We enjoyed a terrific bike ride in Fish Creek Provincial Park today. It was a little shorter than usual, as Youngest GeoK took a tumble and skinned his knee, so we decided to head back to the parking area a little sooner than we otherwise would have. Even so, we rode a little under 20 km and managed to find 2 geocaches placed earlier this year.

But the true highlights related to the bird sightings! First off, thanks to the fact that we met up with Grandma and Grandpa GeoK and they’d spotted a feeding bald eagle while riding to our rendezvous spot, so we headed back in that direction hoping to spot it. We lucked out! Oldest GeoKid managed to approach close enough to capture a fairly good shot with our Canon PowerShot S90. Then, Youngest GeoK spotted another bald eagle flying past! We played hide and seek with the pair for about 10 minutes as we rode south along the bike path, but didn’t manage to get any closer than this…

Once when we stopped along the path, we spotted five birds in another dead tree top, but way across the river. We’re still not sure whether these were blue herons, cormorants or something else entirely, and the photo is not close enough to facilitate an easy identification.

A few minutes later we arrived at GC2B577 Jigs, which, in addition to a smiley, offered a great view of the Bow River.

As we continued south, we spotted a trio of great white pelicans landing on the Bow River, a half-dozen Canadian geese landing on a wetland pond and lots of ducks and loons bobbing for food, too.

At the southernmost end of our ride, Mrs. GeoK spotted a survey marker, so we’ll be heading over to the waymarking website later this weekend to see whether it’s already there (in which case we’ll log our visit) or whether we can set it up as a new waymarking location.

Mr. GeoK just off the trail from the survey marker

On our ride back to parking, Mrs. GeoK took a short detour to nab GC216QN Another Fish in the Creek. It was nicely placed and a quick find, which is always appreciated when mosquitoes are swarming.

Thanks to the cache hiders and to our local reviewer (Cache Effect) for the extra effort required to obtain Provincial Parks approval to place new geocaches in this beautiful park.