{"id":24440,"date":"2018-08-24T11:33:45","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T18:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=24440"},"modified":"2018-08-25T08:30:22","modified_gmt":"2018-08-25T15:30:22","slug":"ecotone-walk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=24440","title":{"rendered":"Ecotone walk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I could have merely spoken of a <em>walk along the\u00a0beach<\/em>, but, I wanted to emphasize something subtly different than such a stroll.<\/p>\n<p>An ecotone is a place where <u>eco<\/u>logies are in tension (in Greek, the word is\u00a0<u>ton<\/u>os). It describes the boundary between two communities of plants or animals with differing characteristics. The ecotone is where the disparate communities meet, allowing an ecotone walker to witness the variety that comes with different wildlife communities. In particular, a beach walk can enable wildlife sightings of creatures that favour the lake, the shoreline transition, adjacent grasslands, and even the forest. The creatures shown, all seen this last week, are but a sample of the rich life to be seen on such a walk. <\/p>\n<p>First, a view over the water.<\/p>\n<p>The osprey and its captive Kokanee are both endemic to the lake.\u00a0<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24446\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/ospreyfish180818bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><br \/>\n &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Then there are the creatures of the ecotone, those that live and hunt in the boundary between water and land.<\/p>\n<p>A Lesser\u00a0Yellowlegs Sandpiper grabs arthropods from the shallows along the shore.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24447\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/lesseryellowlegs180821cs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A killdeer hunts along the shore side of the water&#8217;s edge.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24449\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/killdeer180818as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A Northern Rough-winged Swallow forages for insects on the wing, sometimes doing so over the water and sometimes over the adjacent land.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24448\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/roughwingedswallow180821as.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><br \/>\n &nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>One can also see creatures that specialize in the land side of the ecotone.<\/p>\n<p>The Cooper&#8217;s Hawk is a forest raptor that eats small birds. Here it is hunting in the grasslands between the water and the forest.\u00a0<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24450\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/coopershawk180818s.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And a peek into the forest reveals the dark eyes of a fawn looking back.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-24452\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/whitetaileddeer180815sdmf.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; I could have merely spoken of a walk along the\u00a0beach, but, I wanted to emphasize something subtly different than such a stroll. An ecotone is a place where ecologies are in tension (in Greek, the word is\u00a0tonos). It describes &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=24440\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17,19,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-commentary","category-fish","category-mammals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24440"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24469,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24440\/revisions\/24469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}