It will be no surprise to regular readers of the blog to find me out exploring the prairies when I have a couple of hours to kill. With lots going on personally and the weather being a little temperamental of late, getting out to the mountains has been put on hold for a short time.
So, with a couple of spare hours to kill on a clear cold morning I took off on a circular route from home into the Alberta prairies, camera in hand. Leaving home in the dark I had hoped to catch a prairie sunrise, but it was a non event as the gallery image below will show, so I just drove an unplanned circuit and made a few shots along the way. I saw thousands of snow geese making their journey south for the winter and I sat patiently in the recreation area of Lake McGregor waiting for the right 'flight' to wrap itself around the winter moon. I had hoped for a frame of geese around the moon but after a very long time I settled for the main shot below and moved on. I made a couple of shots of critters on the prairie and two lovely images of a Prairie Falcon in the garden when I got home. I have always loved the wide open spaces of the prairies since our first exposure to them in Oklahoma 15 years ago. Alberta has many similarities with Oklahoma, and at one point in time both were part of one great sweeping prairie, we will miss these places.
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We awoke this morning to dense freezing fog which coated the grasses, shrubs and trees with ice, not dissimilar to the ice storm we experienced in Oklahoma in 2007 but nowhere near as severe.
So, on our daily circuit down to the river I decided to take the camera along to find a few 'foggy day' shots. Unfortunately the circuit we walk isn't really photogenic with houses in the background most of the way. So instead, I shot the ice covered fronds of the plant life. A nice little reminder (as if one was needed) of the winter lurking on our horizon. As I sat by the window of the living room last night, the incessant flashes of lightning outside kept on catching my eye. Mainly 'sheet lightning' behind the cloud illuminating that foreboding sky as it crept slowly across the horizon.
After a good 20 minutes or so, streaks of lighting suddenly began darting through the air between the horizon and the clouds. At first I just watched, but as they become more frequent and, in some sense at least, more reliable; I got the camera gear out and set up for very long exposures using the tripod, timer and some heavy manipulation of the aperture, ISO and shutter speed to capture multiple strikes. I 'lost' the sky and city to burnt out highlights as expected, but simply took another two much shorter exposures to capture them correctly, later merging them to make one correctly exposed frame. Not my usual thing but worth shooting, not just for the photography practice but for the impressive number of lightning strikes too. I stayed dry on the balcony with my camera gear in humid heavy air getting bitten repeatedly by passing mozzies....worth it I think. This week I bore witness to a great battle outside in the garden, thankfully my attention was drawn to the window because of the commotion. Looking out I saw an american goldfinch with heel spurs raised crashing into battle. Bouncing back through a cloud of feather dust after the initial confrontation he soon composed himself and returned to meet his adversary head on.
Because they were so equally matched the battle continued this way for several minutes, first backing off then charging heels up meeting perfectly together every time and bouncing back again. Feather dust flew, bits of feather wafted off on the slight breeze and no quarter was given as the battle drew out. Luckily I had grabbed the camera in time, and fired off a number of shots, looking straight on at this wonderful spectacle, perfectly aligned to capture the battle. I know what you are thinking....how.... how are you directly in line with the fight. My secret, this little fellow was fighting his reflection in the house window, and I was on the inside observing, what a wonderful angle to capture, maybe a once in a lifetime occurrence. 6766 years ago, our ancestors watched the last pass of Neowise, the retrograde comet currently illuminating our night skies with the most wonderful, slow orbit. Obviously it would have had a different name back then, and it definitely came with great foreboding for those few homo sapiens observing it's progress across the night sky. Thankfully we're no longer tied to ancient ritual and superstition, says I with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
Fortunately for me, the horizon was filled with noctilucent clouds, I have seen these several times but never understood exactly what they were, until Sarahs mum sent me some images of them just a few weeks ago and I looked them up. They are comprised entirely of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere and only visible during astronomical twilight. My response was that I would try to shoot some, so as they say in Canada, this is a twofer. As the evening continued an aurora put in an appearance, a weak one, but welcome nonetheless, it has been quite a while since we saw an aurora from the balcony, largely due to the current solar minimum and associated lack of solar activity. To complete the evening, or morning (as it was now 2am) a long raking 'Steve' appeared in the night sky. A 'Steve' is actually a Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, not a rare event but only recently investigated. They are quite common in Alberta and were actually named by Alberta aurora watchers in 2016. So, all in all, nature has put on a spectacular show this evening, a comet, noctilucent clouds, an aurora and a STEVE. It wasn't until I went back into the house at 2:30am that I suddenly realised how cold I was. Turns out that standing outside in shorts and a T-shirt for 3.5 hours in the late evening/early morning is unwise, even in July. Fortunately, when I crawled into bed Sarah was far too hot and a cuddle met both of our needs.....well that's my take on it anyway. Sarah and I watched another striking sunset from the balcony last night. Much of the cloud drifted away before the very best light, but what remained was illuminated perfectly and put on a lovely show. We particularly liked the ribbon of darker cloud loops that danced along the upper edge of the array. So, at Sarahs insistence, I made a few shots, after all, we all know that I do as I'm told.....some of the time.
Just a few days ago I saw a trio of bears out in Kananaskis (see post below). I was still giddy about the sighting when I walked into the dining room today and saw a black bear just appearing from the forest behind the house.
I called upstairs to Sarah, "there's a bear at the fence", she called back, I thought it was a squirrel??. I didn't have time to question the logic of that. I grabbed the camera and made a few shots as he crept out of the tree line and up to the fence. In seconds he saw me at the window and retreated to the forest. I bolted downstairs and out of the basement door, across the lawn, and to the fence, where I was able to make two more images before he disappeared into the undergrowth (a feat that still surprises me every time I witness it). What a wonderful encounter from our own garden, and what a fine looking bear too. A little lean due to hibernation but clearly healthy and in good shape. Black bears aren't always black, it's the shape of the face and ears that give him away. As for looking like a squirrel, it transpires that Sarah didn't have her glasses on and saw a 'fur blur' coming out of the forest. Once she retrieved her specs she was able to get a great view of him from upstairs. My 'go to' spring location is West Bragg Creek. It's close to home and clear of snow early in the year and, because it is wet in the spring, there are few mountain bikes on the trails at this time.
Today I did one of my usual routes covering 13 km of muddy trail in the rain, it was much more enjoyable than it sounds. I had my lightweight gear on and ultralight waterproof stuff over the top, the result was a warm dry me in a muddy wet forest. I found it quite challenging to make images, mainly due to the inclement weather and my camera and lens choice for the day, it was my old A7r, taken as a hedge against the weather potential. As it transpires the trees and my rain gear kept the water away almost entirely, so maybe next time I venture out in the rain, I'll take my better camera gear. It was really enjoyable with absolutely nobody around for almost the entire circuit, I did see two teen girls jogging who were absolutely filthy with mud splatter from head to toe. It's an indication of how muddy the trail was that they slowed to pass me so they didn't splash me in the same manner. Higher up in the forest the low cloud presented some photo opportunities giving me my own cloud forest for 5 km or so, all in all I would definitely do this again as the rain gear rarely gets an outing and I didn't really notice the rain once hiking. The main shot today is of the forest as I ascended into the low cloud for the first time, the gallery has captions as usual. In the garden this week we have three new visitors, firstly, as seen in the main image is the Rose-breasted Grosbeak. This means we have now seen every available Grosbeak in Canada, all from the comfort of our own house.
Next up was a new adult squirrel who we named Panda because he has two light grey patches on his very dark fur. Soon after that came Titch 2, the first baby squirrel we've seen this year, he already looks like a character. He reminded us of one of our very first visitors years ago who we named Titch. The spring rain has arrived now so expect storms, sunsets and green, green growth over the next few weeks. The main image is of the fine looking Rose-breasted Grosbeak and the gallery has captions to identify other individuals. The sunset tonight threatened to be a great one, storm clouds overhead and the sun dipping below them meant uplighting and backlighting should be present. I grabbed a couple of camera bodies and went out onto the balcony with Sarah to watch the show.
It wasn't the best sunset we've seen form here (by some measure) but it did throw out some wonderful light and I couldn't resist pulling out a few sections with the telephoto lens. The best of which (for me) is the mayfly cloud that came in just before the final light died away. The mayfly is the last image in the gallery below. The main shot is a two shot panorama using the telephoto lens to pick out a cloud on the horizon struck by sunlight from below as we had hoped. |
AuthorWe arrived in Calgary, Canada on 29th December 2011 to continue our journey. This blog is intended to keep our family and friends informed whilst we explore Canada.You can use the RSS feed below to stay updated. Categories
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January 2024
The Shaman, West Texas
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