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On the Road: Tracks in the snow

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It looked like it was going to be a nice, sparkly day.

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Though it was chilly, the sun was shining brightly and down in a hollow just north of the city, frost was glittering everywhere. Crystals lined the fences, coated the roadside grass and shimmered on bits of twine that danced in the light breeze.

On the Road: Tracks in the snow Back to video

At -4 C it was considerably warmer than it had been for the past few days and the sunshine added strength to the warmth. The blue sky above added a cyan tinge to the landscape that softened the otherwise harsh shadows with a soft grey look.

Gophers were out though they were skittish. Don’t blame them. They were easy to spot against the bright snow. No hawks around that I could see but there were plenty of ravens who might swoop down on them. Further out in a field, a coyote. Yep, smart to be skittish.

I was headed north and east just to see what I could see. After the past week’s deep freeze — it wasn’t actually all that bad — the rising temperatures in the forecast made it tempting to just go poke around.

The frost was a good start so I rolled on expecting to find more.

I didn’t. Turned out that hollow was a bit of an anomaly. Out in the more open country east of Airdrie, there was no frost at all. In fact, there wasn’t even all that much snow.

Given how much had fallen in the city and along the foothills, I expected the fields to be covered out this way. And they were, kinda. In the sense that there was snow on the ground, yeah. But in most places the pasture grass and field stubble showed through.

The storm had been pretty windy, though, and a lot of the ditches were full of drifts. They weren’t very big or very deep but some of them had lovely sculpted shapes. And all of them had tracks.

Tracks are almost as good as seeing that being that had made them. The jackrabbit or coyote or pheasant that had wandered across this blown snow might be long gone but the tracks it left behind are irrefutable proof it had been there. Tracks are amazing.

And not just in snow.

A long time ago I was shown a set of depressions the size of garbage can lids at St. Mary Reservoir. Something huge had walked here at some point and left these potholes behind. Turned out that a woolly mammoth had strolled by on its way to the St. Mary River about 13,000 years ago and left its tracks in the soft mud.

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I will never see a woolly mammoth but thanks to those tracks, I know they existed and that they lived here in southern Alberta. Whenever I look out across the land from the south end of the Porcupine Hills, in my mind I can see them wandering along on the plains below.

Tracks are proof that something alive has passed by.

So as I drove along I was watching for tracks in the ditches and doing so, I nearly missed the snowy owl.

I was following the Rosebud River east of Irricana, paying attention to the scant snow cover and whatever interesting things it might hold when, crossing a low depression, I saw a road grader ahead of me. I slowed and pulled over to let it pass and as I did, I happened to glance up. And I saw an extra bump on one of the power pole insulators.

I expected it to fly off as the grader passed by but, nope, it stayed put. So I drove on past it, turned around and eased my way back.

I haven’t had a great year for snowies. I’ve seen a few but the pictures have been pretty ordinary so I wanted to make sure I got something that was at least OK this time. I eased the truck ahead, stopping every few metres to aim the camera, until I was directly underneath the owl.

She barely acknowledged me. Instead, she just gazed off into the distance, her head rotating as she scanned around. Thank you momma owl!

I forgot about the snow drifts now and started watching the power poles as I drove slowly along. So, needless to say, when I spotted the next snowy, it had already taken off from the top of a drift right beside the road.

I watched it fly away, a bright, white male as opposed to the mottled female from earlier, and saw it land in a field. Turning around to see if I could get a picture, I couldn’t find it again. It hadn’t actually moved but it blended so well with the scant snow that it was virtually invisible. Finally, though, I found it. Their camo really works!

Now I scanned both the ditches and the power poles as I drove. I found mule deer lazing in a field and, inspired by the owl between the rows of stubble, stopped to photograph an oil pump with the stubbly, yellow-striped foreground.

It had warmed up to just above zero now with the southwest breeze and a bit of loose snow was drifting across the road. Ahead of me on the gravel there was a dark splotch I assumed was sifting snow that had landed there and was melting but as I got closer, the splotch began to move.

It was birds, hundreds and hundreds of birds.

They were snow buntings. Like snowy owls, they are visitors from the far north, here for the winter before they fly back to the Arctic to make more snow buntings. They are a fairly common sight along the roads east of the foothills where flocks of maybe 50 or so forage for seeds and grit.

But this was far more than 50. I would guess closer to a thousand.

Skittish by nature, it didn’t take long for them to fly off and with the truck window rolled down I could hear rush of all those wings even over the wind. Fortunately, they didn’t fly far and I spent the next half hour watching them fly back and forth from field to road and back again. They never did let me get very close, though, and when another truck came along they all took off and chirped away over the horizon.

I headed over to Redland now, hoping I might see a pheasant but no luck with that and then along the Rosebud River to the town of Rosebud. I was out of snowy owl country now — they prefer flatter and more open areas — so I started watching the ditches again. But though there was snow on the ground, the ditches were pretty much drift-free.

So I dropped down to Drumheller for a bit of road chow and then headed south again from Rosedale across the Wintering Hills.

I was back in snowy owl country again but no luck there. Deadhorse Lake by Hussar was flat and white with thin snow but no drifts that I could find to explore. There were sparrows flitting around the top of the elevator at Chancellor and I did see a falcon of some sort fly by but beyond that, not even a deer.

The Chimney Hills, maybe?

I passed an old farmyard along the way where the flat snow was covered with partridge, rabbit and magpie tracks, all tinted blue by the shade of the caragana hedge, and just past Standard, a lovely drift behind an old snow fence. Unfortunately, it was a ways out in a pasture so all I could do was simply record its swirly elegance.

Looking back as I crested the heights of the hills I could see I had vastly overestimated the amount of snow that had fallen out here. With the sun now at a low angle I could see it was nearly as bare as it had been before the storm. Unless March and April get snowy, fields will be pretty dry come seeding time. Deadhorse Lake will stay Deadhorse Flats.

The drifts were just as rare at the top of the hills. A pretty little coulee that runs off toward the southwest, a place where I’d ended up hip-deep in drifted snow when I tried to retrieve my crashed drone in a previous February, was nearly all bare grass. I did find some pretty nice hare tracks at one low drift, though. I could see where Mr. Jake had dug in the toes on his big hind feet to make the next hop.

Light was getting low now and warm air from the west was mixing with the cooler air to make a thin, blue mist. Closer to Rockyford I found a steep hillside that was at just the right angle to catch some drifting snow. Here, a set of coyote tracks led up the slope and I could see where it had slipped as it climbed. On top, partridge tracks.

Were the two related? I dunno but they made for a potentially funny scenario, wily coyote bested by a bird. Might make a fun cartoon series.

I rolled on now across the Crowfoot Creek valley and past an old farmstead where ravens were having a get-together. Sunshine was bright on the stubble sticking up past the thin snow and I could hear the ravens chatting.

The day had started in sparkly frost and now it was ending in soft sunshine. A lovely day even though It hadn’t turned out quite the way I had expected. But there were highlights along the way.

And sometimes, that’s all you can ask for.

I headed into the blue mist and drove on.

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