When I travel almost anywhere locally, I tote my camera. It usually sits unused—but now and then, something interesting turns up. Last evening was such an occasion. In rain and failing light, I saw a half-dozen female elk.
Elk are certainly around here, but I don’t see them often enough. Here are four pictures of wet-looking members of this group.
This posting plays catchup with last week’s scenes and adds this morning’s muskrat.
A muskrat forages at dawn.
A female Pine Grosbeak looks regal.
A squirrel enjoys a cone for breakfast.
A heron’s wings are coloured by the Sun’s first light.
Another heron lands aside mud exposed by the low waters of March.
A sub-adult eagle hunts from a snag.
As the rising Sun limns their wings, Canada Geese skim the Lake.
During the Spring migration last year I only saw Tundra Swans—no Trumpeters at all. This year, I have seen both species, but most have been Trumpeters.
Between the three pictures, below, I show the fourteen Trumpeters that were hanging out at Taghum.
Sources suggest that the Yellow-bellied Marmot emerges from hibernation some time between mid April and early May depending on climatic conditions and snowpack.
What can one conclude about this marmot photographed at noon on March 23rd? It was seen somewhat west of Nelson at a spot where I saw a marmot last August. There may be a colony nearby.
This Yellow-bellied Marmot blends in well with the dried grass of its surroundings.
If I weren’t still groggy, I wouldn’t let you get this close. 
On March 3, Derek Kite reported a leucistic goose on the Lake. Today, I also saw it, but now with its mate.
Leucism describes a defect in cells where patches on the body’s surface lack pigment. The Canada Goose we each saw showed white on its crown and a portion of the neck.
Will this mating produce leucistic goslings? It is not possible to tell at this time.
This female leucistic goose seems posed to mate with a normal male.
A half-dozen or more Tundra Swans have arrived at Robert’s Bay.
Almost all Tundra Swans can be identified by their yellow lores (lore: the region between the eye and the bill). Not all Tundras show this spot, and when seen the spot is variable in size, yet it is a good indicator of the species.
Robert’s Bay (the bay in front of Blaylock’s Mansion) is quite shallow. Swans appear to be able to spot shallow feeding areas as they fly over the Lake, and so Robert’s Bay is a perennial springtime favourite of swans (as are the shallows at Kokanee Creek Park).
Late March and early April is the time to see Tundras at Robert’s Bay as they stop to feed on their way to the high arctic. If they stick around for a few days, I may be able to get some better shots.
Both members of this pair of Tundra Swans show yellow lores, but the male (bigger, foreground) displays a much larger yellow lore than does the female.
Pictographs are at once art and narrative.
Pictographs—rock paintings—were created by Aboriginal people over millennia. Alas, many have become obscured by time, suffering fading, erosion, lichen, and sometimes vandalism. There is now often difficulty in discerning many of the shapes depicted.
There are over two-dozen ancient pictographic sites around Kootenay Lake. Most have been known only to locals and archaeologists. However, the use of clever image-enhancement software on site photographs has resulted in publicity from Parks Canada and the Globe and Mail. These articles tell how pictographs, two of which are adjacent to the Main Lake, have started to yield their secrets.
The pictographic seachange started with an image-enhancement technique developed by NASA for use on planetary missions. It was then adapted for pictographs by Jon Harman, an American mathematician and amateur archaeologist. Harman’s software was adopted by Brad Himour, an archaeologist at Parks Canada. Mr. Himour has been working cooperatively with Aboriginal Elders to protect, preserve and interpret rock-art sites in the Kootenay region. This cooperation resulted in a the article in the Globe and Mail.
I thought: if Parks can do this with its pictures of pictographs, why can’t I do it with mine? I acquired the software and tried it on a picture of a local pictograph. It works.
The picture, below, shows my original photograph. When the cursor rolls over it, the picture changes to show the enhanced image (you might have to wait a moment for it to be loaded the first time). Many virtually unnoticeable features in the original picture become striking in the second. Consider the smudge in the lower left that turns into a swimming lizard (or canoe) with a bow wave.
While I have my own guess as to the story being told at this site, for now I merely note that such enhanced images allow the welcome possibility of rediscovering both the art and narrative enshrined on cliffs around the Lake.
Before and after enhancement: move cursor over image; wait; move cursor off image; repeat. As I cannot get the image swap to work on an ipad, I have attached a copy of the enhanced image below this one.
Many animals put aside preserves for winter: humans do, squirrels do. Do finches?
Over a period of a few days this January, Pine Grosbeaks cleaned the berries off a mountain ash in my yard. The first picture, below, shows a male working at it.
As the mountain ash was now bare, the grosbeaks moved on and were subsequently seen eating (the somewhat less palatable) snowberries and then those of the black hawthorn.
Today, they were back at the same (empty) mountain ash for the first time in two months. Why?
This time the feeding was under the tree. In January, many of the berries had been dropped onto the snow and subsequently covered with fresh snow. Now the snow has melted and the birds have returned to eat the berries preserved in the snow for two months.
Were the berries dropped purposefully for later consumption, or was this result inadvertent? It was probably inadvertent, but isn’t it fun to see these birds now getting to eat the food they had caused to be preserved two months earlier?
In January, a male Pine Grosbeak eats (and drops) berries from a mountain ash.
In March, a male Pine Grosbeak came to the same tree and is eating the now exposed berries that had been dropped and preserved in the snow under the tree.
For over a week now, there has been a family of migrating swans feeding in the shallows south of the Kokanee Creek Park—swans and their entourage of ducks. As the lake level has been dropping, the swans have been squeezed between the expanding shore and the fixed location of the deeper channel. The result is that it is easier now to get close enough for pictures. Here are four from midday Sunday.
(When posted this morning, the title read: Kokanee’s Tundras. It now turns out that these swans are all Trumpeters.)
Ogopogo
It was the churning water, the splashing, and the spreading waves that drew my attention to an unreasonably long and sinuous animal with a whipping tail and fish-devouring jaws.
Yikes, it is an OGOPOGO !!! ( ← Note my hyperbolic use of explanation marks. )
The light was dim; it was raining; the monster was a long, long way offshore. But, it fit all the descriptions I have encountered of the ogopogo. It progressed rapidly along the West Arm from the Nine-mile Narrows as it headed towards Kokanee Creek Park. My camera clicked away happily. After capturing some fish, and before reaching the Park, the ogopogo turned around and undulated back down the Lake churning the water as it swam.
Then it spotted me; it promptly turned and headed straight at me—yikes, this chthonic monster was hydra-headed.
The folks in the Okanagan are noted for seeing such monsters (and taking unconvincing pictures of them). Yet, those of us on Kootenay Lake have had our own observations (an interesting summary by Tammy Hardwick). Now, I had a chance to take my own pictures (continued below).
This is an un-retouched telephoto image of the distant Kootenay Lake ogopogo.
As the ogopogo approached me, its sinuous body undulated in and out of the water;
Its tail whipped about;
And one of its multiple heads ploughed directly toward me.
Finally, some of this family of otters approached quite close.
Ok, I knew from my initial observation that this was actually a family of a half-dozen otters, but it was stunning how closely what was seen way out on the Lake fitted the reports of the ogopogo.