Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

A beautifully sunny morning saw the aerial hunters performing over Lakeside Park. The arctic tern has been a frequent visitor in the mornings but just for a short while before moving on. Back lit as the sun had just moved up over the trees, and even though the focus isn't quite there, I had to include this photo which recorded all of the tern's splashes on the lake's still water: The kingfishers do not appear to like me at all. They will complain and take off to the farthest side of the lake whenever I am sighted, telling the whole world of my whereabouts. This morning though, one let me get a little closer than normal. Not looking the prettiest that I have seen, a very bedraggled kingfisher: The kingfisher does look much prettier in flight though, gliding down for its next meal: I feel very lucky to get any half-decent photos showing flight as my 500mm Tamron lens is manual, which requires a degree of judgement on my part and as I said, a lot of luck. This...

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 ...

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.