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...

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...

Viewing the expanse of Shoemaker Lake from the bottom edge of the lake is a great way to start a morning's birdwatching. The whole of the lake is visible and with the aid of binoculars or a camera equipped with a telephoto lens, it's easy to pick out the great blue heron, the kingfishers and on the odd occasion even an osprey. I'd already located the kingfishers and this really is a great time to watch them hunt as the young have fledged and are busy honing their fishing skills. They are numerous and at times present all around Shoemaker Lake. Scanning further around the lake, I located a heron much smaller than the great blue heron. Not a night-heron as they have sadly been missing from Lakeside Park this year, this was a young green heron perched on the dead branches of a black walnut tree. It was way over to my left, standing out, highlighted in contrast to the shade of the black walnut's leaves behind it. Some kingfishers were also on that side of the lake, and so I...