July 17
Good Morning
We are back from a very enjoyable journey to southwestern Alberta. This is an area that Sheryl and I spent a lot of time in during the seven years we lived in Calgary . We spent our weekends at Old Man Dam Reservoir and Waterton Lake windsurfing with our friends. It was during one of the ‘waiting on wind” afternoons that I saw a Western Tanager and that stared my interested in birding. That was about 30 years ago.
This trip was very different from the windsurfing weekends. Connor and I hiked slowly along trails and roads in lots of new areas and explored in much more depth. We spent around 4 days exploring the Waterton Park area and four days in the West Castle Mountain area. These areas are considered montane regions where the prairies meet the mountains, They make up about 1% of Albertas land area and are they most biodiverse areas. Connor photographed birds, plants and insects, many which were new to us. He managed to out shoot me 2 to 1 and he came home with 20,000 images. He will have a fun time sorting through those!
It has taken me awhile to get through my images and I am just started to process a few. One of the birds that was high on our “Want to see” list was the Lazuli Bunting. This bird is common in Lower British Columbia and the northern US but rare in Alberta. It is found mainly in the southern part of the province. Waterton is known to be a good place to find them. We had great luck on the Red Rock Canyon road and found three different males. Maybe, I shouldn’t say we found them. I really realized how important hearing was to birding on this trip. Connor has extremely good hearing and was able to hear many of the birds long before we could see them. This was the case with the Lazuli Bunting. We had an idea of the general area where we might find the bird by looking at eBird sightings. But it took Connor's keen sense of hearing to find the bird once we were in the the area. More than once on this trip, he said, “Dad over here, I can here it!” and that sent us scurrying through the brush.
I will try to get a few more posts out before our next trip on Monday to Cold Lake
Stay well.
