This is the time of year to see fresh osprey chicks peeking out of nests around the Lake.
Often the chicks are seen interacting with a parent.
At another nest, three chicks look out at a parent in an adjacent tree. The chicks are distinguished by white-fringed wing feathers, and orange eyes, rather than the adult’s yellow.
There was a time when local sport fishermen demonized the osprey: How dare that bird prey on (what was fantasized as) their fish? Clearly, we need to kill the osprey. Locally burned pilings still stand as a mute testimony to torched osprey nests atop them. Sigh…, yahoos are timeless.
Leaving aside the fact that ospreys have fed on local fish for millennia prior to the arrival of the upstart fishermen, there is the secondary question of whether those fishermen correctly assessed the situation. Were the osprey actually depleting the favourite fish of the sport fishermen?
Here is the situation: humans prefer to catch and eat salmonid species: salmon, trout, chars, freshwater whitefish, graylings. Ospreys prefer to catch and eat fish that are particularly slow moving and thus easy to catch: suckers. Suckers are fish that are spurned by humans (too bony). So, the yahoos burned osprey nests on a nonsensical claim of prior rights, but based it on a flawed assessment of the (imagined) harm they inflicted.
An osprey lifts a sucker from the Lake. Osprey take other species, but suckers are a favourite.
Yet, ospreys have their own peculiarities when it comes to protecting their fish. This osprey is returning to its nest with a headless fish. OK, it ate the (tasty) head earlier, probably before even bringing the fish to the nest. But then, in response to a perceived threat, it took its fish and flew off (it now returns). The reason the fish was removed is that it cannot be protected if left in the nest. Alas, an eagle is likely to steal it. It does not matter that the perceived threat was actually a passing human, the headless fish was protected by being removed.
Waves form behind a boat travelling on the water. It is the relative motion that counts, not whether it is the boat that is moving or the water that is moving. In a similar manner, the air displaced by flowing over mountains can oscillate up and down in a series of waves.
However, the thing about the upward displacement of air is that often the humidity increase in the lifted air is sufficient to produce cloud. The resulting wave clouds are characteristically rather smooth and lenticular in appearance. This afternoon, I watched as wave clouds hung over the mountains around the Lake.
A feature of wave clouds is their rather uniform drop size. When seen in front of the Sun, these cloud drops give rise to one of the delights of wave clouds: iridescence.
Wave clouds form over the mountains surrounding Kootenay Lake.
One of the wave clouds that appears in front of the Sun shows the iridescent colours that result from the diffraction of light through uniform cloud drops.
The Giant Helleborine is a wild orchid that grows in western North America.
It is found in a small portion of southern British Columbia, yet it is not particularly common. Indeed, it takes some effort to locate even a single population. But, it is assuredly (but rather sparsely) found around Kootenay Lake. And when located, one’s calendar will say: it is mid July.
However, when found, the Giant Helleborine does grow in a profusion of many dozens of plants and hundreds of flowers.
The Giant Helleborine grows in wet areas.
It grows on stalks containing multiple flowers.
Mycorrhizal fungi supply nutrients that the Giant Helleborine cannot obtain otherwise.
A brood parasite is something that one reads about, but does not actually expect to see.
The story begins with the Brown-headed Cowbird, a warm-season species that lays its eggs in the nests of other birds and so outsources its chick-raising obligations. As such, the cowbird is a brood parasite, which just means that it cons others into becoming foster parents for its chicks.
An initially unidentified fledged chick was begging as it sat deep among the branches of a tree.
But when a (tiny) Yellow Warbler responded by feeding it, the identity of the (large) chick was revealed as a Brown-headed Cowbird.
With a constant demand, the cowbird kept its foster parent busy searching for food to satisfy it.
Having shown some less-than-cute baby animals, it struck me as appropriate to show some societally more acceptable babies. The first things I ran across were some pups of Columbian Ground Squirrels.
Columbian Ground Squirrels are usually found in fields where an adult sentry stands over a burrow. Their pups have not previously been apparent to me. However, when Kokanee Creek Park was closed for five weeks starting in April, this normally skittish ground squirrel cautiously spread in response to human absence. That led to the opportunity to see its pups.
When the Park opened again in mid May, this Columbian Ground Squirrel was spotted at the south end of the spawning channel. And this is where the pups were seen starting in early July.
At the beginning of July, three Columbian Ground Squirrel pups appeared at the same place the adult had been seen a month and a half earlier.
I didn’t get them all in the same view, but did manage a shot of one pup feasting on leaves.
Babies are cute. We seem to be hard wired to protect those adorable infants with their rounded, over-sized heads, large eyes, and chubby cheeks, whether they be human or animal. We just adore them.
Well, maybe not all of them. How about baby arthropods?
What I believe are mosquito larvae were spotted in a puddle early in June. Our revulsion is probably a result of what we anticipate the adult females will do.
These spiderlings were seen in the grass. No one finds them cute, and arachnophobes fear them. Just maybe, all babies are not perceived as being cute.
But, did I get the identification correct? Are those mosquito larvae? What is the species of those spiderlings?
Nature is not bucolic. Animals attack one another with tooth, claw, and bill. Other species are seen as either food or competitor — in either case they must be attacked. I have watched animals assault prey. I have seen eagles harass ospreys in an attempt to steal their fish. I have seen ospreys attack herons (who knows why?). Spiders devoir flies. Bears and birds prey on fish. Everything captures and eats those tasty voles. It is just a matter of eat or be eaten. There is nothing personal here, folks: you are merely food.
While I have watched ospreys fight over access to a nest site early in the season, I had not previously seen them fight over a fish. But, that is what two of them were doing on this occasion.
A female osprey flies in with her partially eaten fish.
She lands on a branch to eat it further, but is watched by another osprey that covets the fish.
The chase begins. This is only one scene from a vigorous back and forth between the two of them.
In the end she triumphs and settles down to consume her fish.
This is a collection of images from June, none of which has had a posting of its own. Curiously, there are no mammals. Although I saw mammals, none of them produced interesting pictures.
The first shore bird to arrive each year is normally the killdeer, which usually can be seen as early as mid March. Strangely, the first one I saw this year didn’t appear until mid June.
A just fledged dipper chick sits on a log overlooking the creek. It is still too young to feed itself and desperately wants a parent to come along with some food.
With summer, redstarts have flowed into this region. This is a female.
A male Red-winged Blackbird flies past.
While a female Red-winged Blackbird prepares to fly.
The fact that this small creature looks rather like a wasp is a ruse to discourage a bird from eating it. It is actually a harmless little hoverfly collecting pollen from a daisy.
A Bank Swallow leaves its cavity, having fed its chicks, which are, as yet, not visible.
A male Northern Flicker (red-shafted) flies past.
A crab spider waits patiently on a daisy for a meal to arrive in the form of a fly or ant.
A female Common Yellowthroat flits through the brush looking for insects.
The male Common Yellowthroat reveals how the bird was named.
Meow!
As does the Common Yellowthroat, the Warbling Vireo searches for insects to eat.
The Osprey has a blind spot when it comes to property rights. It regularly builds its nest on human-built structures, but then complains bitterly when humans happen to pass by. Its mantra seems to be, if I am here, it is mine.
Wild Turkey presence
When I was a child on the shore of Kootenay Lake, there were no Wild Turkeys to be seen.
Returning to the lakeshore in retirement, I was surprised to see a few. Since that time, the proliferation of turkeys is probably satisfying only to coyotes.
Why are they here? Apparently they were introduced in the states of Washington and Idaho as a way to satisfy hunters. Sigh….
A Washington website states: “wild turkeys … were introduced to Washington beginning in the early twentieth century.” These turkeys apparently did not head north. However, an Idaho website tells us that: “Wild turkey populations have taken off in Idaho since Idaho Fish and Game first introduced them in the 1960s.” It is a portion of this plantation that seems to have sought refuge around Kootenay Lake, for a few were apparently seen around Salmo later in that decade.
However, the purpose of this posting is merely to record a milestone in our history of the Wild Turkey. By an accident of the preservation of ephemera, I have a page from the BC Naturalist from the Spring of 1987 (Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 6) that notes: “West Kootenay Naturalists were excited to find two WILD TURKEYS near Nelson on 27 December.”
This event, over thirty years ago, was an early stage in our turkey infestation, all apparently a consequence of Idaho’s introduction.
