Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

My last post gave witness to some of the many colourful warblers that passed through Lakeside Park on their migration north. But warblers were not the only birds to visit Lakeside Park on their journey from America. Baltimore orioles also came with the warblers and they are still here. The males are brightly coloured with the contrast of black on their heads and wings. They rarely sit still for long, tending to spend most of their time up in the tops of the trees, but they do occasionally come down low enough for the odd photo opportunity. Baltimore orioles are fond of fruit, nectar and judging from the following photo, really big insects. Female Baltimore orioles are also colourful, though they lack the black on their heads. That does make perfect sense, as they will soon be sitting on eggs and the need to be camouflaged will be paramount. The young males are easy to distinguish with the black on their heads being in a transitional stage. They show ...

I had meant to publish these images on my last post, but I felt that it was already getting pretty full. We have had goslings at Lakeside Park for a few days now. They are so cute and fluffy and they do have the ability to make people stop in their tracks to take a photo or two on their cell phone or camera. I am no different from anyone else in that respect, but it seems that every morning I am given better photos, so here are my best and cutest so far. After their breakfast, this group of five goslings huddled together and were soon joined by their mother who snuggled up to them and then covered her goslings with her wing for safety as they took an early morning nap. Not to be outdone by the goslings at Lakeside Park, we also have cute ducklings. The warbler migration is now in full swing, and that can be attested to by the numbers of birdwatchers and photographers who are also migrating to Lakeside Park and who are at times outnumbering the warblers. It is good ...

Last comes first in this post. The last thing which I took a photo of this morning, were these hairy, white caterpillars which I almost rode into on my way back from Lakeside Park. They were suspended from a black walnut tree, right over the trail, at head height. There were lots of gossamer threads strung from that tree, all with their own abseiling caterpillars, which were wriggling a dazzling dance in the sunlight: If there is such a thing as a deluge of birds, then I experienced it this morning. I was literally surrounded at one point, with woodpeckers, the northern flicker, a nuthatch, chickadees, young robins etc. And as usual, I missed more photo opportunities than I took. Here is another photo of a juvenile baltimore oriole with what looks like a grasshopper in its grasp: A female rose-breasted grosbeak, which I had to include even though the pose and photo quality are not that good: This young bird, which I had to use my Merlin app to identify as a young warblin...