Creeping Camouflage

I was all set to leave Lakeside Park this morning without many photos. I'd seriously underestimated the weather and how cold it was going to be. I was literally shivering in my rubber boots and heading to the warmth of my little car when the smallest of movements caught my eye.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that a small piece of bark was moving up this tree. This bird's colouring is designed to seamlessly blend into the surface on which it hunts.

I'm more used to seeing brown creepers moving through the trees in groups of other small birds, for safety during the winter months. This brown creeper, however, was hunting over the jigsaw puzzle of cracks and crevices in this tree's bark all on its own.

Only when a brown creeper is silhouetted on the side of a tree's trunk does it really stand out to the naked eye.

It appears I'm writing this post last first, so I'll continue in reverse with this photo of a northern flicker.

The northern flicker was feeding on the berries of a staghorn sumac bush, just off the walkway, next to the seated area.

After eating its fill, the northern flicker flew up to a loftier position, called out a few times and then preened its polka dot feathers.

From the top side of the lake, the calls of the pied-billed grebe resounded. It was halfway across the lake and heading towards the far bank.

Where it met up with its mate. Taken from the opposite side of the lake, there is not a great deal of detail in this photo, but there are definitely two pied-billed grebes at Lakeside Park.

As I took the photo of the grebes, a grackle busied itself collecting nesting material. It was pulling up the dried stems of grasses directly in front of me.

The male goldfinches now appear resplendent in their almost full summer plumage.

Not quite as brightly coloured, but displayed with sharp detail in the contrasting light of the morning sun was this song sparrow which was warming up, sitting on the edge of the reed beds at the top of the lake.

Above it and to the left sat another sparrow, a white-throated sparrow. The song sparrow and the white-throated sparrow are both beautiful singers, but the white-throated sparrow's song is more of a long whistle.

As I mentioned earlier, not many photos today as it was simply too cold for me to hang around. My final photo was my first taken at Lakeside Park as I waited for the sun to rise up above the tree line.

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