chasing colours as they near conclusion

With Thanksgiving behind us and October quickly coming to a close, that feel of wintry weather is in the air.  The autumn colours are fading fast which gave me the incentive to get out there and capture what I can.  There is motivation too to be "out & about" as I near the end of the St Francis Way Challenge with just short of 50 kms to cover.  

 

On this day at Confluence Park, the plan was to check out the Siberian Larch trees to see how their colour was progressing and you can see those in the bottom left photo.  In other locations there are more leaves on the ground than on the trees yet the shades are still quite sweet.  While wondering through the Birth Forest enjoying the sound as I swished through the fallen leaves, movement caught my eye and after a few seconds I spotted this Great Horned Owl intently starring at me.  This was early on into my urban hike and  I already felt fulfilled seeing the Owl yet I had 8kms to cover on this day so swished along!

With the sun rising well into the morning hours these days, I had loads of time to get "out & about" and be somewhere for the dawning of today.  I hit The Hill, Nose Hill that is!  The sun rose and then  almost as quickly worked its way up into the cloud cover.  It stayed there for quite some time before the sky began to offer up blue openings.  I headed over to the medicine circle as I always do if I am in that area of Nose Hill.  This was the first time I saw a circle of chairs.  Either a gathering occurred or would be occurring.   These are some of the nice sights I saw today.  

 

Our route today took us from the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary into Pearce Estates, around St George's Island then back the way we came.  We started off under full on cloud cover and cold.  The cloud cover did clear but the cold remained.  In some of the locations we visited, the colours were still glorious. It's not quite cold enough for the Great Blue Heron to migrate south and as I mentioned in a prior post, the tiny little Black-Capped Chickadees will be with us even through the coldest days of winter.  When all was said and done today, we covered 14kms and I anxious to get that number added onto my virtual challenge.