Ministik Berg Hike: Blossoms and Beavers

Twenty people came out to hike on our warmest day yet. The aspen leaves are still emerging, so most of the time we were only in dappled shade.

The Ministik Bird Sanctuary is a beautiful, undisturbed plot of land. The trail, which is narrow and discrete, wanders from pond to pond through aspen woods, up and down hills, and over boardwalks. We saw ducks, geese, and coots, and listened to the call of chickadees and warblers.The biggest impact on the land here is clearly the beavers. We even walked across a beaver dam.

Fruit trees are in bloom now. We saw saskatoons, pin cherries, red currants, and hazelnuts.
Saskatoon blossoms
The mushrooms are starting too. We spotted a false morel.
False morel

Fungus
On our return, we watched a muskrat swimming in one of the ponds.

It was an amazing day for pictures. Have a look on Flickr.

 

Maintenance News at Miquelon: Water Water Everywhere!

On Wednesday ten of us started work at Miquelon A84; soon finding a new pond we needed to skirt, then arrived at our 10 section boardwalk over a bigger pond with one end needing a ramp, the other another needing 15 ft added. Then as we stepped on it, the walkway sank below the water……..sooo we moved on to a closer prospective mushroom trail; North Miquelon. We found a lot of down trees and our chain saw misbehaved…..coulda used two, thought of it too late. Working hard, one weed eater handle broke in half. There was new water everywhere; albeit this time it was passable. Some of the more recently used field pathways looked less inviting than the wooded former trail in a couple of places….so we may reinstate those next time. We experienced a new coffee place better located for the Coal Lake & Camrose volunteers in New Sarepta at the Market restaurant, and found it was a bit expensive for us, although looked good to try for a meal.