Exploring Kootenay Lake

Not a chipmunk

Posted on August 29, 2017 by Alistair

Two years ago, I noticed a touristy website that tried to pass off a Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel as being a Chipmunk (posting). Fascinated by this ineptitude, I searched stock-photo sites and discovered that it wasn’t uncommon to label pictures of a Golden-mantle Ground Squirrel as being a Chipmunk. As I noted at the time, one should not turn to stock-photo companies for biological insights.

The mistake is easy to make if the viewer applies an algorithm for squirrels: stripes mean chipmunk. The problem is that it isn’t true. While the chipmunk has multiple white stripes that extend from its back to its head (another example), the much larger Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel has two white stripes, one on each side, and neither extends to its head.

A Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel enjoys a snack high in a subalpine forest. The single white stripe on either side does not extend to the head.

The reason for the designaton of golden mantle isn’t always obvious, but here the golden pelage on the head and shoulders is abundantly clear.

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EEEP

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Alistair

… Now I remember only
The long ascent of the lonely valley, the live
Pine spirally scarred by lightning, the slicing pipe
Of invisible pika….
David, by Earle Birney (1942)

The slicing pipe of the pika (invisible or not) is: “EEEP”.

Birney’s reference to the call of the invisible pika resonates with hikers adjacent to talus in the subalpine of Western North America: the furtive pika is heard much more often than it is seen.

A pika issues its call of EEEP upon spotting an interloper in its world.

Another pika doesn’t seem to know it is being watched when it presents its profile to the camera.

Apparently secure in its invisibility this pika strikes a hero’s pose.

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Mating swarm

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Alistair

How do a lovelorn insects find a mate?

There are various strategies, but one of them is to gather in a mating ball or mating swarm. Such swarms abound at this time of year, hanging over fixed references such as a tree or post, or marshalling along the edge of a sunbeam.

In the swarm the insects perform a dance which involves flying to the top and floating down. When they find each other, they will mate in the air.

A mating swarm of mayflies had anchored itself along the edge of a sunbeam.

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Fledgling heron

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Alistair

A fledgling Great Blue Heron performs its matutinal callisthenics.

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Wet bear

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Alistair

The kokanee are spawning in local creeks. Bears come to feast upon them. Locals and tourists come to delight in both.

There is a family of black bears with two cubs working a spawning channel. However, getting a good picture through the intervening brush and trees was difficult. The best I managed yestermorn was a portrait of the sow.

A black bear sow lifts her head from the water after failing to catch the fish she was after.

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Sun pictures

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Alistair

During the solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, telescopes looked up; I looked down.

Well, fair’s fair, I looked up also, but I concentrated on the ground. Let me explain.

I leave it to the folks with good equipment in the path of totality to take the inspiring images of the corona. However, my title, Sun pictures, does not refer to such pictures of the Sun, itself, but to pictures made by the Sun.

The first hint I had that the Sun could paint pictures on the ground came from a book I read as a student. M. Minnaert’s book, Light and Colour in the Open Air, told of the way the gaps between tree leaves behave as pinhole cameras and projected images of the Sun on the ground. Normally when projected on a horizontal surface, these images would be elliptical. However, during a partial solar eclipse, they match the appearance of the Sun and become crescents.

I first saw these crescent Sun pictures during the solar eclipse of 1970. I wanted to see them again.

Sunlight passing though the gaps between tree leaves normally project elliptical Sun pictures on the ground. The lawn provides an uneven screen.

This is a shot of the Sun just as the partial eclipse was ending (the Moon still takes a tiny bite out of the Sun at seven o’clock), but the Sun is essentially circular and would produce elliptical images on a horizontal surface. The picture shows both sunspots and limb darkening.

Here is the Sun at about the greatest extent of the eclipse at my location.

Sun pictures are projected through the gaps between tree leaves during a partial solar eclipse. A less cluttered image was obtained by placing a kitchen mat on the grass.

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Skunk

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Alistair

“Please go away. Producing butyl mercaptan is expensive, and I don’t want to waste it on you.”

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By continuing to…

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Alistair

Satire often gains its effect by joining disparate ideas. So it was that when I encountered:

• The government of BC’s recent (partial) ban on hunting grizzlies;
• A CBC story that told of the thrill of killing a grizzly;
• The many websites that assert: “By continuing to browse our site,
you are agreeing to our use of (tracking) cookies.” (Huh?)

I imagined our wilderness filled with notices to wildlife.

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Smoke colour

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Alistair

Having one’s home on a wildfire Evacuation Alert is a stressful experience — but, it would be worse having one’s home on a wildfire Evacuation Order.

Portraits of Local Wildlife:
My presentation is this evening.

The fire prompting the alert does not look very threatening in the picture, below. However, it was taken on Sunday, after a day of both water bombing and rain. Earlier extensive flames and candling were intimidating.

The fairly thin smoke on this occasion does allow the sighting of interesting colour variations: bluish against a dark background; reddish against a bright background. Much of the smoke is composed of small carbon particles, yet it is not the colour of carbon that is controlling the appearance. Rather, it is the smallness of the particles that preferentially scatters (deflects) the bluish light (just as do molecules in the atmosphere).

The light coming through the smoke seen against the bright sky has lost some of the shorter (bluish) wavelengths and so looks reddish. However, against the dark mountainside, there is little transmitted light, and the smoke is seen primarily by scattered light and so appears bluish.

The colour of the smoke is not due to the material composing it, but rather to the small size of the particles. The result is that the colour depends upon how the smoke is illuminated.

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Raven attack

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Alistair

Only days after a marmot accosted a local hiker, I was attacked by a raven. Had our local wildlife started to run amuck? It was easy to be reminded of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 horror-thriller, The Birds.

There was no need to conjure up a wildlife conspiracy. The raven was a freshly hatched chick that had taken to begging from humans whom it mistook for its parents.

The raven chick begged incessantly, pulled at my trousers, and tried to eat my shoe laces. I had no food to give it, so it soon transferred its attentions to someone else.

There were a few clues that this was a chick, but the striking one was its flesh-coloured gape.

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