"Clive" – The Salt Loving Marmot

Two weeks ago, we were up at Helen Lake, and after settling in for lunch, a very bold marmot approached our group.  We figured it had been fed by other hikers, but it showed no interest in our food.  Instead, it marched over to one of our backpacks and started licking the straps.

We were all pretty surprised, and stayed still to watch. In very short order, it became clear that the marmot had a major salt addiction.  It visited each of our packs in turn, and then decided to try other options, eventually licking one bare arm and one pant leg.  It was fascinating to watch, because we rarely get close to marmots.  Everyone was so enthralled that we decided to give the marmot a name, just for the day.  One of the guests settled on 'Clive'.

Clive discovers the motherlode of salt  –  hiking pole handles

We figured it was a one time craving, like when you've just gotta have potato chips.

But we were back at Helen Lake yesterday, and so was Clive.  His (or her  – it's hard to tell) addiction had not abated, but this time Clive discovered something even better than packs – hiking pole handles.

We have another trip running to Helen Lake this Friday, on July 25, and we will be on the lookout to see if Clive is still there for another rare close-up encounter.

Clive entertaining our gang of hikers on yesterday's hike

Clive the marmot checks out his namesake backpack

Cone Crop of the Century, Part III - The Next Generation

Last September, and again this February, we wrote about the bumper crop of cones on our spruce and fir trees during the summer of 2013.

On today's guided hike up to Yoho Lake, we talked about the ability of subalpine fir to germinate in the snow, and to grow a taproot – up to 3 cm long – right after germinating.  This long taproot allows it to get a foothold in the mineral soil that's under all the leaf litter, and makes the fir superb at regenerating in shady, mossy subalpine forests.

subalpine fir with taproot

Well, talking about it is one thing, but seeing it is another.  A few minutes after our discussion, we found ourselves in a patch of snow, and there they were!  Dozens, maybe hundreds, of little fir seeds from last year's bumper crop, happily germinating and growing their epic taproots.

Then, to complete the story, a few minutes later we stopped for good views, and around our feet were baby fir trees, maybe a month old, sprouting their first needles.  My photo is a bit blurry, but you can see the first two needles, ready to start photosynthesizing.

baby subalpine fir, with its first needles

Boreal Toads on the Move

Yesterday we were hiking in Paradise Valley, and we met two boreal toads migrating from the forest towards the creek.  It was a good thing that they were moving, because otherwise they're really hard to see.  Today I realized that I didn't know much about toads, so I thought I should find out a bit more.

It turns out that boreal toads deserve a bit more admiration from us.  They are the highest elevation amphibian in Canada, and to get through winter, they hibernate underground for up to six months, staying below the frost line.  According to researchers, they mostly use the burrows of golden-mantled ground squirrels, sometimes even sharing them with the squirrels!  The burrows need to be deep enough to prevent freezing, so toads will hibernate up to 1.3 m underground.

Life in the mountains is tough, so female toads lay between 5,000 and 15,000 eggs in late spring to keep the whole show rolling.  Since they live so high, and lay so many eggs, boreal toads contribute a lot to high elevation wetlands: the eggs and tadpoles are food for many aquatic critters.  One time in Kananaskis, we saw a huge school of toad tadpoles, and we both thought, “that's a lot of food.”

The tadpoles transform into toadlets in a couple of months, and then leave the water, which might seem weird, since we usually think of amphibians as aquatic, but boreal toads are mostly landlubbers.  They eat bugs in the forest, and only come back to the ponds for breeding.  They can live to be 12 years old.

One final reason to admire boreal toads: they're beautiful, in their toady kind of way.

Beavers at Lake Louise.... Inconceivable!

We've lived in Lake Louise for over twenty years, and we've never seen a beaver here.  That's still true, but we now know that one visited our home town last week.

Freshly cut cottonwood alongside the Bow River

We were out for a stroll along the Bow River the other day, and found the proof right beside the pedestrian bridge at the train station: a freshly cut cottonwood.  When we poked around in the cottonwood grove nearby, we found another couple of chewed up trees.

It made us wonder about the beaver who had a quick bite in our backyard.  Was it trying to make a home here, or just passing through?  Both options are possible. Beavers can live in riverbanks, without making dams and lodges, but the Lake Louise area is pretty poor habitat.

It's more likely that this was a youngster travelling through.  Juvenile beavers leave their native ponds at the age of two, and can travel anywhere from ten km to 200 km to find a new home.

Bon voyage, Castor canadensis!

Grizzly bears and fire, plus the black bear "mom of the year" award

Last night was all about bears.  We went to Banff National Park's research updates, and heard a great presentation about how much grizzly bears like to spend time in burned areas, as a lot of the vegetarian foods they prefer grow really well after fires.  A young biologist named Charlie McLellan has been putting in a lot of days in the park doing vegetation plots, and putting in a lot of days at the computer looking at where grizzly bears with GPS collars are spending their time.  Last summer, one grizzly spent six weeks in a row a portion of Kootenay National Park that had been burned in a wildfire in 2003.

Buffaloberries yielding bumper crops in Kootenay National Park in 2009,
six years after the big forest fires of 2003.

Heading home at dusk, not far from the town of Banff, we saw our first grizzly of the year, a beautiful subadult feeding on grasses.  We didn't have a camera with us, so we watched for a few minutes through binoculars, and then headed home.

And finally, in the bear department, after the presentations, everybody was talking about the video clip of a mother black bear in Kootenay who did some good quality parenting to keep her young of the year cub safe near Highway 93 South.  It should put a smile on your face!

The Ultimate Headbanger

The birdwatching season has begun!  Here in Lake Louise, we're still waiting for the snow to melt, so there's not much around, but at last weekend's community bird walk on the edge of the town of Banff, the keen participants spotted more than 60 species of birds.

On Saturday, our friend Reno Sommerhalder, who is a naturalist with a special interest in bears, took this great shot of a pileated woodpecker excavating a nest cavity in a trembling aspen tree.  The pileated is North America's biggest and toughest woodpecker, and if you look closely at the photo, you can see it spitting out wood chips.  That is one hard-headed bird!

Pileated woodpecker.  Photo by Reno Sommerhalder.

Woodpeckers like the pileated play a crucial role in forests, because their old nest cavities become prime real estate for dozens of other animals, from owls to bats to flying squirrels.

If you want to join in on the Banff Community Birdwalk, there are trips on Saturdays and Mondays through into June, usually starting at 8:00 a.m.  Contact banffcommunitybirdwalk@hotmail.com if you want more information.

Spring Break, Bow River Style

Every kid looks forward to Spring Break, and we got to enjoy two of them this year in Lake Louise. Schools were out for the official break at the end of March, but the Bow River is doing its "spring break" right now: the snow and ice cover is falling into the main channel, leaving behind beautiful, chunky works of art along the river banks.

This morning, we'd had a hard overnight freeze, so it was possible to walk right on top of the snow -- no snowshoes required!  The early morning sun was illuminating the bright hunks of snow and ice, and the water was as clear as glass. And we weren't the only ones out to take it all in.  The first osprey and kingfisher of the year put in an appearance as well.

The water should run super clear for another week or so, and then the snowmelt will begin, and our works of art will be washed away by the silty runoff.