Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

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...

Since I first saw the black-crowned night-heron on the third of August it has become a regular early morning acquaintance. But only very briefly before it disappears among the high branches of the trees that edge Shoemaker Lake. A lone Caspian Tern has also been a welcome visitor to Lakeside Park every morning. It circles with seemingly effortless flaps of its wings, it swoops, stalls motionless in midair, it folds its wings and then dives headfirst. More times than not, it comes up with nothing more than wet feathers, but when it does hit its target the Tern leaves Lakeside Park with its prize, only to return a while later looking for its next unsuspecting catch. The young belted kingfishers are becoming masters of the hunt.  Using their skills effectively to score on almost every attempt. There is always the problem of the scales though, they tend to get everywhere! A quick rub and it's all better. The mallards and geese at Lakeside Park are quite often taken for granted. They ar...

Watching the kingfishers, enjoying the cool morning breeze blowing over Shoemaker Lake. It was blissful! I'd missed a few mornings at Lakeside Park with the much-needed rainfall we'd had. I returned to the lake on Monday the third of August for the photo of the black-crowned night-heron that I included at the end of my last post. On Thursday though, the temperature was a little cooler than of late and the light breeze was just perfect. Mallards were feeding at my feet in the shallows, painted turtles had pulled themselves out onto the dead branches poking through the surface of the water, and the kingfishers were calling out to each other a little further away, chasing whichever one of them was lucky enough to have caught a fish.  And then everything paused... there was silence. The silhouette of a large pair of wings held at full stretch glided in from my side. The kingfishers disappeared from sight, the mallards stopped feeding, everyone was watching the predator that was coa...

I made a claim in my last post in regards to the timing of the snapping turtles nesting and the full moon. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps I was a little presumptuous in that assertion, or maybe I was correct in that it was the full moon that triggered the initial nesting. Anyway, as always it was awesome to see the snappers out and about and here is one more photo from that morning and an explanation of why I now believe I may not have been completely correct. A few mornings have come and gone since the snapping turtles left Shoemaker Lake and made their walk up the bank to nest. There were, unfortunately no more sightings of the snapping turtles since that morning. I'd taken an assortment of photos during that time: A series of shots of a great blue heron as it lifted itself clear of the lake. And also this beautiful little killdeer feeding; taking full advantage of the waterlogged ground at the base of Shoemaker Lake. Then a storm hit us on Tuesd...