Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

This was my short shift at work for the week and as I left at just after 5 AM, I decided to wait at the lake for the sun to rise. Too dark at that time to take anything of any detail I thought, so I decided on the seated area which gives a good view of the full length of the lake and watched the beaver way in the distance feeding among the lily pads. Sitting on the back of the seat with the hood of my jacket pulled up over my head (to avoid the mosquitoes) a great blue heron flew in front of me, landing behind the wall of reeds just to my left. I increased the ISO to 12800 on my Pentax K-S2 and fired off a few shots, not expecting much of anything, but with the high level of grain and the reeds blurring in the foreground, it gave an almost pastel effect: The heron was looking my way and clearly saw some movement, but was unsure of what I was, so it slowly edged its way out from behind the reeds to get a better look: Once I was identified, the heron promptly flew over to the ...

I have a truly scary, creepy photo for you today. This looks as if it came straight out of one of Sir Ridley Scott's Alien movies. I was actually expecting to take a photo of the nymph which was steadily climbing up the reed when I first saw it. I turned to switch cameras as it was too close for my telephoto lens and I would have got my feet very wet if I'd tried to use my macro DIY lens. My trusty Powershot SX720 came out of its holder and when I zoomed in for the photo, this is what I saw: That was a little unexpected to say the least, but also very cool. I hope you like the photo as much as I do. Here's another unexpected photo, and nothing creepy at all about this, more unexpected in the fact that female red-winged blackbirds don't usually catch anyone's attention, they're not really that pretty, and for good reason, as they need to hide from predators. But this female red-winged blackbird is definitely looking at her best: Lastly, nothing unexpec...

Today is egg laying day, and perhaps it had something to do with the temperature, or maybe it was the full moon, but for whatever reason, the snapping turtles at Lakeside Park decided that they must nest. So many turtles this morning that I did not know which way to point my camera: All making their way up the bank from the lake: There is a nesting area set aside for the turtles and it was being used, as well as any loose dirt they could find like around the young trees: This is the main nesting area for the turtles with a bunny photo-bombing in the background: There is something very prehistoric about the snappers and that is no surprise as they have been around since before the time of the dinosaurs: It appears it was not just the snappers which I was attracting this morning, but also this little lady who walked right up to me while I was trying to take photos of the turtles: Actually I think it was the seeds from the tree she was interested in and I...

Standing on the near (trail) side of Lakeside Park at the turtle nesting area with the sun barely above the horizon, I noticed something in the misty shadows moving through the water, way over by the seated area, much bigger and moving faster than the beaver. I had no idea what it was until I reviewed the photos and zoomed in: It sped across to the far side of the lake, pausing for a few seconds before disappearing into the reeds: Not a great deal of light for my pocket size PowerShot SX720, but I did manage to get a few photos from what I took. The first view for me of deer at Lakeside Park! Copyright  ©  wildlakeside.blogpot.com 2019 Scott Atkinson All Rights Reserved.