It was one of those great Alberta mornings – sunny, a slight breeze and a bit of cool in the air.
Our pair of swallows was busy bringing nesting material to the box and further along our fence the chickadees were already into heavy child rearing. We decided that we needed to check what was happening down along the river. Before we even got there, we saw two good examples of how our wildlife is adapting itself to city life.
The goldfish-eating ospreys have built their big nest of sticks right on top of the main bank of lights above the Dawgs Stadium and every now and again we could see her neck sticking above the twigs. We have to hope they are baseball fans and we also wondered how she will cope when the lights get switched on for an evening game. Further along, by the BMX track I noticed some little brown swallows flitting in and out of the holes in the cement blocks that support one end of the track.
These were Bank Swallows that normally nest in holes that they burrow out of the riverbanks. You have to think that a nice soft sandy hole would be much more comfortable than those hard concrete slabs, but perhaps these guys had decided that less work took precedence over comfort. Further along a song sparrow was singing in the willows along by the sewage works and the rock doves were cooing from their nests on the CPR Bridge. Rock doves build very skimpy nests and one wonders how their eggs survive the vibration caused by those rumbling oil trains.
Beyond the bridge the Saskatoon bushes were in full flower, promising a great crop of berries later in the year. Sadly, however, we noticed that the choke cherry bushes were badly infected with the black knot fungus that has invaded many of the mayday trees in Okotoks and I suspect that most of them will eventually die. The cottonwood trees were into their early flush of greenery and made pleasant dappled shadows along the pathway. We watched a pair of flickers chasing each other around the tops of the poplars. Flickers usually get into child rearing quite early in the spring but maybe this pair had adopted the new approach to marriage and had decided that fun came ahead of family.
Further along, where the path brushes the riverbank we disturbed a spotted sandpiper that flew off across the river making its high pitched whistle. Back in January, we had met this same sandpiper, or maybe its cousin, foraging on a little stream that comes tumbling down out of the Sierras behind Puerto Vallarta in Mexico.
They make their nests on the gravel bars along the Sheep River. The eggs look just like little pebbles and you can easily walk on them if you are not careful, though the adults are going to tell you about it if you get too close. Hearing some heavy drumming in a grove of older cottonwoods I had hopes that maybe we would get a rare glimpse of the crow sized pileated woodpecker that occasionally visits the river valley. We eventually managed to spot the much smaller hairy woodpecker that was hammering away on a hollow trunk. Along with the drum roll from the woodpecker we could hear the nyah nyah call of the red breasted nuthatch that was hunting insects on the same dead tree.
And then, for the first time this year, just were the power line crosses the river we heard the melodious “Peter, Peter”, call that we wait for every spring. Despite Global Warming and Donald’s wall, the Orioles had returned. Summer was upon us.
