Category Archives: wildflowers

Ghost plant

Posted on July 17, 2025 by Alistair

  It is mid-July. The time has come to see the ghost plant (formally called the Indian pipe). The ghost plant is in fact a herbaceous perennial plant (not a fungus), but its strikingly white colour means that it lacks … Continue reading →

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Scraggly eagle & ghost

Posted on July 24, 2024 by Alistair

  The only similarity to these two things is that each is scraggly. The first two pictures are of a juvenile Bald Eagle (likely in its second year). It is under-going a moult of its body feathers, which are replaced … Continue reading →

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May miscellaneous

Posted on May 14, 2024 by Alistair

  I went looking for something else, but instead found, well, many other things. On a pond by the river, there was a loafing log with 14 painted turtles in three sizes. The mature females are the largest and there … Continue reading →

Posted in birds, herptiles, mammals, wildflowers | 4 Comments

Spring arrives

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Alistair

  The temperature now rises above freezing day and night at the bottom of the valleys. The trees begin to bloom, and skunk cabbage sprouts in moist areas. Birds mate and build nests. Migrants arrive and some pass northward. This … Continue reading →

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Ghost plant

Posted on July 19, 2023 by Alistair

  This somewhat uncommon flower has given me a great deal of trouble. It wasn’t due to the behaviour of the flower itself, which is unusual, but straight forward. It was due to the name it has had: the Indian … Continue reading →

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Striped coralroot

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Alistair

  The striped coralroot orchid is widespread across southern Canada and western U.S. However, it is sparse throughout its range for it does not use leaves to synthesize food but obtains it nutrients from fungi in the ground.   This orchid … Continue reading →

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Fairy slipper deception

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Alistair

  Our first orchid of the year, the fairy slipper (Calypso bulbosa) is beautiful, but remarkably deceptive. There is a nearly universal contract between pollinators (such as bees) and flowers: The bees provide the flowers with pollination in exchange for … Continue reading →

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August’s goulash

Posted on August 31, 2022 by Alistair

  This is a collection of August’s pictures that lacked a posting of their own.  This strange looking bird is just a juvenile Robin. Wintering in the Amazon, this Red-eyed Vireo is near the limit of its summer range. The … Continue reading →

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June’s goulash

Posted on June 30, 2022 by Alistair

  This is a collection of June’s pictures that lacked a posting of their own.  June began with a dipper feeding a bug to one of it three chicks. This purple virgin’s-bower (Clematis occidentalis) is a western flower. If one … Continue reading →

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Two more wild orchids

Posted on June 18, 2022 by Alistair

  On June 9th I posted two local wild orchids: the fairy slipper and the lady’s slipper. Each stalk had but one flower. Here are two more local wild orchids, but here the stalks contain many flowers: they are racemes. … Continue reading →

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