Educating Risa

After the T rex Discovery Centre, we made the scenic drive through the Cypress Hills to Medicine Hat, AB,where we stayed overnight. En route we saw more pronghorn antelopes:

and stopped at the Alberta Tourist Info Centre at Walsh, just inside the AB / SK border. We’d stopped there on the way out for a bathroom break, and Gareth wanted Jim to see the neat dino stuff they had inside:

I also found a Western Meadowlark getting its dinner on the front lawn:

The next day we did a few activities in “The Hat.” After getting Jim a much needed coffee, we headed to the world’s tallest teepee, but were disappointed to find it cordoned off as they were repainting. (That’s a truck with a huge crane in the pic). The teepee is 20 stories high:

We went for a short walk anyways, checking out groundhogs, bugs, cacti, and birds. I saw and heard the very colourful ring-necked pheasant, but he was too far to get a decent pic, even with the zoom lens. You can see a better pic of one here.

 

We then headed to the nature centre in Police Point Park. We chatted with the park naturalist, who showed the boys a black widow spider in a small terrarium (black widows, scorpions, and rattlesnakes are found in this SE corner of Alberta), and the boys checked out the current display all about beavers:

We then headed for a long nature walk, via the “Enchanted Forest” and pathway that looped along the river. We saw all kinds of birds, bugs, flowers and other wildlife. All of us found something to enjoy in this outing:

I found a Mountain Cottontail rabbit (also called Nuttall’s cottontail), as well as several birds. I’ve included pics of the Cedar Waxwing and Yellow Warbler, but other sightings included a Gray Catbird, House Wren, flycatcher (unknown species—flycatchers are even harder to sort out than gulls or sparrows!), Common Nighthawk, and Baltimore Oriole:

Jim and the boys found a pair of mating box elder bugs, which obviously made an impression on Daegan, given his later entry in his travel journal:

 

We then drove on to Brooks, about an hour down the highway, where we were staying as it is the closest town to Dinosaur Provincial Park (more on it tomorrow). I went solo for a short outing to Kinbrook Island Provincial Park, about 15 minutes south of town, as it is supposed to be one of the best birding locations in SE Alberta (and, no surprise, the rest of the family was ‘all birded out’ by this point). I was not disappointed. In my short time there, I saw the reclusive marsh wren, as well as countless other birds, including canvasback ducks and yellow-headed blackbirds:

Tomorrow: the amazing badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park!