A good day at the office

Yesterday Pahokee and I accompanied Peter for the day while he was “at work” on the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s Tatlayoko Ranch.
Click here, to learn more about the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

It was a sunny, still, warm day in the valley and a beautiful day to be outside.

We started out by checking some old Russell fences to see where repairs might be needed. Then we gathered jackpine rails and strung them out along the fence line at the damaged sections for the NCC’s caretaker to carry out the necessary repairs. It was lunchtime by the time we finished this chore, and we took our lunch break sitting on the tailgate of the truck, looking at the Niut mountains and filling our bellies. Pahokee couldn’t decide if he should beg some lunch from us or chase robins in the pasture.

We spent the rest of the day plotting a fence line around the south-west property line of the NCC ranch, using maps, a GPS unit and compass. We hiked several kilometers around the north-west end of the lake, did a fair bit of bushwhacking, hill climbing (phew!), binocular looking all while keeping our eyes peeled for bears. We saw a number of tracks including a huge grizzly track that crossed a small stream.

It’s hard to tell what you’re looking at if you haven’t seen many tracks before – we’ve circled the tracks – but there were 3 very large footyprints in the mud. Made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

We were both carrying bear spray, which does give a small measure of comfort. We will be buying bear bangers on our next trip to town.

And we kept Pahokee on a leash in the areas where we thought we might run into a bear.

After we climbed a hill to a corner point of the fence line we were plotting, we found we were looking right at an osprey nest and a pair of ospreys circling around above us.

Unfortunately the fence line has to go right past the tree that holds the osprey’s nest, so the contractor that gets the fencing job will have to wait until the osprey chicks have fledged before he can work on that section of fence line.

The nest looks like a tangle of sticks at the top of a dead tree.

It would be interesting to build a blind here and watch the nest to see how many chicks the pair produce.

Osprey-Cam. A different version of the recently popular eagle-cam.

One of the ospreys watching us watching it.

Looking southward we could see the north end of Tatlayoko Lake and Potato Mtn to the east.

We also saw several grouse (which Pahokee desperately wants to chase), one dandelion in bloom, a pileated woodpecker, various birds and several piles of bear poo.

We came home at 5:30 tired, dirty and smiling. Wish you all could have come with us!
Roma