Red squirrel

Red squirrels are quite common in our area, take a walk in the woods in any direction and you soon have one chattering, chirping and scolding at your passage. Trying to get a good photograph, however, is a bit of a challenge. Their jerky quick movements and habit of getting behind branches and brush make it difficult to get a clear shot. Yesterday I finally came across one sitting on the rocks, enjoying her snack of pine cones. You can often find piles of chewed up cones, but rarely catch a red squirrel in the act of actually eating one.

Bunchberry: Blooming in September

This morning I led a field trip for the Kingston Field Naturalists at the Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area just north of Kingston, in search of fungi. We found several species of mushrooms, boletes, and bracket fungi, a list of which I'll be compiling later. Other species of note: a wood frog, leopard frog, heard peepers and treefrogs, heard a catbird calling, saw a viceroy butterfly, and got chattered at by chickadees and scolded by bluejays. Two of us in the group of 6 participants thought we heard a grouse drumming, but couldn't be 100% certain. One interesting thing of note: we found a patch of bunchberries with 3 of the plants in full bloom.

Dragonflies

One of the things I enjoy photographing in late summer and early fall are dew-covered insects. I found these 2 dragonflies on the weeds down beside the lake in mid-September.

Fathead loon

I took to calling one of our resident loons "Fathead", it was a large squat loon with a wide head, and sat hunched like a bulldog most of the time. It's nearly impossible to tell loons apart, but Fathead stands out in a crowd, as you can see in this picture. Fathead is the one in the middle. Even when "sitting up", when next to another loon you can see that the neck and head is just a bit broader than the other birds. It was also an aggressive bird, the moment I'd pull off the shore with my canoe or kayak, Fathead could be a half mile away, literally, and would immediately start making a beeline towards me, and start squawking when it got near. It also seemed to enjoy sneaking up behind me, get within 10 feet, and start yodelling. One should not be startled like that early in the morning when one is sitting in a smll watercraft. The good side to this behaviour, however, was that the bird was often close and gave me good opportunities for photography.

Lightning

You'd think with this summer of rain and storms at night that I'd get plenty of opportunity to practise what I've learned with long exposures and get a few shots of lightning. No such luck. The spectacular flashes that I used to watch from the window just haven't appeared this year, it's as if the fates are laughing at me and directing the storms around me, out of range of my lens. Last night we had a couple little storms pass over, I managed to catch one measly little sparkler.

Loon Chase

Seems kind of late in the year for loons to be chasing each other, but these two were at it August 17th. Looking at time stamp on my camera, start to finish of photographing them, that was 15 minutes, and the chase started at least 2 minutes before I got down to the dock. If I had known it would last so long I would have hopped into my canoe and paddled out a bit further for some better pictures, this shot is about the best of the lot.

Downy Yellow Violets

A discussion on the nature list reminded me to check on how the seed pods of our downy yellow violets were progressing.