Life Trove: Canadian Critters

The Canadian Rockies is home to a plethora of wildlife and we saw lots of it.

On our first day in the park, we sighted a black bear on the road which caused me great excitement as it is on my life list. Then to crown the experience, we spotted a bear and two cubs the following night. Unfortunatley in both cases, we were too excited and the experience too fleeting to take a photo.

Not so with the big horn sheep - the male above posed beautfully for the camera.

The photo of the Columbian Ground Squirrel was taken at our camp site in Banff - they were pesky little fellows who dive bombed pine cones from the tree early every morning onto Trish and Mike's camp trailer - waking them up to what seemed like the battle of Britain. When we left, we swept a hundred cones off the trailer roof and then we watched as a particularly energetic little squirrel (phographed above) retrieved every single one of them to take off to his nest near by.

The Golden Mantled Ground Squirrels posed for us at Morraine Lake. We climbed a rock stack for better views of the lake and these cute little creatures kept popping up from the rocks just above us, peering down curiously,

The elk stag was photographed at our camp site at Jasper. He was there with his concubine of over ten females. It's rutting season so he was very energetic and kept charging about, rounding up his ladies, even coming between our tent and trailor to do so. So we had some very close up views indeed. But we had to be cautious too - the wardens warned us that it wasn't a good idea to get between a rutting elk and the objects of his affection.

The juvenile Osprey was photographed on a nest on a bridge near Banff. These beautiful birds are quite common here, thanks to the abundance of fish in the lake. The Clarke's Nutcracker was a lively and very arial bird that is common in the forests. The Loon is a symbol of "wild Canada" - it's beautiful, playful and has a wonderful call.

In total, I saw 15 new species of birds in the Rockies (thanks to my long suffering and very patient family who were very good about stopping off at lakes for me to do some twitching!)

Columbian Ground Squirrel