Readers’ wildlife photos

August 18, 2025 • 8:15 am

Thanks to the readers who sent in wildlife photos.  Today we have the first part of a two-part series from Kevin Krebs taken in British Columbia. Kevin’s notes and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

The Crowsnest to Osoyoos – Part 1

Vancouver to Princeton

Each spring I make a pilgrimage from my home in Vancouver to Osoyoos in south-central British Columbia. Birds are what drew me there initially, but over the years the ecology and geology have cast a spell on me.

After roughly 2½ hours of driving on the Crowsnest Highway, E.C. Manning Provincial Park is my first stop. Located in the North Cascades, the area is densely forested with coniferous trees, and even in late May you can expect to find some patches of snow.

Every year without fail I’m greeted by numerous Columbian Ground Squirrels (Urocitellus columbianus). They hibernate for up to 8 months of the year, and this population has probably been active for only a few weeks when I visit.

I don’t have to go much further than the parking lot to find flocks of Chipping sparrows (Spizella passerina).

Venturing further into the park, I almost always find a few Townsend’s Warblers (Setophaga townsendi).

This year I felt especially lucky — a pair of American Three-toed Woodpeckers (Picoides dorsalis) appeared out of nowhere just as I was about to leave.

Princeton is my next stop, and where the transition from the forests to semi-arid climate begins to become apparent. According to Wikipedia, “Princeton is one of the sunniest places in British Columbia with 2,088 hours of sunshine annually”.

My destination is Swan Lake Wildlife Refuge, located just north of the city that is always replete with swallows, waterfowl, and many other surprises.

A Common Raven (Corvus corax) keeping watch from a fence post.

New World Sparrows (Family Passerellidae) don’t get a lot of love and it’s not uncommon to hear them derided as LBJs (Little Brown Jobs). I think many birders do themselves a disservice by not paying attention to sparrows and other ‘common’ birds. Here’s a beautiful Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus) posing on a branch.

American Kestral (Falco sparverius) are the smallest and most widespread North American falcon with distinctive sexual dimorphism. This male was waiting out a sudden rain shower:

Another photo of the American Kestral (Falco sparverius) being scolded by a Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) who was very unhappy with his presence:

The bluest of bluebirds — this male Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides) was quite shy, but let me get a decent photograph before it fled my primate curiosity.

A mediocre photo of a Lewis’s Woodpecker (Melanerpes lewis) — a large, oddball woodpecker which is still somewhat enigmatic.

On the route to Osoyoos, I pass through the small town of Hedley, once the site of a gold mine (confusingly named the Nickel Plate Mine). The geology is striking — uplifted Triassic sedimentary rocks of the Nicola Formation.

17 thoughts on “Readers’ wildlife photos”

  3. What lovely photos! I’m eager to see the next set. Unfortunately I do not know this area of North America, so I’m glad to see a bit of it in photos.

  4. Comment by Greg Mayer

    I love the uplifted and tilted Triassic strata at an average incline of about 45 degrees, but with waves running within running from lower up to close to 90 degrees. It would be fun to reconstruct the history of this exposure!

    GCM

    1. Agreed. I used to take students out to an outcrop near my house when I lived in Virginia. There was about ten feet of horizontal exposure and the entire outcrop was no more than 6 feet high. The rock was folded sediment. I would ask the students to outline the historical steps that produced the outcrop. Everyone who thinks about it is amazed at the number of steps that one can infer:

      1) Marine nearshore sediments were deposited during the Ordovician. Where we were standing was once under water.
      2) Sediment was buried (by compaction and further deposition), squeezing the water out and turning it to rock—red sandstones and limestones.
      3) Rock was compressed from the side to cause the folding (probably during the Late Ordovician Taconic Orogeny).
      4) Rock was uplifted back to the surface and eroded so that younger marine sediment could be deposited on top of the folded rock. (Rock was probably exposed subaerially for a time to cause the erosion, before the seas returned to deposit new sediment.)
      5) Entire sequence of marine rocks was uplifted to the surface (otherwise they wouldn’t be exposed today).
      6) The sea retreated and all post-Ordovician rock that lay above the outcrop was eroded away, forming today’s land surface.

      I probably missed some steps.

      1. The uplifted, tilted strata struck me also. Norman, can you please identify some ballpark “years ago” with each of your steps 1-6? I am a former mountains of Virginia hiker and always interested in our geological history. Thanks. Love that you introduced your students to real field work…and simply available.

  5. Awesome folding in those rocks, and maybe even some faulting, but it’s hard to tell from this angle.

    And I agree that we should give more love to our little sparrows. There are 22 species in the Puget Sound: https://www.birdadvisors.com/sparrows-washington/. Few people even notice.

    Thank you for contributing today’s pictures!

  8. Great to see the listing and the details as I drive that route a few times a year. I had never heard of the Swan Lake Sanctuary https://vffn.ca/swan-lake-sanctuary/ This is the correct link. The other link you have posted is somewhere in Missouri.

    Where exactly is the Nicola formation in Hedley?

    1. I could be wrong – it might not be part of the Hedley formation… I’m a very amateur geologist and that might be further south. In any case, you can see this peak from a pull-off just west of the town (when headed east).

      I really recommend a book called “Roadside Geology of Southern British Columbia” if you’re curious about geology… I know they also have editions for almost every state in the US as well.

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