Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

The 9th of May saw the temperature drop down to freezing! The soft and squishy waterlogged ground surrounding Shoemaker Lake that could previously only be traversed with the aid of rubber boots had now been transformed into a soft toffee type substance with a thin icy crust. My first thoughts were, what is going to happen to all of the birds that depend on insects to feed? Well, this American Robin had a backup plan. I'm guessing that the seeds of Staghorn Sumac are not the favourite food item for American robins, but in times of need, they are always there. The yellow-rumped warblers were still somehow managing to find insects to feed on. The kinglets also, although they are more adapted to hunting for food in much colder temperatures. And quite to my amazement I actually saw a hummingbird. We had a mixture of snow and hail over the course of the day. The next photo shows a hermit thrush with snowflakes falling around it. Moving on to Sunday which was almost a...

The title of this post is not misspelt, Sunday was a really grainy day for taking photographs. There was very little available light and it was attempting to rain in spits and spots. But, just because my camera was using a faster ISO and the photos are grainy, it does not mean they are unusable. From the reed beds on the far side of Lakeside Park, we have this angry-looking bird. It is, of course, a grackle and not angry at all, just displaying. Let's take a closer look at that display in action. Grackles puff out their feathers from head to tail when they display. And from the side, they look just as impressive. I've been keeping an eye on a pair of red-bellied woodpeckers who have gradually chipped out the perfect nesting hole for themselves way up at the top of a dead tree. This photo shows one of the woodpeckers apparently admiring its work, but there was a problem. Prime nesting holes are at a premium at Lakeside Park, and the red-bellied woodpecke...

I was all set to leave Lakeside Park this morning without many photos. I'd seriously underestimated the weather and how cold it was going to be. I was literally shivering in my rubber boots and heading to the warmth of my little car when the smallest of movements caught my eye. You'd be forgiven for thinking that a small piece of bark was moving up this tree. This bird's colouring is designed to seamlessly blend into the surface on which it hunts. I'm more used to seeing brown creepers moving through the trees in groups of other small birds, for safety during the winter months. This brown creeper, however, was hunting over the jigsaw puzzle of cracks and crevices in this tree's bark all on its own. Only when a brown creeper is silhouetted on the side of a tree's trunk does it really stand out to the naked eye. It appears I'm writing this post last first, so I'll continue in reverse with this photo of a northern flicker. T...

I have not been to Lakeside Park since the 2nd of April and I must admit that I am missing my walks around the lake and my observations of the wildlife there. Work has kept me too busy to even go through my photos, but I feel I should make an effort. The last time that I observed this bird at Lakeside Park was in October of 2019. From the front, it is a strange-looking creature with its black bib and those eyes that appear to see everything from every direction. It is remarkably hard to get close to. From the side, it is easily identifiable as a pied-billed grebe. It was extremely cautious, and the slightest suggestion that there may be something human-looking and it moved off, and out of range. I circled the lake a few times in my rubber boots attempting to sneak up unawares, but this grebe was way too canny for me. After my initial photos, the best that I could do was to take shots from a good distance away, and while being not very detailed, they do show what ...