Sunday, November 29, 2009

Fall migration

Well, the sun was nowhere to be seen today finally making it feel more like a typical, late-November day. Still haven't seen a single deer in about 3 weeks now. Wonder where the heck they are. After coming out of the woods on the east side, a fellow park goer and I both stopped to watch and listen to an extremely loud commotion of Canadian Geese. About 5 separate flocks came from every direction and seemed to meet up directly above us making one giant flock. I'm guessing there must have been about 130 or more total making quite a noise. I tried to get a photo but they trailed out so long that I just couldn't capture them all. Nothing else was moving after that and I barely had any good reasons to pull out my camera save for this cluster of hard tree-mushrooms.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Preparing for winter

Gettin' a little colder lately -in the mornings anyway- and just not much to see for wildlife. The sun is still shining though creating some interesting scenery as the park prepares for winter. The same pond with all the ducks last Sunday was just barely frozen over today. Cattails are exploding everywhere now and it's tough to find one that's not seeding out. Their cotton-like seeds are clinging to everything and near the south side of the park the underbrush looks like it's been coated in freshly fallen white snow. The only critter I saw this day was a muskrat. He was sitting on a floating log where the creek drains back out of the main bodies of water. I'll have to check back to see if he is building his winter home in the same area.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Wood Duck

The woods are really starting to thin out now and you can see much further through the trees. Things that I've never noticed before are now in plain sight like this huge beehive just a few feet off the wood chip trail. Not much wildlife seen this day but at one of the small ponds near the baseball fields I spotted this big group of Ducks. There in the middle was just one male Wood Duck among about 25 other Mallards. I didn't think they associated with each other but apparently they do. The Wood Duck however was constantly being harassed by a few of the Mallards. As they chased him back and forth, the whole group just getting closer to me so I snapped a ton of pictures. The fairly sunny sky really showed off his bright colors and iridescent green-blue-purple head. After a while he ended up only just feet from me.