Fireweed - for a change of colour

My alarm clock was not set last night, as I was so desperately tired after three nights in a row of very little sleep. As a result, I slept in really late this morning, so am posting my photos around noon. I turned on my computer and left the room. A minute or two later, when I returned, I found a black screen with white writing on it - don't know if I just missed seeing the Blue Screen of Death, which I got a few days ago. Panic now sets in, as I think of many months' worth of photos not backed up at all! Looks like I'd better back-up at least a few photo folders.

Yesterday was a birding trip to Bow Valley Provincial Park, west of Calgary, at the very foot of the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. Takes around 45 minutes to drive there, via Highway 1, from the western edge of Calgary. This was the park that I finally made myself drive to on 20 July, with my youngest daughter. Can't wait to tell her what we saw yesterday, that made the day "exciting" as well as thoroughly enjoyable - and not a single photo to show it, ha. A good thing she and I didn't come across certain of yesterday's sightings on 20 July! I'm going to use the trip leader's write-up of the events of the day - thank you, Andrew, for yet another great trip to a very beautiful place. Each year, this trip to the park makes such a great day. Hope you don't mind my using your report here! I should add that all these birds were far, far away, too far for photos and, for me with no binoculars, too far to see either properly or at all.

"We had six participants on this trip.

We arrived at BVPP with early morning temperatures which started to warm up.

We walked around the Flowing Waters Trail where we heard many of the species we recorded. The highlight of this segment was a Blue Headed Vireo (conceivably a Cassin's but we decided Blue Headed was the higher probability, based on location and the song). I do have some photographs but doubt they would delineate between the two species. (Later: confirmed to be a Cassin's).

We had lunch in the Whitefish area and then went over to the Many Springs Trail.

As we were assembling in the small Many Springs Trail's car parking area, we looked back along the road we just driven in by and saw a fairly large very glossy, very black Black Bear amble across the road and vanish into the woods.

We carried on walking around the trail. About half way around we heard a call from ahead which sounded something like "bear on the trail". We exchanged a few shouted communications with the group ahead of us and
concluded that there was a black bear with two cubs wandering around on the trail about 200m ahead of us. We all looked at the (suddenly small looking) bear spray I had with me and decided to turn around and head back to the car park. There were still six of us when we got back.

We stopped briefly at Middle Lake and then stopped at the Morleyville Church on Hwy 1A on the way back to Calgary.

We had cell coverage all day so I recorded all of the sightings on the Birdlog app, which created the convenient summary of the trip which follows.

Checklists included in this summary:
(1): Bow Valley PP - Flowing Waters Trails
Date: Aug 2, 2014, 8:30 AM
(2): Whitefish
Date: Aug 2, 2014, 11:30 AM
(3): Bow Valley PP - Many Springs Trail
Date: Aug 2, 2014, 12:15 PM
(4): Bow Valley PP Middle Lake
Date: Aug 2, 2014, 1:40 PM
(5): Morleyville Church - Aug 2, 2014, 2:49 PM
Date: Aug 2, 2014, 2:45 PM

1 Mallard -- (2)
4 Common Merganser -- (2)
1 Common Loon -- (4)
2 Red-tailed Hawk -- (1),(3)
2 Spotted Sandpiper -- (2)
2 Solitary Sandpiper -- (3)
2 Hairy Woodpecker -- (1)
1 Northern Flicker (Red-shafted) -- (1)
1 Merlin -- (5)
1 Western Wood-Pewee -- (3)
1 Willow Flycatcher -- (1)
1 Cassin's Vireo -- (1)
8 Black-billed Magpie -- (5)
4 American Crow -- (2),(4)
3 Common Raven -- (2),(3)
6 Northern Rough-winged Swallow -- (1)
12 Tree Swallow -- (1)
2 Black-capped Chickadee -- (1),(3)
3 Mountain Chickadee -- (1),(3)
2 Red-breasted Nuthatch -- (1)
1 Townsend's Solitaire -- (3)
1 Swainson's Thrush -- (1)
6 American Robin -- (1),(3)
6 Cedar Waxwing -- (1),(3)
1 Northern Waterthrush -- (1)
3 Yellow Warbler -- (1)
1 Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle) -- (1)
1 Clay-colored Sparrow -- (1)
1 Savannah Sparrow -- (5)
3 Song Sparrow -- (1),(3)
2 Brown-headed Cowbird -- (3)
1 American Goldfinch -- (1)

Andrew Hart"