I don’t often see marmots, so it was fun to see two different (widely separated) ones yesterday. Both were Yellow–bellied Marmots, but the pictures below are only of the first.
Locally, there are two species: The Yellow–bellied Marmot is found in the valleys; The Hoary Marmot higher in the mountains. The marmot is essentially a large, vegetarian, ground squirrel.
Ron Welwood invited me to his place to see a family of flycatchers. They turned out to be the Pacific-slope Flycatchers. It is the only one around here that will nest on buildings and that will use moss in its construction.
The five pictures below show two of the three chicks (barely) peeking out of the nest and some shots of the two adults that seemed anxious to feed them.
In ancient times, pileus was the name of a brimless felt cap worn first by Greek sailors and then by Roman freed slaves. The word is now applied to the cap of a mushroom and the cloud that forms over the top of a vigorously growing cumulus cloud.
I only see the pileus a few times a year.
A pileus is a smooth cloud sometimes seen briefly over the top of a vigorously growing cumulus cloud. There were a few of them on the cumulus building around the Lake last Sunday.
A cap cloud sits over Mount Ymir
A similar looking cloud is frequently seen over the higher mountain peaks where it has the linguistically equivalent name of cap cloud. Such a cap cloud forms when a strong wind blows against the mountain and flows up and over it. Water vapour is cooled by the lifting and condenses to form the cloud. The vapour condenses on the upwind side, the resulting cloud droplets persist as the air flows across the mountain top, but then evaporate as the air flows down the lee side. As a consequence, a stationary cloud sits over the mountain top even though the wind howls though it.
The pileus forms in a similar way when the growing cumulus cloud acts as a barrier to the winds near its top. Some web sources suggest that the pileus is composed of ice crystals, however, this is rarely the case. Rather, the pileus is almost always composed of water droplets.
As moisture in the atmosphere is often in thin moist and dry layers, when the pileus forms, it too may appear laminated. The pileus is transient: the cumulus soon grows right through it and engulfs it—something a mountain cannot do to a cap cloud.
This pileus looks like an upside–down dinner plate hanging over the cumulus cloud. It has multiple layers.
Another laminated pileus hangs over cumulus growing over the mountains around the Lake.
Derek Kite and I visited the kestrels again. The chicks had fledged. Unexpectedly, there were now three chicks, even though earlier we had only seen two at a time looking out of the nest cavity.
It was fun to see the kestrel chicks, and adults, but a real treat was the appearance of two vultures.
Neither American Kestrels nor Turkey Vultures are common along the heavily forested valley of the West Arm of Kootenay Lake. Both birds prefer clearings, the kestrel for hunting, the vulture for scavenging. However, the birds do take advantage of the modest clearings that have been made.
Three kestrel chicks have fledged and sit together on a snag. 
Two kestrels sit on adjacent snags. 
One of the Turkey Vultures flies overhead. 
The other Turkey Vulture flies by.
I was looking for bumble bees, and found them visiting—to my amazement—indian pipe. I had visited this spot close to the water’s edge along the North Shore many, many times over the years and had never seen indian pipe there before. Indeed, the only place I had seen indian pipe in recent years was deep in the forest of Pilot Bay Provincial Park.
More pictures of indian pipe and a description of the plant is offered on the main website under Wildflower Oddities.
Although it looks like a fungus, indian pipe is indeed a plant, but one that lacks chlorophyll and so cannot manufacture its own carbohydrates. Rather, it obtains carbohydrates from another plant (such as a tree) through a fungal intermediary. This tactic enables it compete successfully on the dark forest floor where little sunlight penetrates.
It may be a testimony to the cloudy and rainy spring we have had, that it appeared along the West Arm at a spot where I had never seen it before.
Ghostly and beautiful, the flowers and stems of the indian pipe lack chlorophyll.
These ones were growing in a shady spot close to the lakeshore.
This blurry picture shows a bumble bee visiting the indian pipe flower.
A year ago, I realized that an obscure piece of local architecture had one of the oddest characteristics to be found in this area. Discussed on the main website on a page about Curiosities, it is our local whispering gallery.
The structure is actually a long–abandoned, century–old, swimming pool that is an easily overlooked feature of Kokanee Creek Provincial Park. It is accessed by going about 600 metres up the Kokanee Glacier Road and taking a short path into the woods on the north side of the road.
What I realized was that the empty pool’s elliptical shape enabled it to function as a whispering gallery: a person located at one of the two foci could hold a quiet conversation with someone at the other.
Yesterday, I showed it to visitors. One person knelt at each focus: about 80 centemetres from each end of the twelve–metre axis. The two people were easily able to whisper back and forth despite the fact that, standing halfway between, I could hear neither. Really neat.
Trying out Kokanee Creek Park’s strangest feature: a whispering pool.
If one were to judge all flies by the few baddies, such as the house fly and mosquito, we would miss out on the delightful ones in the yard and woods. Many folks take pleasure in watching the many species of hover flies go about their rounds. Indeed, in the U.K. there are hover fly watchers, just as there are bird watchers.
This posting is not about a hover fly, but another rather friendly group: the Long–legged Fly (Condylostylus sp.), generally also known as the Condylostylid Fly. It is tiny usually being less than 5 millimetres long; it has long legs; it is the gardner’s friend as it goes about devouring aphids and silverfish; it is fairly easy to approach; but most of all, it is amazingly colourful with metalic green, blue, and gold. There seems to be more the one species around here as I have seen them with both red eyes and green eyes.
Below are two pictures, one with greenish eyes taken this summer, and one with reddish eyes taken two years ago. The Condylostylid Fly will visit flowers for nectar, but I usually see it on leaves, where I assume it is hunting.
Sunday, I saw my first kestrel—my first ever—and not just one, but two chicks and three adults. I owe it all to Derek Kite. I have never been able to find kestrels on my own, and certainly wouldn’t have found these ones. Yet, only a few hundred meters from a road, Derek had found a birch snag with kestrel chicks peering out. He took me there. We sat on the ground at a discrete distance and watched for a few hours. The nine pictures below offer a taste of the morning.
Sometimes one, sometimes two chicks peered out of an opening high on the birch snag.
If chicks are there, adults cannot be far away. On an adjacent snag sits a female who has captured a June beetle,
that she then delivers to the nest,
for a happy chick to eat.
An adult male captures a smaller bird, eats the tasty brains,
then delivers the rest of it to the nest. (My most satisfying image of the day).
For reasons that are unclear, another male (one with a ragged tail) also visits the nest. One of the males might be an elder sibling helping out. Who knows?
A final shot of an adult male at the nest hole.
All in all, a superb morning; thank you Derek.
I am used to birds colliding with my windows; I am used to birds challenging their reflections in my windows; but, I am not used to birds sitting on an outside window sill and merely peering inside. But, this seems to be what a Yellow–rumped Warbler did, and not at just one window but two of them.
The Yellow–rumped Warbler is a fairly common bird around here in the spring and summer, and for that matter a delightfully colourful addition to the neighbourhood. (At first I thought I could specify the sex of this bird, but it is not clear).
A Yellow–rumped Warbler peeks in one window,
and then hops onto a bench before moving on to another window to peek in the house again.
The ancients believed that (adult) honey bees could be produced from dead meat. References to this are found in Hebrew and Roman literature. How could this strange belief have arisen? The answer is simple and found to this day in most summer gardens.
The honey bee has a mimic: the drone fly.
It is not uncommon for various species of flies to mimic a bee or wasp. Being the look-alike of a stinging insect confers some protection from predators such as birds. Macrophotography easily enables us to tell the flies from the bees, but, when these insects are seen moving rapidly or in the distance, the differences are apparent to neither birds nor ancients. While adult honey bees emerge from larva in a hive, adult drone flies often emerge from maggots in decaying flesh. It was the honey bee mimic the ancients would have seen emerging from dead meat, not the honey bee.
The first picture shows a honey bee (Apis mellifera) collecting pollen from clover. (Why I have honey bees in my yard is unclear. Are they feral or does a neighbour keep hives?) The bee has long antennae, small eyes, and a distinct waist between the thorax and abdomen. It also has four wings, but that is more difficult to spot.
The second picture shows the drone fly (Eristalis tenax). It has short antennae, large eyes (this one is a male, so the eyes nearly touch), and no waist between thorax and abdomen. It also has only two wings.
Each of these insects is a European import that has become well established across North America.
A honey bee forages for pollen. 
Although shown here on a cedar bough, the drone fly is a pollinator and is frequently found on flowers. The hourglass pattern on the abdomen of this fly is characteristic. It neither stings nor bites so its primary protection is that it looks like something with better defences. 
