There was some discussion about 9:00am as to whether we head off to Montana (USA) at noon, or to get up a bit earlier on Tuesday morning, and go then, and return Wednesday afternoon. This was agreed so it was a "local" day today. My request list for the day was to have another quick look at CN’s Sarcee Yard (had only seen one CN train since we had been here), go to the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary and if time was available also check out the Bass Pro Shop in the new Cross Iron Mills mall complex, the rest of which is not due to open for another month. When complete, this will be Calgary’s biggest mall complex employing over 3500 staff.
Naushad and I set off to 50th Ave SE and we stopped a couple of times while I photographed CN action. A Mi-Jack wheeled container crane was taking 53’ CN containers off road trucks and placing them onto the top of 48’ CN containers in the lower wells of DTTX double stack sets. Further on down the yard, a shipping container train, mainly made up of Asian 40’ containers sat on the track.
There was no CN mainline power to be seen (this is technically a CN branch line), but the yard power (three units) was assembling a train. I took some pics of the units and some of the cars in that section of the train. We then moved on to the nearby Tim Hortons drive thru and got our morning fix, before heading passed CP’s Ogden yard and going passed the Alyth locomotive depot, with at least 40 locomotives present, mostly Dash-9s.
Not far away is the bird sanctuary (9th Ave SE), so we parked the car, got the camera ready with the 400mm lens on the tripod/Wimberley head and headed in through the gate. The sanctuary has a few trails and bridges across a lagoon of the Bow River, and while we didn’t see that many birds, what we saw was interesting. A few white pelicans soared overhead, while a few species of duck (Wood Duck, Mallards, Lesser Scaup) were in the lagoon. Naushad was good at spotting birds, as well as telling me there was a deer on the bridge we had just crossed. A group of children led by someone from the sanctuary came along, just after we spotted a hole in a tree being used by tree swallows. One of the kids said that the swallows were barn swallows, and the lady asked me what I was photographing. I pointed out the hole in the dead tree limb, and she told the group that these must be tree swallows and not barn swallows as they are using an old woodpecker hole. That got me a bit excited as I have never seen a woodpecker, and we resumed walking the trails. On the track alongside the Bow River, Naushad spotted a small bird sitting in a dead tree. I looked at it and thought it may have been a woodpecker, black and white with a patch of red on the head, but it looked smaller than what I assumed a woodpecker was. I took a couple of shots before it flew off. A display in the information centre (as we went out) confirmed it was a Downy Woodpecker. Also saw some Cedar Waxwings, a Chickadee (possibly a Boreal Chickadee), a pair of Mourning Doves, and a lot of American Robins. Saw a few large nests and took these to be Swainson’s Hawk nests, although most looked old. Signage said there were more species during the fall migration south, but I thought there might have been more aquatic birds, such as Mergansers and Loons. On the Bow River were a lot of Franklin’s Gull in breeding and non-breeding plumage.
We did however see three deer wandering through the sanctuary, and two were using the footbridge to cross from one side of the lagoon to the other. There are also a lot of trout in the lagoon, most of these being a decent size, but as it is a sanctuary there is “no fishing”. The sanctuary is also a little east of the approach to the main runway (#34) at Calgary International, so was able to photograph planes at the same time. I restricted myself to plane images of more exotic planes and airlines (not the normal Air Canada and Westjet planes), but got American Airlines, United Express, Delta Connection, Continental, a Lufthansa A340 in the Star Alliance paint scheme and a F-18 Hornet from CAF in special 100 years of flight paint scheme.
Leaving the Inglewood Sanctuary we headed north on Deerfoot Trail (Hwy 2) to the new Bass Pro Shop, about 12km north of the city. I have never been in an outdoors shop like it. Departments included fishing, hunting, (both shooting and bow hunting), clothing, home furnishings (outdoor themed) and a coffee shop. It was huge, with probably more animals in it than most museums. A two story live waterfall feature was museum quality, and beers, wolves, moose, caribou, and other species abounded in the shop. One long feature had a few wolves chasing a herd of caribou down a rocky slope, the slope actually starting above the display cabinets on the second level and ending above the cabinets on the ground level. I purchased a few trout lures from here, as well as a fridge magnet.
We returned home mid afternoon after a busy but rewarding day, to find that Shamina and Rozi had just left to go shopping yet again.
Naushad and I set off to 50th Ave SE and we stopped a couple of times while I photographed CN action. A Mi-Jack wheeled container crane was taking 53’ CN containers off road trucks and placing them onto the top of 48’ CN containers in the lower wells of DTTX double stack sets. Further on down the yard, a shipping container train, mainly made up of Asian 40’ containers sat on the track.
There was no CN mainline power to be seen (this is technically a CN branch line), but the yard power (three units) was assembling a train. I took some pics of the units and some of the cars in that section of the train. We then moved on to the nearby Tim Hortons drive thru and got our morning fix, before heading passed CP’s Ogden yard and going passed the Alyth locomotive depot, with at least 40 locomotives present, mostly Dash-9s.
Not far away is the bird sanctuary (9th Ave SE), so we parked the car, got the camera ready with the 400mm lens on the tripod/Wimberley head and headed in through the gate. The sanctuary has a few trails and bridges across a lagoon of the Bow River, and while we didn’t see that many birds, what we saw was interesting. A few white pelicans soared overhead, while a few species of duck (Wood Duck, Mallards, Lesser Scaup) were in the lagoon. Naushad was good at spotting birds, as well as telling me there was a deer on the bridge we had just crossed. A group of children led by someone from the sanctuary came along, just after we spotted a hole in a tree being used by tree swallows. One of the kids said that the swallows were barn swallows, and the lady asked me what I was photographing. I pointed out the hole in the dead tree limb, and she told the group that these must be tree swallows and not barn swallows as they are using an old woodpecker hole. That got me a bit excited as I have never seen a woodpecker, and we resumed walking the trails. On the track alongside the Bow River, Naushad spotted a small bird sitting in a dead tree. I looked at it and thought it may have been a woodpecker, black and white with a patch of red on the head, but it looked smaller than what I assumed a woodpecker was. I took a couple of shots before it flew off. A display in the information centre (as we went out) confirmed it was a Downy Woodpecker. Also saw some Cedar Waxwings, a Chickadee (possibly a Boreal Chickadee), a pair of Mourning Doves, and a lot of American Robins. Saw a few large nests and took these to be Swainson’s Hawk nests, although most looked old. Signage said there were more species during the fall migration south, but I thought there might have been more aquatic birds, such as Mergansers and Loons. On the Bow River were a lot of Franklin’s Gull in breeding and non-breeding plumage.
We did however see three deer wandering through the sanctuary, and two were using the footbridge to cross from one side of the lagoon to the other. There are also a lot of trout in the lagoon, most of these being a decent size, but as it is a sanctuary there is “no fishing”. The sanctuary is also a little east of the approach to the main runway (#34) at Calgary International, so was able to photograph planes at the same time. I restricted myself to plane images of more exotic planes and airlines (not the normal Air Canada and Westjet planes), but got American Airlines, United Express, Delta Connection, Continental, a Lufthansa A340 in the Star Alliance paint scheme and a F-18 Hornet from CAF in special 100 years of flight paint scheme.
Leaving the Inglewood Sanctuary we headed north on Deerfoot Trail (Hwy 2) to the new Bass Pro Shop, about 12km north of the city. I have never been in an outdoors shop like it. Departments included fishing, hunting, (both shooting and bow hunting), clothing, home furnishings (outdoor themed) and a coffee shop. It was huge, with probably more animals in it than most museums. A two story live waterfall feature was museum quality, and beers, wolves, moose, caribou, and other species abounded in the shop. One long feature had a few wolves chasing a herd of caribou down a rocky slope, the slope actually starting above the display cabinets on the second level and ending above the cabinets on the ground level. I purchased a few trout lures from here, as well as a fridge magnet.
We returned home mid afternoon after a busy but rewarding day, to find that Shamina and Rozi had just left to go shopping yet again.
Then, it happened agaim! While I was uploading the images from the day, a strange jet sound was heard so I went outside to find a nine plane diamond formation of Canadian Air Force Canadair CT-114 Tutor's wheeling to the left overhead. Wrong lens on camera, cards in computer - missed another shot!
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