Monday, September 17, 2012

love the prairies and the best part may be the badger

We spent some of our holidays in the badlands around Drumheller and also in Dinosaur Provincial Park.

I love the prairies! and I love the badlands!...more photos of the landscape soon but, though it might seem odd, the best part of the holiday (for me if not for Charley) may have been the serendipitous sighting of a badger. We missed the turn off for Horse Thief Canyon and so we pulled into a road that led to an oil 'farm' or something and stopped to look at the map. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement and looked to see a very large creature digging in the verge by the road. We watched as it dug a huge hole, which eventually was larger than its whole body. It was a badger and I was thrilled as I had never seen a one before (except in all the English books I read as a child and Canadian badgers are definitely bigger). So we sat and watched this badger for a very long time. It was obviously digging into rodent warrens since would turn its head to listen and then it would dig furiously. Then it would come rapidly out of the hole run forward about 10 inches and dig furiously there. Then (and this was confounding - so now I will have to research badger behaviour) it would then back into the smaller hole and fill it in and run back to the big hole and dig furiously again. We were there for about 30 mintues watching. I saw a mouse jump up and run behind the badger and he (she?) did not see it, so it escaped. Such a lot of hard work and no meal by the time we left. Good hearing maybe but not good eyesight.
The pictures after the badger show his front yard - prairie and sky as far as the eye can see.... and his backyard - badlands canyons for miles and miles.

The dinosaur statue was at the corner of the street where we were staying.
















Sunday, September 2, 2012

Birthday Girl in Banff



Out for dinner on my
birthday with good friends - Kathy and Claudia. Good laughs, good food, good night.
(For some reason the blog has made all sorts of changes and I am still trying to figure out how to do what I used to so on it).