The Quiet Picture

Random rants and occasional photographs

Sep 14

Kinda wild life

Category: canada, squirrel, vacation
The day was just as grey as we were afraid of. Just some light drizzle, but very low cloud so the only thing clear was that we couldn’t shoot any landscape today. We decided to drive through the Kootenay NP, which normally is good for wildlife sightings. Except on a day like this, not even the wildlife want to move too much. Sure enough, we didn’t see anything special on our drive to Radium Hot Springs. We stopped at the Paint Pots but been there seen it done that and moved along. The info centre at Radium Hot Springs recommended the trail up from the centre to the camping site on top of the hill, as it may provide an opportunity to see some bighorn sheep. I didn’t feel like hiking at all, so I decided to drive up instead. On the way there though, I saw a couple of whitetail deer grazing by the roadside. As I drove past them for the second time, I saw a couple of people walking by and they got to a few metres from the deer. Duh! The deer here are definitely not as skittish as the ones we have at home…

Then I spotted a squirrel, and he wasn’t too bothered about me either. I got a chance to get close and the squirrel just kept on munching the apples, providing me plenty of opportunity for photography. The background isn’t ideal, but I’m fairly pleased with the pictures anyway. It’s such a cute little thing! As far as the ID goes, we think it’s a red squirrel, even if it doesn’t look exactly like the ones we have at home.


When we were turning back to the highway, I saw a couple of bighorn sheep by the roadside! This was just the edge of the town so I was able to park in front of a shop and we approached the sheep by foot - mind you, we made sure to keep a safe distance. I know there’s a rule that you should not get out of the car and approach the wildlife, but I’m telling you these sheep were so close to the houses and shops that the main difference between us and the other people walking the street was that we had cameras and the shoppers didn’t.


You could get fooled to thinking that the animal is in a natural environment, right? Well, wrong… I was able to take the above shot by keeping myself low on the other side of the road, so that the grasses hid the tarmac. And then just squeeze in the shots in between the passing cars! We were quite amused by the other tourists who crowded the place after they saw us, they stood on the road and photographed the animals. They probably wondered why we lifted the cameras barely over the curb when there was a clearer view to be had on top…

One the way back to Lake Louise we decided to take the Bow Valley Parkway. It had started to rain a lot so any photography was out of the question. And just when we were about to give up, we saw an animal run across the road - a fox I thought. We drove slowly to where it had disappeared to the forest, and there it still was, looking back at us. But now it was obvious it was no fox - it was a coyote! Just as we had identified it, it jogged deeper into the forest, leaving us feeling happy about this cold, grey and rainy day.

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