A treat to see and hear

I definitely should not have cropped this image as much as I did! If I have time and energy, I might just think about re-doing it - but most likely won't get round to doing it : ) Taken at 48x zoom and heavily cropped. Posting it just for the record and to add it to a couple of my Sets.

Yesterday, 28 June 2013, seven of us spent the day at Bow Valley Provincial Park, recording all flora and fauna that we saw. Bow Valley Provincial Park lies at the foot of the very first mountains when one drives westwards from Calgary. In other words, the Park lies at the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. It's a very popular place with botanists, birders and photographers of any kind. We weren't sure just what we would find when we arrived, especially how much or little the Park had been affected by the recent flooding in Alberta. Parts of the Park were closed, so we didn't walk at Many Springs, but instead walked the Flowing Waters Trail (which was quite wet in places) and around Middle Lake. The water level of the lake was high and the reeds around one part of the lake were lying on top of the water. I had seen two Common Loons out in the middle of the lake on 18 June 2013, when I spent the day in the rain walking around this lake and Many Springs. Wonderfully, these Loons were still there yesterday and we saw and heard them calling. Such an amazing sound. They tend to stay in the middle of the lake, which makes it difficult or impossible to photograph them. The weather was perfect yesterday and it felt so good to be out and to have no rain at all. I couldn't help but feel rather guilty, though, going out enjoying myself in such a beautiful place, knowing that there were so many people back in Calgary and so many other parts of southern Alberta, who were dealing with flooded basements and other damage. The person who was going to be leading this trip lives in nearby Exshaw and he was unable to come because of dealing with the bad flooding there. In fact, sadly, it's most likely that he has lost his house completely. It's so frustrating to me that a painful back, hips, etc. won't let me help with any clean-up. All I can do is donate to the Red Cross, and carry on with my usual volunteers shifts. I was expecting to hear from many flood victims, but only had a call from one family who had had to come to Calgary from High River, where everyone was so badly affected by the floods. We are expecing a lot more calls from flood victims in perhaps another couple of weeks.

Lol, I'm not sure if I slept for 12 or 13 hours last night!!! Haven't done that for years - I usually get between 2 and maybe five hours of sleep a night. Only got about an hour and a half of sleep befere I went on this trip yesterday, partly because I was busy transferring more of my Flickr photos to ipernity, but mainly because of emotional tiredness from seeing all the devastation form the "Flood of the Century" in Calgary and the rest of the southern part of the province. I was so tired when I got home late afternoon and was falling asleep at my computer, so by 4:00 p.m. I had no choice but to lie down for maybe an hour, ha.

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