The Biodiversity Museum

After months of meaning to go, Kathryn and I finally made our way out to UBC to look at the Biodiversity Museum. The crown jewel of said museum is the articulated blue whale skeleton suspended in the entry foyer. Buried in PEI in the 80s, the skeleton spent 20 years getting vaguely cleaned up naturally before a group of professors and students exhumed it and moved it across the country for mounting and display.
Beneath the whale there are rows upon rows of display cases containing articulated skeletons, stuffed birds, plant samples, and endless jars of preserved fish and reptiles. The cabinets are both museum and univeristy collection with every 3rd case having a facing out display for visitors and the rest being closed for preservation and student uses.
Each of the rows in the picture above is a decent sized display of specimens, with the whole museum containing thousands of different animals of all sorts. Our visit was long overdue and very enjoyable once we finally made it.
By blind luck we also ran into some of our friends from Vancouver Island that happened to be in town and in the university for the same 5 minutes we were passing by and we met up for dinner with Roger and Colleen in the evening.

More Manitoba Mammals

There were quite a few other mammals to be seen this summer in Manitoba, starting with this little wild rabbit I saw while taking a walk through the Forks. He dashed across the path and stood still just long enough for my auto-focus to kick in before jumping through a hole in the fence. They are a not uncommon but always pleasant sight for me, and somewhat less so for my mother-in-law and her wonderful garden.
A trip out to Oak Hammock Marsh found us a handful of very tame and curious Richardsons Ground Squirrels, one of which in particular was willing to pose until we were practically sitting on him with his nose in the lens.
And last but not least, the icon of Manitoba, the bison. They were unfortunate in being on the wrong end of the "there's so many of them we can kill them forever and never run out" line of thought of early settlers. Their once massive herds have been decimated to a number of protected herds in provincial parks and some small herds raised for meat. This individual is from the latter group as there was a small group of them near the marsh.

Animals in the Field

A life long dream came true this summer when I came across wild horses in the Chilcotin. First time I didn't have a camera. Wandering around in the bush we came almost face to face with a stallion and his mare and foal. A lovely sight. We also saw a herd of 8-12 drinking and grazing near a small lake. These three we were lucky enough to see several times as they seemed to like a grassy meadow that this rough logging road went right through. There is a stallion and two mares. There are some documentaries about horses in the Chilcotin. People living there still lose the occasional horse to the wild herds.
This was a problem. Walking up an access road that goes to the block we need to survey we ran across these tracks. It had rained the day before and these tracks were so fresh they were still damp in the middle as you can see from the photo. Some investigating revealed another set of tracks and another. One big set and 2 small. A mother cougar and her babies! We left pretty quick. I wasn't hugely concerned as where we parked the truck we got snorted at by some wild horses and I don't think they would have been so relaxed if a huge kitty and her brood were close by. Some research into tracking that evening showed that the tracks were really fresh as it was warm out and they would have dried out fast and they hadn't had a chance to do that yet. When we went back the next day I made sure I had my machete and I sang lots.