, as they had tried to hide (quite successfully) how many can you find?

As the day warmed up our sightings slowed a little, but we did manage to spy this GHO enjoying the heat from this araetion rig. I wish we could have approached closer but you take what you can take.

Just a short ride up the road from here this Magpie modeled for us.

The gamebirds continued as we had a chance to "capture" this hen pheasant. She was one of two that we saw. We had seen two others earlier in the day. It is not hard to see how they just disappear when they walk into the brush.

I hope you have a great week.
Turbo