Lovable Llama

Happy March 1st, everyone! Can't believe how fast time is flying by. The temperature is 0C this afternoon, with a forecast for possible snow flurries.

This photo was taken on 29 December 2016, when three of us took part in the annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count for the Cochrane Wildlife Reserve area, NW of Calgary. I'm not sure why it's called a Wildlife Reserve, as it consists of backroads and farms just like on our other Counts. We all travelled in just one car, and the area we covered was east of Highway 22/Cowboy Trail (across from the Water Valley area). We had to be way NW of the city, ready to start driving our Count area by 8:00 am. There always seems to be a beautiful sunrise when we start this Count.

This is one of the Llamas seen at one of the farms we called in at during our coverage. This farmer has several of these large, amusing animals, and they are always one of the highlights of this Count for me. Unfortunately, it was very overcast when we were there, so this was taken in poor light. There was so much snow on the long driveway that led to the house, that we were unable to drive up, so we decided to walk. Actually, several of the backroads were in bad condition and I was expecting us to get stuck, which fortunately didn't happen. A huge bag of gravel and a snow shovel were in the back of the driver's vehicle, just in case.

"Llamas appear to have originated from the central plains of North America about 40 million years ago. They migrated to South America and Asia about 3 million years ago. By the end of the last ice age (10,000–12,000 years ago) camelids were extinct in North America. As of 2007, there were over 7 million llamas and alpacas in South America and, due to importation from South America in the late 20th century, there are now over 100,000 llamas and 6,500–7,000 alpacas in the US and Canada." From Wikipedia.

Another of my favourite farms to stop at has a shy, old dog named Fang, along with beautiful cats, and I always look forward to seeing them each year. The neighbouring farm, which is also included in our area, has two beautiful old, red barns and I was longing to see these again. Unfortunately, we drove in past them, but didn't stop - of course, it IS a birding trip : ) A bit further in, we did get out of the car while our leader tried to find someone to ask permission for us to get out and look for birds. No one could be found, but it gave me the chance to take two rapid shots through the trees of the second barn, from a side view, which I had never seen it from before.

So, it was a very enjoyable day, though there were not all that many species or individual birds to be seen. Many thanks, Andrew, for driving our leader and myself. You did a great job of handling the roads that had not been cleared of snow. I will add the list of species seen, in a comment box below.