Slugs and Bugs and Such

After going through a couple weeks without any significant rainfall, we are starting to get some here and there, mostly overnights. Seems like the wet weather brings the slugs out onto the trail and it's getting harder to avoid stepping on them. There are also tons of these small brown butterflies with orange stripes. Butterflies in my opinion are as equally hard to photograph as birds as they also never sit still. These are common butterflies I see all the time but have yet to learn their name. I'm also still seeing a fair amount of Garter Snakes and it's surprising how big they are already. This one was over three feet long but less colorful than the one I'd photographed earlier with orange speckles. On the south side I spotted this Frog right up by the railroad ties that make up the overlook onto the lake. He didn't seem to move much even when I almost stepped on him. I've also yet to learn much about frogs versus toads so I'm just guessing it was a frog as it was rather large. I will have to pick up another Field guide from Stan Tekiela!

Spring Songsters

Just off the woodchip trail on the south side this evening I caught a glimpse of a gray colored bird making crazy sounds. None of the calls themselves were crazy really but what caught my attention was that they were extremely different from one another and were being made in quick succession by this one bird. It sounded like 20+ birds combined into one. It wouldn't stay in one place for very long and was tough to get a photo of as it bounced around inside thick trees. My field guide confirms that it is a Gray Catbird who are masters at mimicing other birds. Since I've spotted this one singing, I can now recognize their sound. I've likely heard them all the time but would have never guessed that it was just one bird. In later encounters I've listened more closely and can pick out obvious impressions of a Robin, Chickadee and Red-Winged Blackbird. Very shortly after I heard -then spotted a Baltimore Oriole. Although it's not a great shot, this is definitely better than my last attempt. Again like the Catbird, Orioles seem to stay hidden within high tree tops, rarely coming out to the edge unless they're about to fly over to a different tree. They also have a very unique call that I've come to recognize after seeing them make that sound. Most of my future encounters have involved only hearing them and never actually seeing them. After hearing them a few times I invented my own alphanumeric representation to help me describe to someone else what they sound like. Here goes: C-O2, Oh-Oh, C-Oh-C-O2. (with C as in "see")

Young Bucks

There wasn't much to see this Monday evening until just before Shingle Creek on the north side. There right off the trail was a group of four deer who were way more interested in eating than the people passing by. I immediately noticed most of them were bucks -in fact I think all were. They were amazingly close to the trail and I could easily see their short velvety antler nubs. I stopped dead in my tracks as it's a true rarity to see so many bucks together. I think they were possibly too young to know any better yet and they just stood there munching on the low hanging leaves of the trees. With the combination of their constant movement and the dimming light, I was getting one crummy photo after another. I was just dying being this close and unable to fully capture it. Out of the 30+ photos I took, these were the least blurry of them. At least now I know the park should have a larger share of bucks this year.

Walk after kayak excursion

After a couple hours of kayaking it was still early in the day so I decided to walk around the park. Upon coming to the pine tree where I'd found the bird's egg last Wednesday I decided to peek my head in. There sitting on the nest was a female Cardinal whom I scared out quickly. I couldn't see any babies but now I know what kind of bird the egg belongs to. Later on the paved path I noticed this snail poking his head high up out of his shell. I always thought they had just one set of tentacles but it was easier to see from this guy that there are two. I finally did run across a few deer on the southwest side. This is an unusual place to see them but I have been seeing more of them here over the past couple of weeks. There were two who walked right out in front of me on the wood chip trail. When I went for my camera they got spooked and darted into the thick woods. A short while later one more jumped out and ran across the field where they plow the snow into in the winter. I don't get many "action" shots with my low-end camera but this one sort of worked. Right before the mouth of the creek, I noticed a couple of big mushrooms down in a low spot off the left side of the trail. I'm pretty sure they are Morel Mushrooms and there were just three of them -two growing together and one on it's own. The looked so top-heavy that they were about to tip over.