Beach walk

On a beautiful sunny day, a walk along the beach at Kokanee Creek Park revealed old friends and a new delight. Three are illustrated below in the order seen.

The view over the waters of Kootenay Lake often shows rather nice mirages. Most of them are inferior mirages, such as in this picture, but sometimes I see a superior mirage. The term, inferior, is not an editorial comment, but a literal statement of fact. Consider the Harrop ferry seen at a distance of about four kilometres. Both the erect and inverted images are actually displaced downward from where they would have appeared if the temperature over the Lake’s surface had no variation with height. Although the ferry looks as if it has been lifted above the water surface (foreground), actually, both the ferry and the water have been shifted downwards with the water being displaced more.

Just as mirages are a staple of the Lake, so are mallards—they are with us throughout the year. They are very easy to photograph. So, who needs yet another picture of this familiar friend? Well, I couldn’t resist recording this scene of four of them upended as they dabbled in the shallows along the shore.

It is mid-October and who would expect to see dragonflies? Actually, quite a few species remain around until this time. While I did see a Cherry-faced Meadowhawk, the great delight was to see a species new to me: the Western Meadowhawk. One of the things that makes this dragonfly easily recognizable is the broad yellowish tint on its wings. Here the colour is visible both on the wings and and in their shadows on the sand.