Crystal Sculptures and a Deer

It was a welcome return to Lakeside Park this morning. A clear sky brought about the first real heavy frost which seemed to be nudging all of the leaves from their branches. The pollinator meadow seems to get the worst of the cold as it is exposed to the sky. Leaves, flowers and blades of grass were transformed into crystal sculptures:


I did not stay long in the meadow as my rubber boots which keep my feet perfectly dry are not so good at keeping the cold out. I headed for the cover of the trees and the warmer ground, and as I neared the path I got a surprise! A deer which had been just as oblivious of me as I was of it, raised its tail and took off in the opposite direction. I love how they run, there is no sound and I feel sure their feet never actually touch the ground. I followed, hoping that I might get a chance of a photo at a distance. I waited at the edge of a rough path which leads to a clearing and sure enough, the deer came out from behind the trees to see where I was. I snapped a couple of photos before the deer walked off into the undergrowth:


There are still warblers at the park, but what really caught my attention was a tree which was host to approximately a dozen young cedar waxwings playfully jumping from one branch to the next:


To the left of the waxwings and just on the edge of the pollinator meadow were a group of goldfinches who had the plant stems bent over as they searched for seeds:


Copyright © wildlakeside.blogpot.com 2019 Scott Atkinson All Rights Reserved.
Location: Lakeside Park, 206 Lakeside Dr, Kitchener, ON N2M 4C5, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thrushes and Blue-Winged Teal

Image
I must admit that I am no expert when it comes to thrushes in Ontario. I am well acquainted with thrushes in the UK, but these guys have completely different names. I will do my best to hopefully identify correctly. There are I believe two possible candidates,  Swainson's thrush and the hermit thrush. Very similar-looking birds. One outstanding difference between them appears to be a white ring around the eye of the hermit thrush compared to a buffy eyering on Swainson's thrush. Another distinguishing detail is the colour of their tailfeathers. The hermit thrush has more of a cinnamon colour to its tailfeathers, and this photo does show that. A white eyering and cinnamon tailfeathers, I'm going with a hermit thrush. This photo also shows both the cinnamon tailfeathers and the white eyering. There were many of these thrushes working their way through the leaf litter of the woodland on the far side of Shoemaker Lake. They were very sensitive to any movement. I h
Read more

A Coyote, an Osprey and a Goldfish

Image
I never know what I'll find when I go to Lakeside Park, and sometimes it isn't what I find, rather what finds me. Partly hidden behind the woodland's latticework of twigs and fallen branches, this coyote knew I was there. It could definitely hear my clumsy rubber boots and with the wind coming from behind me, it also had the advantage of scent, but it hadn't seen me yet. I knew that I only had a few moments, if that, to capture some photographs. My autofocus struggled, as did the coyote's sight, to cut through all of the obstructions between us, but I did somehow manage a few shots before the coyote disappeared into the undergrowth.  The unexpected often catches me unprepared. A little earlier in the morning, I was attempting to take a photo of the first migratory warbler that I have seen this year, a yellow-rumped warbler. The warbler would not sit still for an instant, and in the course of attempting to relocate the warbler, I was entirely ta
Read more

A Welcome Return

Image
Lakeside Park has always felt welcoming, and it was an unscheduled return on a dull, misty morning in September that saw me tracing my steps from a year ago. I wondered what would be different and what would be unchanged. The black-crowned night heron's willow tree was uncustomarily empty. The long outstretched branch of the willow which reached out over the water had been a favoured roost, but it held nothing. Perhaps I'd catch sight of the beaver out amongst the lilypads, bobbing up and down as it dabbled in the shallows with its feet, searching for tasty roots. But again, there was nothing. The lake appeared eerily still.  And then my vision started to return. Through the mist, a familiar shape came into sharp relief. A grey silhouette dwarfed by the tall reeds on the far bank. It was tiptoeing its way along the length of a partly submerged branch. I had never observed the night heron hunting, but there it was. There was no light, no detail, just grain and layers in shades o
Read more