Snake Eyes and the Misfit Photos

The rain has kept me away from my mornings at Lakeside Park. I have gone but been forced to leave with the torrential rain we have had. Yesterday though after the rain had stopped, my wife and I ventured out for a walk around the park and of course, no walk is complete without a camera. A T-shirt-wearing 16 degrees had everyone out walking too, so we headed off the beaten track, mindful of social distancing. A walk through the grass beside the pollinator meadow would have been uneventful had the grass not moved.


I have seen garter snakes at Lakeside Park before but never actually managed to take a photo. They don't usually hang around. This garter snake did though and mindful of my encounter in October of 2019, I decided to keep my distance: https://wildlakeside.blogspot.com/2019/10/watch-your-step.html.


Garter snakes are well camouflaged and I'm sure had it not been for its movement we would not have noticed it at all.


The unusually mild weather and the heat of the sun had provided just enough energy to enable this garter snake to be active.


Let's zoom in to take a closer look at those amazing scales, and as you can see the garter snakes scales are not slimy at all, they are smooth and quite dry, but they do have a sheen. They are designed for protection, for movement and to retain moisture.


We left the snake and continued our walk around to the far side of the lake. We were soon stopped in our tracks by the complaints of a little red squirrel who looked like it was in need of a good wash.


The rest of our walk was enjoyable, but for the most part, uneventful, which leaves me with enough space to fill up with photos from previous days that I had been unable to post. This female mallard swam in front of me as I was taking photos of the muskrat a few days ago, and I just had to snap a photo.


From the day that I saw the Cooper's hawks nesting, a beautiful Canada goose in Shoemaker Creek.

The Canada goose was feeding in the shallows while its mate waited on the far bank. I love the reflections on the ripples of the water in this photo.


And from the same day, a white-breasted nuthatch searching the crevices in the bark of a tree.


I'm not exactly sure what it found, but it plucked out what appears to be some kind of large seed. Nuthatches are known to store food under loose bark to eat later, a behaviour known as caching.

A photo of a female mallard, wearing a band, on top of a dead tree stump with the lake behind her.


And finally, an animated GIF I was working on of an American crow cawing in the light of the morning sun, from the same day as the pileated woodpecker post.

Copyright © wildlakeside.blogspot.com 2020 Scott Atkinson All Rights Reserved.


Location: Lakeside Park, 206 Lakeside Dr, Kitchener, ON N2M 4C5, Canada

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