Hikes

Our first hike in the country this year, and talk about May flowers! It was the perfect day to see blossoms on our native fruit trees and the woodland plants and shrubs.

Here is the list of what the twelve of us saw in bloom today:

early blue violet (see right)
wood violet
fairy bell
saskatoon (see above)
pin cherry
red currant
black currant
goose berry
dew berry
bracted honeysuckle
low bush cranberry
sandwort

We also saw a white tailed deer and a frog.

Here we are on the smart new boardwalk that the trail maintenance team installed last week. The heap of boards at the bottom left is the old walk.

As you know the beavers are very active in this area. This tree will not be standing upright for much longer. Here you see only the base of a really tall poplar tree. We did not linger for long.

Our hike last Sunday was at the Big Lake area west of St. Albert. It’s a wonderful place to visit in the spring. We started with a walk through the Grey Nuns White Spruce Park. The trees were just starting to leaf out, and the growth on the forest flower was only a few inches high. Most remarkable was the white butterflies—they were everywhere.

Then we went on to the lake, where we saw ducks, geese, and snipe.

We were very fortunate to run into Dale Scott, a wildlife photographer, who had set up a tripod and giant camera on the boardwalk over the marshes. He was photographing Phoebes.

Unless you are an experienced birdwatcher, you don’t notice these birds until someone points them out to you. And then suddenly you see them everywhere.

Dale has very generously provided the two photos on this page—photos which he took that day. The one above is an Eastern Phoebe and this one on the right is a Song Sparrow. You can view more of his beautiful pictures on Flickr.