Wildlife at Home, the Wetlands and Lakeside Park

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...

The rain has kept me away from my mornings at Lakeside Park. I have gone but been forced to leave with the torrential rain we have had. Yesterday though after the rain had stopped, my wife and I ventured out for a walk around the park and of course, no walk is complete without a camera. A T-shirt-wearing 16 degrees had everyone out walking too, so we headed off the beaten track, mindful of social distancing. A walk through the grass beside the pollinator meadow would have been uneventful had the grass not moved. I have seen garter snakes at Lakeside Park before but never actually managed to take a photo. They don't usually hang around. This garter snake did though and mindful of my encounter in October of 2019, I decided to keep my distance:  https://wildlakeside.blogspot.com/2019/10/watch-your-step.html . Garter snakes are well camouflaged and I'm sure had it not been for its movement we would not have noticed it at all. The unusually mild weather and the heat o...