The Sights and Sounds of Spring

When you live in Lake Louise, spring comes into existence slowly, almost painfully so.  A week ago we had a warm day, and there were flocks of swallows overhead.  Then it snowed and the swallows disappeared, not to return until today.

Prairie crocus.  Photo by Doug McKown

So, we thought, “if spring won't come to us, we'll go to spring,” and went looking for some early season hiking on the weekend.  We found it east of Canmore, on a sunny trail to Windy Point.  All the snow was gone, and the prairie crocuses were blooming everywhere.  We had great views of nearby snowy peaks, and enjoyed a welcome hit of sunshine.

But in the mountains, nothing says "spring" more than finding some animal out there in the mountains trying out its pickup line for the first time in almost a year.  It's the the wildlife equivalent of “hey, baby” at the bar on a Saturday night.  We found our pickup artist right near the top of the trail: a male dusky grouse, hidden just behind some brush, was puffing itself up and hooting out these amazing, low frequency notes.  It was positively symphonic.

My little camera recorded a pretty good video of the booming grouse, but the microphone couldn't pick up the sound, so I've attached a sound file of the dusky grouse's coastal cousin, the sooty grouse, so you can enjoy not just the sights, but also the sounds.. of spring!

The Blackpoll Warbler – a Migration Mystery Solved.

We just got back from Cuba, and enjoyed both snorkelling in really warm water (hurray!), and birdwatching in the jungle.  We saw some great species that are native only to Cuba, like the Cuban trogon, or “tocororo,” which is the country's national bird, and also the Cuban tody, which looks like a chunky, souped-up hummingbird.

Cuban trogon

Cuban tody

But we also saw lots of warblers, birds that we think of as Canadian species.  There were yellow warblers, yellow-rumped warblers, common yellowthroats, and lots of American redstarts.  These four warblers – and many others – winter in the tropics, and spend their summers in North America.  All the ones we saw “down there” are also found nesting “up here” in Banff National Park.

But the best Cuba / warbler connection was waiting for us when we got home: we were catching up on episodes of Quirks and Quarks, our favourite science show on CBC radio, and there was a feature story about the newly confirmed migration route of the blackpoll warbler.

Blackpoll warblers are lovely black and white striped warblers, weighing in at about half an ounce, or 12 grams.  It's long been known that they gather in the fall in places like Nova Scotia, Vermont, and Maine, and then head south.  That's pretty normal warbler behaviour, but the problem is that south of the Carolinas, they are almost never seen...  which is strange, because warblers like to fly over land, so they are usually easy to observe on their southward migration.  With blackpolls, it seems like they just disappear.  By the mid-20th century, reports of blackpoll warblers landing on ships out in the Atlantic during autumn offered up the first clues about where they were going: they were migrating over water!

Blackpoll warbler, wearing a geolocator.  Photo courtesy of Vermont Centres for EcoStudies

Well, now we know the whole story.  Dr Ryan Norris, from the University of Guelph, was able to put tiny geolocators on the backs of the warblers.  These geolocators record the timing of sunrise and sunset, and were used used to tell the longitude and latitude of the birds who were wearing them.

This spring, Dr. Norris and his colleagues published their findings: blackpoll warblers leave Nova Scotia in late September or October, fly 2,500 km over open ocean in three straight days, and then touch down in either the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Haiti or Cuba!  From there, they refuel, and continue south to winter in Venezuela or Columbia.

It puts our Cuban migration (courtesy of Westjet) to shame.

Here's the Quirks and Quarks episode, if you want a listen.  (The interview starts after the theme music and intro, about one and half minutes into the podcast.)

Where the Wild Things Sleep – Grizzly Bear Den Sites Revealed Thanks to GPS Technology

Banff's first grizzly bear was spotted last week, by hidden camera.  Bear #122, a large male that has made his home in the Bow Valley for the last few years, was captured by one of the park's automated cameras at a research site near Castle Junction on March 19.  Adult male bears are often active by March. The rest of the gang (subadults, lone females, moms with cubs) will come out of hibernation over the next six or eight weeks.

Out of sight usually means out of mind, but we often wonder where bears are spending the winter.  We don't know where they are, but we have a friend who does.  Brian Spreadbury works for Parks Canada in their Resource Conservation department, and specializes in wildlife work.  He can use GPS data to find bear den sites.  Since 2012, a handful of Banff's grizzly bears have been fitted with GPS collars, allowing researchers to track their movement.  Every fall, when the GPS signal suddenly disappears, you know that a bear has gone into its den.

Using the last transmission point as a guide, Brian has discovered several dens.  If you're wondering, he waits until the summer or early fall, long after the bear in question has emerged, so he doesn't disturb them.  Last fall, Brian sent us a photo of the den used by grizzly bear #72, a local female, in the winter of 2103 – 2014.  The park likes to keep the exact location of dens a secret, but Brian recorded all the other info about the den.  Take a look, and imagine yourself spending six months snoozing in this particular spot...

Gung Hey Fat Choy: the Year of the... Ptarmigan?

Today is the official start of the Chinese lunar new year, and depending on who you talk to, it is either the year of the sheep, the goat, or the ram.

On today's snowshoeing trip, we didn't see any hoofed mammals, but we did see a most extraordinary bird, and it is a worthy Rocky Mountain substitute for this year's "official" animal.

It was a white-tailed ptarmigan, and it can boast many of the same features that the Chinese attribute to the goat / sheep / ram:

• Sheep are "gentle": ptarmigans stay alive by munching on willow buds.  How gentle is that?

• Sheep are "mild-mannered": when was the last time you heard about a ptarmigan going postal?

• Sheep are "shy": ptarmigans epitomize shy.  It's their life goal.  With their cryptic feathers, they blend right into the background.  In the winter, they are completely white except for the black eyes and beak.  In the summer, they sport feathers that look like rocks and lichens.

White-tailed ptarmigan in fall, moulting from its summer plumage

• Sheep are "stable": check!  By growing extra feathers on their feet, ptarmigans have stable snowshoes to keep them upright and supported while they walk around in the wintry landscape

Feathered feet on a ptarmigan that's being banded for a research project.  Photo courtesy of Kathy Martin 

• Sheep are "brimming with a strong sense of kindheartedness and justice": okay, four out of five ain't bad!

Gung Hey Fat Choy, everyone, and enjoy whatever wildlife you get to see here in the park!

Ice Magic, Beyond the Sculptures...

We were up at Lake Louise to see the ice sculptures this evening, a day after the carvers put the finishing touches on their creations at the annual “Ice Magic” festival. Ten teams were given a dozen 300-lb blocks of ice each, and it is truly astounding to see the results of their efforts.  Our favourite was the "Wonder of the World by Faberge," with a giant hand holding a giant egg, which in turn contained the Taj Mahal.

Seeing these sculptures reminded us of how beautiful ice can be, and how there are frozen works of art everywhere in this park.  For instance, we'd been down to the end of the lake a few days ago, and seen some of nature's Ice Magic at “Louise Falls.” These falls form every winter, as there is a permanent spring at the top of one of the lakeside cliffs.  Even with a flow rate of only a few litres per minute, by mid-winter, the water dribbling out freezes into an impressive 100 metre tall ice column.

Louise Falls

Earlier this month, at Lake Minnewanka, near Banff, the lake ice was frozen thick enough for skating, and the trapped air bubbles in the ice again made for exquisite and impressive art.

Air bubbles at Lake Minnewanka

Tonight, we've gone through our photo album, and pulled out a few of our favourite “frozen fotos.”  We hope you enjoy the Ice Magic!

ps: the ice sculptures at Lake Louise usually stay in really good shape until early February, if you want to come to see them.

Skating at Lake Louise in November

Frost flowers and frost heaves at Vermilion Lake, near Banff in November

Frost on water birch leaves in September

The Upper Victoria Glacier at sunrise in July

Early ice in October in one of the side channels of Paradise Creek

Surface hoar frost on the snow near Lake Louise

What's with all the Frost Flowers?

One week ago, after a long spell of milder than average weather, it suddenly got cold and clear. Winter had arrived all at once.  For six nights in a row, until last night, we hit -24 degrees C here in Lake Louise.  As expected, our lakes began to freeze, but instead of nice clean ice, which we love for skating, every lake was soon covered in "frost flowers."  They're beautiful, but last winter we managed to skate on lakes that were mostly free of these frost flowers, and we wondered, "why the difference?"

Frost flowers at Vermilion Lake

Well, it turns out that researchers Robert W. Style and Grae Worster have answered that question.  In 2009, they published "Frost flower formation on sea ice and lake ice" in a journal called "Geophysical Research Letters."  Their article showed that the flowers do not form like conventional frost, in which water vapour in the atmosphere condenses and freezes on a cold surface. (This is the normal way you end up with frost on your car windshield.)

Instead, when there is a strong temperature differential between the newly formed ice and the air temperature, moisture sublimates right out of the ice and freezes into frost crystals.  Once the flowers are in place, even if the air itself is very dry, they continue to grow as long as the air temperature remains below about -15 degrees C.

Smooth ice at one of the ponds near Field, B.C.

So the mystery is solved.... or is it?  Today, we went to Yoho Park, west of Lake Louise, and skated on the ponds near Field.  They were clear and smooth.  Where were the frost flowers?

The answer is that it needs to be calm for them to form.  Most places here in the Rockies were dead calm this week, but not Field.  It sits below Kicking Horse Pass, where the cold, high pressure air squeezed through to create a strong local wind. Wind is the enemy of frost flowers. According to the researchers, "frost flowers are typically only seen at wind speeds below about 5 metres per second: at higher wind speeds, turbulence mixes the region of local supersaturation with the drier air above."

If you like lots of math, here's the full story, but frost flowers or not, being outside on our frozen lakes has been great fun.

A Fireweed Summer and a Fireweed Fall

This year we had perfect conditions for fireweed, one of the showiest wildflowers in the Rockies.  If you visited in August, you couldn't help but notice their hot pink blossoms, especially in areas where fires burned in 2003.

Now that it's September, the fields of fireweed are the gift that keeps on giving.  In the first two weeks of the month, the leaves turned a beautiful burgundy, and now, in the past week, the seed pods have been splitting open, releasing what might be the lightest and most abundant seed in the Rockies.

Fireweed leaves turning burgundy, with some harebells in the mix.

I did an experiment last week, opening up a seed pod and doing a seed count.  I ended up with 581 seeds, and given that a portion of the seeds blew away in a gust of wind (before I moved the experiment inside), my guess is that there may have been 750 or 800 seeds in the pod.  Each fireweed plant can have several dozen seed pods, and if you start doing the math, that means billions or trillions of seeds produced in the park this summer.

There were 581 seeds in this one fireweed seed pod (plus the ones that blew away).

A field of fireweed going to seed yesterday on the Highline trail near the Plain of Six Glaciers.

North of Lake Louise, there was a fire in early July along the Icefields Parkway, the road to Jasper.  By next summer, the seeds from this year's bumper crop of fireweed will germinate, and in a few years, there will be fabulous roadside viewing.

Happy first day of autumn everyone!