Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

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 had a much-needed return to Lakeside Park yesterday. Some free time away from work and a beautifully sunny morning took me to the far side of the lake, way off the beaten track and out into the reed beds, keeping well away from all the extra human visitors we are currently seeing at the Lakeside Park, and also as I had seen some ducks with different markings than I had ever seen before. Not ducks like our resident mallards who will come over and peck at my boots, these were more in tune with the pied-billed grebe and very wary of humans. I needed to be smart if I was going to return home with some useful photos. First up we have the common mergansers; underwater hunters with a hooked bill to help latch onto fish. Mergansers peer through the water to locate their target. And then they dive, chasing their prey. First one, two and then three out of the four mergansers came up with fish. The closest merganser appeared to have caught a large goldfish. In addi...

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 ...

My morning was almost a repeat of yesterday at Lakeside Park. The great blue heron was in position and there was again not enough light for anything other than grainy photos when I first arrived. I felt that I had to upload this dark and grainy photo though, because instead of a catfish, the great blue heron pulled what appears to be a crayfish out of the lake, and that is a first for me: I really did not want to take similar photos to those I took of the great blue heron yesterday, so I decided to move further along to where the beaver was busily working on its daily maintenance, clearing channels in the bed of the stream. Moving mud: And also any branches which were obstructing: I walked inland from there to the wildflower meadow and was happy to find a little hairy caterpillar on a leaf, bejewelled by the morning dew: I heard a car pull into the parking area and met up with a fellow photographer. We swapped stories for a while and then spied the young pied-bill...

No sooner do I mention a grebe (yesterday) than one visits Lakeside Park. At least that is what I thought the small bird was. Looking through my lens from the main seated area, I could tell that it was much smaller than the mallards and it was also diving. It had to be a grebe. It kept diving and surfacing, moving to the far end of the lake: I followed the path around to the top of the lake and found a good place to chain my bike. Looking out over the lake from the side bank, I should have been able to see the grebe, but there was nothing other than mallard ducks and a great blue heron on the far bank. I waited for the grebe to appear, and waited, nothing. I looked around for something to busy myself with and found this curiously striped and spotted caterpillar on the stem of a grapevine. A good chance to use my DIY macro lens. A later google search came up with an eight-spotted forester moth caterpillar: I had given up any thought of seeing the grebe. It must have lef...