Final Attempt at an After-Work Walk

Today was the first day of November but with the temps so warm, I wanted to take advantage of being outside. Unfortunately I didn't make it to the park until nearly 7pm which gave me just roughly one hour of light. I was optimistic until I came across my first good photo opportunity and remembered how poorly my camera works in even just slightly low light. Right from the paved trail overlooking the pond on the far west side, I could see two Deer wading in the water along the edge. This isn't a real common place to see Deer and I'd definitely never seen them here in this water that is normally full of Ducks. To keep my pics from becoming completely blurry, I laid down to steady my camera on the concrete facade above the drainage pipe. This is why my only image for this post is crooked. The other Deer that was in the water had jumped out by this time and joined another up on the bank that I hadn't noticed before. I did make it all the way around but it was completely dark by the time I got back to the parking lot. I only took one other photo the whole way around -of some cattails- and that was mostly just to see if the photo would even show up on my camera screen. This will definitely be my last after-work-walk of the year.

A good walk soured by stupidity

Today was my last visit to the park this October and the weather is still warmer than normal. I hope it lasts even longer. I arrived just after 8am and the sky was a hazy mix of overcast and spots of orange sunshine trying to break through. My walk was rather quiet and uneventful until I go all the way to the north side just before the bridge where I spotted a Doe and two Fawns. I was glad to see that the trio has so far been spared by the archery hunt that had started at the beginning of the month. I later spotted a large Hawk in a tree across the park -too far for a good picture. As I was making my way around the southeast side I noticed some containers among the cattails about 10 feet off the trail. They looked to be full of dark liquid and I thought to myself "no way would someone toss out used oil in a park." I had to find out for sure so I walked into the cattails, stepping into wet muddy places where my shoes sank halfway. Sure enough, I found multiple gallon containers filled to the brim with used motor oil!!! I could not believe it. I was torn with feeling both anger and disappointment, trying my hardest to figure out why someone would do something so inconsiderate. With how much discussion of environmental concerns that our society has on a regular basis now, the person who did this must either be completely oblivious to all media; extremely uneducated, or have a personal vendetta against something that I don't understand. With a still overwhelming feeling of disbelief, I picked up as many jugs as I could find and brought them to the path. Luckily the caps were still on and holding most of the oil inside. Sadly there were more than pictured here, and I even fished another full gallon out of the water on the opposite side of the trail! As I was gathering up all of these jugs, an older gentleman on a bike came by and decided to help me bring them to the nearest trash can. He then volunteered to call the City to tell them what we had found & have them pick it up. I felt a bit better at this point, thinking -and hoping- that the majority of people would recognize this action as a mistake and try to correct it. I thought about how upset this made me and how minute of an event it was in comparison the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year. The problem with some of the mistakes we make on such a large scale, is that they might never be corrected. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

Autumn Hanging On Strong

It's been almost 2 weeks since my last visit and I am surprised that the warm and mild weather is sill hanging on. Not only that but there are parts of the park that are just now displaying their best Fall colors. As I've said before, Palmer Lake Park is not a good place to see Fall foliage -being it mostly a swamp, overgrown with invasive Buckthorn trees. Even so, it had it's moments today against the rich, blue Autumn sky. This particular view on the north side was one that stuck in my memory from earlier in the year, on a day with lots of frost. How different it looked now. A few other things caught my attention around the park today including busy Squirrels, Chickadees, Deer, Wood Ducks and more Starlings. I am just now learning to recognize and remember the Starling's unique "slide-whistle" sounding call. When I came back around to the south side I spotted a large number of Coots out in the water. Other than maybe Canada Geese, I think this is probably the largest number of one species I've ever seen together at the park. I didn't even try to count them all, and this photo only shows a small section of them. Not much later I was making my way back to the parking lot and ran into another acquaintance I know only from the park. As we stood talking about what we'd seen today, he pointed out a "Marsh Hawk" over the water near the center of the park. I'd never seen one before -or at least knew how to identify one. It didn't take too long before we could see the tell tale white "rump patch" as it swooped upwards. A Marsh Hawk is properly known as a Northern Harrier and a new bird species I can add to my list. As we both watched the clear blue sky, more birds of prey came into view, including a Red-tailed Hawk and also a juvenile Bald Eagle. To our delight, the young Bald Eagle and the Harrier decided to play a friendly game of dogfight in which the two would both show off their aerial skills by playfully attacking each other. It was pretty fun to watch -especially through binoculars. While this was going on, the Red-tailed Hawk glided along much higher up in the sky, almost an invisible speck. Also, here is the first photo from today combined with the photo I remember taking in early February. If you think the top photo was in black and white you would be mistaken. But I can sure see why one might assume that when you compare it to the bottom photo. Click on the photo for a larger view.

October Evening

With the beautiful weather over the weekend I was up for another visit on Monday after work. This is getting increasingly harder to do now that sunset is coming earlier by a few minutes every day. I arrived at the park just before 6pm and the sun was already casting a horizontal orange glow on the trees. I saw one single Doe right off the bat on the southern wood chip trail but she was quite far away. Later on the north side another Doe was much closer to the trail and as I watched I noticed another much larger Deer in the background. To my surprise it was a Buck with either 4 or 5 point antlers. It was already getting dark and I had a hard time getting a photo that wasn't completely blurry. I'd knelt down for stability in taking a picture and much like many other times, the Doe became curious and walked right up to me, stopping within about a 10 foot range. Though it was quite dark now, she was close enough for a much better photo than I would get of the Buck. I moved along after a few minutes as I knew I'd be racing the clock to get back before it was totally dark. I could see a nice sunset forming and I picked up my pace even more to get to the southeast side for a more open view. The sun set so fast you could pick up on the changing color in real time. I had one more surprise in store when I got back near the parking lot. I was just coming up the hillside from the paved trail when I noticed something moving quickly down the hill to my right. There were TWO Coyotes together trotting one behind another along the cattails. I had absolutely no chance of a photo because it was too dark now but it was a pretty cool thing to see none the less. It's rare for me to even see Coyotes outside of winter but two of them together was even more rare -in fact it was a first for me.