On Monday, June 20th, I took Elsen and Amy, our son and his wife from Kenya, with me to visit my trail cameras in the upper Powers Creek area. In addition, we enjoyed a few hours exploring the fauna and flora along the rim of the canyon. I will include several of Elsen's pictures with some of my own in this post. The high quality ones are his! Just click on the pictures and they will display larger.

There here were several pictures of animals at the cameras, not all of them of suitable quality to include here. Whitetail deer, a brown coloured black bear, a coyote and  some moose were among the animals "captured".














Coyote

Many of the flowers will be well-known to you but their intricate forms and colour never cease to attract us. I am watching again this year for bumble bees feeding on the Columbine nectar spurs by penetrating them directly. Only the nectar feeders with the longest mouthparts, like hummingbirds and certain moths, can reach columbine nectar in the usual way.

Sierra Columbine





Larkspurs are other flowers with long spurs.

Tiger Lily

And another Tiger Lily!

Spotted Coralroot is a perennial saprophytic orchid, a plant that always intrigues me.

Its white petals are spotted with purple dots.

Lupines are in bloom now.

The lupine flower in the centre of this picture seems to be holding its "mouth" wide open in welcome to two small black beetles.

A larger beetle was found on a Yarrow---

--- and Elsen's eyes noticed a large hairy grey spider on a crumbling rotting log.

Further along the trail, we encountered several blue butterflies--which I have failed to identify after searching several collections of butterfly pictures.

They seemed to be strongly attracted to  some coyote scat, along with a variety of flies.

Elsen also found a beautifully marked hairy caterpillar of some kind on a trailside shrub.

Not all of the flowering plants bore colourful blossoms. An example is the Green-flowered Bog Orchid.

One of the most delicate little flowers is the Thread-leaved Sandwort.

On the way home, we stopped to check one more camera, at a place that I call "The Moose Bog" for that trail camera always produces pictures of moose. I have been watching the growth of a pair of twin moose, a male and a female. This time there were several pictures of only the cow or cows. Perhaps the year-old twins are now becoming more independant.