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

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