The salmon are swimming up streams and spawning.

Short version: I took some videos of the kokanee salmon spawning and have compiled them into a 7 minute video.

Question of the week:

"Is 7 minutes too long for a video?"

The rest of the story:

When I started this video, I just wanted to stitch together a group of short clips of the kokanee salmon swimming upstream in our nearby creeks. I managed to "catch the tail end" of this annual event (sorry about the pun...I couldn't resist)... but wanted a film to share a piece of "Kootenay time", with my relatives and friends, as most live very far away.

(Note: This photo, with lots of kokanee, was taken in 2006.)

With 12 minutes of video recording time available, I'm happy to have such a handy little digital camera- I take it everywhere! But rarely use the video. I have to practice being steady & stop moving the camera so quickly. I was up until the wee hours cutting out jerky parts. (Perhaps I could use a tripod, but my purse is already over-loaded. ) Besides it's hard to hold still when there's rustling in the bushes, or a mosquito bites... and I'm alone in the trees, surrounded by bear food.

I was going to add music too, since the creek sounds loud & quiet in different spots, but decided to leave it alone, so it's just the birds and water. Natures music...

My video may be quite amateur, but there's some good parts to it.

With practice, my next one should be much better :)

The video was too large to add here, so I've uploaded it to YouTube... here's the link.)

If you'd like to see some of my "fish" related creations, click here.