This bald eagle was spotted in a tree overlooking the Columbia River just below Radium on the Thanksgiving weekend.


It was motionless apart from when it moved its head to cast its "eagle eye" around it.


It was a thrill to get this picture from the other bank of the river without scaring it away.

SMW, how lucky can you get ?!! She definitely is a beautiful eagle.

This morning there was a hard frost, so we visited the native garden to pick rosehips, which will be made into rosehip jam next week. We worked in our tribes trying to pick as many rosehips as we could from the three wild rose bushes in the half hour before lunch.


In the afternoon each tribe used a balance and weights (10g, 5g, 2g and 1g) to find how much they had collected.


Then we calculated how much each member of each tribe had picked by dividing the weights into equal groups corresponding to the number of students in a tribe. Some of the tribes were missing members due to absence. After we had recorded all the information on our Rosehip Chart, we calculated how much we had gathered altogether. We were amazed that we had collected 1280g or 1 kilogram 280 grams. Now we can't wait till next Thursday to make rosehip jam with Mrs. Kinsman, our Native Liaison Worker.

Today we went with Mrs. Bedell's grade 2/3 class on our Waste Management Tour. Our tour guide was Loree, the Communications Manager with the Regional District of the East Kootenay. We began at the Cranbrook Transfer Station. Each of us brought one or two items to recycle in one of the yellow bins used for recycling. We recycled paper, newspapers, cardboard, tin and aluminum containers, and plastics (1 to 6) but not styrofoam. One parent even brought a glass jar, which went in a special yellow bin marked Glass.


People bring clean wood, metal, old appliances, and propane tanks to be recycled as well as garden waste, which will be composted. Garbage can also be dropped off at the Transfer Station, where it is transferred to the Regional Landfill to be buried. While we were there, a City garbage truck arrived to dump its load of garbage.


While we were examining the garbage that had been dropped off, we noticed many items that could have been recycled. However, now that they were contaminated, they had to be taken to the landfill to be buried.

Our next stop was the Recycling Centre, where the contents of more than 600 recycle bins are brought to be sorted. We made our way to the weighbridge, following the typical journey of a truck when it first arrives at the Centre.


We learned that glass from the Glass bins is dumped at a special bay before being transferred to Airdrie in Alberta, where it can be made into insulation, or reflective paint which is used for marking roads, or it can become the sand in a sandtrap on a golf course.


We were lucky to watch recyclable materials being unloaded from a tractor trailer.

We learned that pop cans, plastic bottles, juice containers, beer and wine bottles from all over the East and West Kootenays are brought to the Packing Plant, our third stop, before being sent off to be reused or recycled.


One of the highlights was watching bags of plastic bottles being emptied into a large tray from where they were air- forced into a pipe to another section of the operation.


It was even more fun to move to the area where the plastic bottles shot out of a pipe into a netted container where they would be fed into a crusher, which would reduce them to a cube of plastic ready for shipping to be recycled.

Our final destination in our tour took us to the Regional Landfill. We were able to watch the compactor in action as it crushed a large pile of garbage which had been brought from the Transfer Station.


Before we returned to school, a load of construction materials was unloaded. As the truck pulled away, we noticed the load contained wood, which could have been diverted from the landfill, if it had been sorted and put into the Clean Wood pile.


As we drove away, we passed a huge pile of clean wood waiting to be made into wood chips. There were also different areas for used concrete, tires, appliances and compost, which will be recycled or reused, and diverted from the landfill.

On two separate visits to Elizabeth Lake this week, I have witnessed something special on both occasions. On Sunday afternoon I watched a muskrat swim by within a stone's throw of the wooden dock where I was standing. It passed close to a coot, which appeared to give chase. But, as the muskrat dived, the coot turned around and swam off.


This afternoon was cool but sunny, so I decided to walk to the lake after school. After strolling around the lake to the Tourist Information parking lot, I walked back along the lakeshore. Something caught my attention as I scanned the shoreline on the E. side of the lake. It could have been a bald eagle because I thought I spotted a white tail. As I zoomed in with the camera, I got a huge surprise. It was not one but two bald eagles, presumably a male and female, sitting in an evergreen tree overlooking the lake. Unfortunately they were more than five hundred meters away, so I could not get a better image. I was able to walk within a hundred meters of where they were, but never did catch sight of them, although I heard them at one point.