Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

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...

Tripods were set, photographers and birdwatchers alike had their favourite locations on the banks of Shoemaker Lake, ready to observe the migration of the warblers through Lakeside Park and to identify as many as possible. But sometimes what you expect is not exactly what you get. This bird made everyone forget the warblers for the few minutes that it landed in the treetops above us. Clinging to end of a single branch with its extremely sharp and curved talons, this osprey surveyed the lake for its next meal. The osprey graced us with its company just long enough for a few photos. It took off to the far side of Shoemaker lake, and to the unwanted attention of the male red-winged blackbirds. Everyone's focus switched back to the job in hand which was in the case of the binocular wielding birdwatchers, to identify how many warblers they could see, and for the photographers, to capture good photos of birds that we do not normally see in Kitchener. A few of the warblers, like the ...