Category Archives: fish

Otter’s breakfast

  No sooner had I commented that I had yet to see an otter this year, than one could be seen swimming towards a nearby dock. What an obliging fellow. It even brought a fish for its breakfast. “Hmm, good.” … Continue reading

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Dipper’s rainbow

  I often see dippers in local creeks and along the lakeshore—for me, the dipper has almost become a yard bird. Yet, in all the time I have watched dippers as they incessantly dived for comestibles, I have only occasionally seen … Continue reading

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Kokanee keep coming

  The Kootenay Lake naturalist’s year is marked by many events: irruptive finches in the winter, migrating swans in the spring, the return of humming birds and ospreys, the freshet, pollinating insects, the arrival of black bears in the valleys … Continue reading

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Kokanee spawning

  They are at it again: the Kokanee are spawning. Depending on the creek, from mid-August until late September the water becomes either spotted or awash with red as these land-locked sockeye salmon move upstream. I hope to get more views as the … Continue reading

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Osprey, fish, crow

  An osprey cannot eat a fish when it is flying; the bird must first land. Even if it is taking the fish back to its chicks in a nest, the osprey will often stop off for a snack first. … Continue reading

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Hitchhiking fish

  Fish: Oh, oh…, the view is sooo lovely from up here. Thank you for showing it to me. Now, if you will kindly just drop me off in the Lake. Right down there will do just fine. No, no, … Continue reading

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Dying trout

  The first thing that caught my eye was a fin sticking above the water. The fish seemed to be circling erratically in the shallows—a behaviour I had never before witnessed. Joe Thorley of Poisson Consulting looked at this picture and said that … Continue reading

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Otter munches

Yesterday, I watched a northern river otter munch on a large-scaled sucker. The Kootenay Lake website offers more pictures of local River Otters I had failed to spot this delight on my own. Standing beside me, Derek Kite wondered about … Continue reading

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Fleeing fish

The first time I saw such a frenzy of fish breaching the water’s surface, I was kayaking on the Persian Gulf. What in the world prompted all those fish to adopt such an odd behaviour? The next time I saw such … Continue reading

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Dipper’s comestible

Dippers, the only aquatic songbird, prefer cold, fast-flowing, streams where they mainly eat invertebrates found on the stream bottom. On Sunday, a half-dozen dippers were scouring the waters of Kokanee Creek below the spawning channel when one surfaced with a … Continue reading

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