Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

I must admit that I am no expert when it comes to thrushes in Ontario. I am well acquainted with thrushes in the UK, but these guys have completely different names. I will do my best to hopefully identify correctly. There are I believe two possible candidates,  Swainson's thrush and the hermit thrush. Very similar-looking birds. One outstanding difference between them appears to be a white ring around the eye of the hermit thrush compared to a buffy eyering on Swainson's thrush. Another distinguishing detail is the colour of their tailfeathers. The hermit thrush has more of a cinnamon colour to its tailfeathers, and this photo does show that. A white eyering and cinnamon tailfeathers, I'm going with a hermit thrush. This photo also shows both the cinnamon tailfeathers and the white eyering. There were many of these thrushes working their way through the leaf litter of the woodland on the far side of Shoemaker Lake. They were very sensitive to any movement. I h...

This morning was special, Lakeside Park gifted me with so many photo opportunities. Photos of an animal that I have not seen at Lakeside Park for a long time and also of some elusive birds that I had wanted to better my previous photos of. It was a cold but gloriously sunny morning, everything crunched underfoot from the nights low of -2 degrees. I followed the sunlight along the bank of the lake and was preoccupied, focusing on a northern flicker that was drumming on a hollow dead tree when I noticed a distraction off to my left as it climbed its way up a tree. The last time that I saw a raccoon at Lakeside Park was back in March of 2018, and that was a young raccoon ( https://wildlakeside.blogspot.com/2019/07/a-wet-and-cold-raccoon.html ). This raccoon was a large adult. I took a few photos before moving along. The northern flicker's drumming and calling had attracted a mate. It presented itself to its partner, tail feathers spread out in an orange fan, fri...