I don’t know how many wild orchids bloom around the Lake, but I have managed to photograph seven different local species. The first to appear each year, sometime in May, is the Fairy Slipper (Calypso bulbosa). This one was spotted about a week earlier than those of other years. With luck, this will be a good year for wild orchids—it is a beauteous beginning.
I see River Otters only a few times a year, but I have to wait two or three years for a sighting such as this: an otter that arrived with its own breakfast.
This morning brought many birds, three of which resulted in pictures.
The loon’s eye is either dark or red depending upon how the sunlight catches it.
These were the first goslings seen this year. If only they didn’t grow up to become geese.
I had not seen a Calliope Hummingbird for a couple of years.
A killdeer nest is merely a shallow depression on open ground. This killdeer really looked as if it were nesting.
And it behaved as if it were nesting. Upon spotting me, it got up and wandered a short distance and waited for me to follow. We played this game three times before I decided that it would now be satisfied that it had lured me away from its nest; it had. I left without disturbing it further, and so did not discover if there were eggs. Unfortunately, I know that the killdeer’s location will be underwater in a few weeks.
Rockets have them; drones have them; cruise ships have them; space telescopes have them; smart phones have them; and some insects have them. They are gyroscopes, rapidly spinning or vibrating devices that, by maintaining orientation in space, can assist navigation by monitoring changes in direction.
The insects with gyro-stabilized flight are found in Diptera, the order comprising true flies. The ancestors of Diptera, which means two wings, had four wings. The two hind wings evolved to become the halteres, rapidly vibrating organs that assist in inertial navigation and look like twirlers’ batons.
While a characteristic of all flies, the halteres are especially visible on a crane fly. They are the two rods, terminated with a ball, located just behind the wings. The halteres are set at right angles to each other, ideal for detecting changes in orientation about two axes. 
As songbirds go, the dipper is a maverick: it flies underwater to forage on the bed of cold and turbulent mountain streams. It takes the cold and wet in its stride.
Yet, when it builds its nest, the dipper seeks shelter and comfort. The nest is a dome with the opening on the side, so it is one of the few covered bird nests. There is the added protection from weather by (often) building the nest on the girders under a bridge. The spot chosen for this nest is high above the creek in a location inaccessible to land predators. Joanne Siderius has pointed out that the dipper couple had just built this nest because last year’s was destroyed (removed?) over the winter.
Here, the male is bringing food to the female while she incubates the eggs (Derek Kite’s picture).
When not foraging or bringing food to the nest, the male stands guard below it on a rock in the creek.
Derek Kite’s picture of the feeding is used with permission.
Tree Swallows are here in good numbers. They are waging war over nesting sites with one another and with flickers. In the midst of the battles, some seem to have taken a break to mate.
That Tree Swallows are fleet of wing is an understatement. Often this aerial speed and agility is devoted to hawking insects. On this occasion, it was devoted to conflict and love.
The term, acrobatic, is sometimes used to describe the manoeuvres of Tree Swallows, but acrobatic falls short of capturing the rapidity and agility of their flight.
Males are the first to arrive from migration. In this encounter it almost looks as if the female (left) is denouncing the male (right) for not already having secured her a nesting cavity. Or they may be fighting for the same spot.
The object of much of the combat was a group of pilings in which flickers had carved cavities. There is a cavity in this piling that the Tree Swallows have used other years, but must fight for again. 
The fight isn’t just between various swallows. Here, a male swallow is making one of many challenges to a female Northern Flicker. She is looking out of the coveted nesting cavity, that, after all, had been carved by a flicker. The following morning, the flicker was still ensconced in the cavity.
In the midst of all the fighting, one couple chose to make love (the upper bird is the male). After recording this, I wondered, do Tree Swallows really mate during flight? A Web search of “Tree Swallows mating” only revealed shots where the female was perched—but then, perched mating would be a vastly easier picture to take.
I sometimes see the Columbian Ground Squirrel during my wanderings. Although I try to take pictures, usually little more than a head is seen cautious peeking from a burrow, and it quickly vanishes.
Yesterday, I was pleased to see one standing upright on a log where it was visible from head to tail. This one quickly hid also, but not before the camera went click.
Mid April prompts a number of annual events: ospreys return (saw another one today), taxes, and the proliferation of Bombylius major. For some years, this blog has devoted a posting to this fuzzy little bee-mimic fly—all in mid April. For that is the brief time they are with us. Only with last year’s posting did I discover why that is and wrote:
It only appears in the spring because that is the time solitary bees temporarily leave their nest sites unprotected. Unlike the social bees, each solitary bee lays her own eggs and does so in a small tunnel she has provisioned with food such as nectar and pollen. She then seals the entrance. However, for the short time it takes to do this, the tunnel entrance is open and that is when the Bombylius fly comes by and deposits its own eggs inside. The Bombylius larva emerges, feeds on the provisions meant for the bee larvae; it then changes form and eats the bee larva, itself. Bombylius has only a short time in the spring to give its offspring this opportunity.
So, I note that there were at least two different species of solitary bees roaming my lawn. Bombylius seems to have timed things right again.
That this Bombylius fly has also been foraging among the dandelions is evident by the yellow pollen on its face.
The Bombylius fly is hovering below the flower, but stabilizing itself with is forelegs.
Squirrel stripes
The squirrel family (Sciuridae) is represented by quite a few species around the Lake: two of marmots, one tree squirrel, two ground squirrels, one flying squirrel, and one (maybe two) chipmunks. Only the chipmunks and the Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel sport stripes. Below, I show a picture of each seen on May 1st in the sub-alpine forest high above the Lake.
A curious aspect of having two types of squirrels with stripes are the websites (usually touristy ones) which show a picture of a ground squirrel but label it as a chipmunk (the two aren’t even in the same genus). I wondered: How could this happen? Then it struck me: The construction of such sites is contracted to web designers who obtain their images from stock-photo services. So, I tested the idea by typing the word, chipmunk, into the search engines of a few different stock-photo websites. Yep, therein lies the source of the problem: a substantial number of the pictures labeled as chipmunks on such sites aren’t. It may be that a stock-image company isn’t such a reliable source of biological information.
A Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel is about four times the weight of a chipmunk. Stripes only appear on its back.
A chipmunk is not only much smaller, but its stripes extend from its back across its face to its nose.
