Archive For The “forest” Category
Devil’s club (Oplopanx horridus) (Robin Rowland)
There’s beauty in the forests of the Kitimat Valley, even if you’re a plant with the Latin name horridus. It’s also called the Devil’s Club and has very nasty spines on both the stem and the leaves. It’s related to the ginseng family and was used by coastal First Nations as a medicine for arthritis and dozens of other ailments.
The other appropriately ill-named plant that is common in wetter areas is the skunk cabbage (Lysichiton Americanum) because it stinks. Here the skunk cabbage is pictured alongside the Devil’s Club near Minette Bay.(Robin Rowland)
Found frequently in swampy, boggy areas and on stream beds. First Nations used it as “wax paper” to line baskets and steaming pits. Can be eaten if steamed or roasted–but only in early spring in time of famine.
Young horsetails (Equiseteum arvense) emerging in the late spring evoke a primeval world during my morning walk in Kitimat. (Robin Rowland)
A juvenile bald eagle surveys the Kitimat River from a log on a sandbar. (Robin Rowland)
Once again this year I joined the Kitimat Christmas Bird Count, helping out the Kitimat Valley Naturalists. Here are some of the best shots from that day, Wednesday December 16. 2015.
Gulls huddle together on the shore of MK Bay at low tide. (Robin Rowland)
A great blue heron watches from an old stump in the Kitimat River estuary. (Robin Rowland)
A female mallard duck in flight over MK Bay at low tide. (Robin Rowland)
A scaup (duck) in intermediate plumage on a mound of reeds in the Kitimat River estuary. (Robin Rowland) (Corrected caption, duck was identified in the field as a ringed-neck but on further review of the photograph, the consensus of the naturalists was scaup)
A red-tailed hawk surveys Haisla Boulevard at the LNG Canada turnoff just as the light fades in the late afternoon. (Robin Rowland)
The next day, on my morning walk, the neighborhood’s resident ravens followed me through the bush. Ravens are intelligent and I almost think they are posing for the camera, for this is the third time that they’ve gone to the same trees, in the same sequence, when I was there with my camera.
One of the ravens directly overhead. (Robin Rowland)
And flying from branch to branch of bare alders. (Robin Rowland)
And perched on a conifer (Robin Rowland)
Fall is coming early to Kitimat….or so it appears. We’ve just come through about three weeks of cold, wet and windy weather. Some trees are already turning to gold.
In the early afternoon sun along the Kitimat River Lower Dyke Road, the glorious green is still dominant.
Wind blown green leaves on a pond alongside the Lower Dyke Road. (Robin Rowland)
More windblown leaves float along a stream that will eventually reach the Kitimat River. (Robin Rowland)
An old log in the middle of a pond looks like an ancient sea monster. (Robin Rowland)
A pile of log slash stands on the route of the Pacific Trail Pipeline, the first route to Kitimat, BC, to see preliminary construction. The 480 kilometre natural gas pipeline will deliver gas from Summit Lake, B.C. to the proposed Kitimat LNG facility site at Bish Cove on Douglas Channel south of Kitimat. (Robin Rowland)
The Pacific Trail Pipeline and its route was originally approved by British Columbia in 2006, as part of an earlier project to import, rather than export, natural gas.
The proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline will follow a similar route to the Pacific Trail Pipeline, but as opponents of the Gateway project pointed out during the Joint Review Panel hearings, PTP has the original and optimum route through the rugged mountain territory. The clearing of the right of a way has led to false rumours that the work is for Northern Gateway.
A Pacific Trail Pipeline sign is seen on the Houlte Forest Service Road near a washout on Houlte Creek, where the pipeline cross the mountains.(Robin Rowland)
The pipeline route near Hunter Creek on the Upper Kitimat River Forest Service Road was cleared a year or so ago and there is already new undergrowth. (Robin Rowland)
The right of way along the Little Wedeene Forest Service Road was cleared this year. (Robin Rowland)
A twisted stump beside the road shows the scars of slash burning and rot. (Robin Rowland)
The slash pile is at the site of a quarry near the Little Wedeene River, which will harvest glacial aggregate for use along the pipeline route. (Robin Rowland)
Part of the quarry site borders on an wetland which was also cleared. (Robin Rowland)
A jumble of branches at the quarry site. (Robin Rowland)
A stump beings to rot away at the quarry site near the Little Wedeene. (Robin Rowland)
A stump at the quarry site shows scars of slash burning, rot and fresh growth of ferns. (Robin Rowland)
The final burning of the slash piles was postponed at the height of the summer drought June, July and early August.
A couple of old stumps at the quarry site. (Robin Rowland)
The route of the Pacific Trail Pipeline (Chevron/Woodside/Pacific Trail Pipeline)
The winning float in the 2015 Kitimat Canada parade from the Community Supper Club. (Robin Rowland)
Staff Sergeant Phil Harrison who is retiring from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police leads the Canada Day parade. (Robin Rowland)
Kitimat Fire and Rescue. (Robin Rowland)
Kitimat Marine Rescue Society (Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue SAR 63) still affectionately known as “Snowflake Responder” (Robin Rowland)
Mayor Phil Germuth. (Robin Rowland)
Rio Tinto Alcan’s Gaby Poirier leads the RTA entry in the parade. (Robin Rowland)
Kids enjoy the parade. (Robin Rowland)
The Haisla Nation Spirit of Kitlope Dancers. (Robin Rowland)
(Robin Rowland)
(Robin Rowland)
The gymnastics club. (Robin Rowland)
Handing out goodies to spectators along the parade route. (Robin Rowland)
The Canada Day cake at Riverlodge ready for cutting. (Robin Rowland)
Later on the afternoon of Canada Day, a wildfire broke out on the hydro transmission corridor near the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter. It was contained a couple of days later. (Robin Rowland)
Fireworks. (Robin Rowland)
Fireworks. (Robin Rowland)
Late on an early November afternoon, the sun, low in the sky, shines through moss hanging from trees in a wooded area near my home in Kitimat, BC, November 9, 2014. (Robin Rowland)
After almost two months of steady rain (from late September to early November) the jet stream has moved east, for now, bringing the “polar vortex” to central and eastern North America, and clear skies and the sun (finally) to the British Columbia coast. Taken about about 20 minutes after the shot above. (Robin Rowland)