Cormorants at Quill Lakes, Saskatchewan

The August long weekend in Saskatchewan. The days are getting shorter. The weather is still quite hot but a tinge of fall is in the air. For the kids, school will be starting up again before long. I remember those days well and the feeling that August was a time to make as much as possible of the outdoors before the onset of another long winter. We could have just stayed at home for the long weekend but we decided to take a trip up to my brother and sister-in-law's place in Wynyard, Saskatchewan. We hadn't been there in about a year so it was time to go for a visit.

Wynyard is quite a nice small town. It is in a great location in east-central Saskatchewan. It is a nice two-hour drive from Regina. The primary industries in Wynyard are the poultry processing plant and the CP Rail yards. The town's population is around 2000 people. Although most of the town is made up of people of Ukrainian and Icelandic decent, there is quite a bit of diversity here with Indigenous people from nearby First Nations, and immigrants from the Philippines, Korea, and China. Just north of town are the Quill Lakes.

Until this particular trip, I haven't made an effort to drive up to the lakes to take a look. Prior to recent flooding, the Quill Lakes were highly saline. Additionally, the lakes are rather shallow with mud bottoms. Thus, they aren't great fishing lakes. But, if you are a bird watcher they are a wonderful place to check out. This is particularly the case in the spring during migration and mating season. My brother indicated that there are areas on the lakes where there are so many birds that you can't hear anything but their calls. He also indicated that one of the more interesting birds to see at the Quill Lakes in the spring are Sandhill Cranes.

I wanted to take a look so we drove up to the area near the intersection of Big Quill Lake and Little Quill Lake. This area was washed out over the past several years due to flooding. Today this area has drained and the gravel road through it is being rebuilt. Unfortunately, at this time of the year the hoards of birds that are usually here have moved one to other parts of the lakes. We managed to see a flock of Canada geese though this did not really impress me as we have thousands of these in Regina and they are nothing but a feces-spewing nuisance. 

That being said, I happened to notice a couple of strange looking birds walking up the shallow water next to the road. I wasn't sure what I was looking at. I first thought that perhaps these were vultures. But, why would a vulture be walking up through the muddy water next to the road. This just didn't seem right. I walked closer to where these birds were and could see that they were definitely a waterfowl of some sort. They took notice of me but didn't really seem to care much one way or the other what I was up to. I was surprised by that. I thought that they would have been much more skittish of my approach.

After observing the cormorants for a while, we walked around the area a bit to take in the scenery. While very flat and surrounded by farmland, it was a very nice and peaceful place to be. I felt very content here. There were some interesting views of the surrounding lakes and some old farm buildings and the heavy equipment that is being used to rebuild the road.

It was a great morning out in the Saskatchewan countryside. I hope to come back here again sometime, hopefully next spring when all of the birds will have just migrated back from the south. This would be a fascinating to witness.