Garter Snake

'Tis December 2nd, and a mild overcast day. Took Dad and The Beastie for a walk at the Little Cataraqui Creek Conservation Area, fed the chickadees, and headed for home. When we came back past the Outdoor Center I dawdled along looking for late-season blooming plants in their flower garden, and spotted a garter snake lying on one of the edging stones.

Moon and Jupiter

Just when I was getting back into photographing the night sky, along came the rains. And clouds. This is putting me into withdrawal. This morning just before 2:00 a.m. I woke up, went to stoke up the woodstove, and saw the moon shining in the window. Spaceweather.com told me that the moon and Jupiter would be in close conjuction, so I got dressed, grabbed the camera and headed down to the beach to take a few shots before the thick clouds came rolling back in.

Odd effect with Jupiter

I was out taking some star trail shots, with Jupiter in the picture, and when I downloaded the pics I got odd dots and arcs. I've not had this happen before, if there was some vibration in the camera, ALL of the stars in the pictures would be affected. I've cropped and enlarged the sections with Jupiter.

Encounters of the prickly kind

My latest thing to try to photograph at night is the ISS (International Space Station). Caught it tonight cutting across the Big Dipper.












Ater the ISS had passed by, I headed over to another spot to see what the stars were doing where there was a thin film of clouds, thought maybe Jupiter would be over the pines. Good thing I had my flashlight, or I might have tripped over this porcupine.

At first he (she?) took off into the cattails at the shore, and I headed over to another part of the lawn to set up the camera and tripod. After a few minutes I heard noises, it was coming towards me, making a "hmmmm hmmmm" strange nasally kind of call. It came over and sniffed the tripod leg, and when I said "Well??" it took off again. I moved about 30 feet to another spot, and saw the porkie way off in the flashlight beam. I started to imitate the noise it was making, and it came trotting over to investigate. When I snapped pictures the flash made it move back, but I kept making the noise and it kept sniffing around. You can see by the picture of porkie sniffing at my shoe how close it came.

Exploding meteor

Where did summer go??? Well, at least we're now into the season of clearer nights with a little less haze, and not too cold to stand otside for a length of time. Last night I took the camera down to the dock to play around with some long exposure shots, took a few of the moon setting, and then a few star trail shots. In one shot I managed to catch a meteor, and when I downloaded it and took a closer look at the enlargement, saw that there were bits trailing off as though it had been breaking up. Nice to catch a meteor, even nicer to catch some of the extra "action".










Wide angle shot.













Enlarged detail of the meteor.

Ringneck snake

A couple of nights ago, when I headed out the front door, I nearly stepped on a snake on the front walkway. I shone the flashlight on it and saw the ring round the neck, so scooped up the snake for a closer look. Sure enough it was a lovely little ringneck snake. These are pretty, gentle snakes, very silky to the touch, and and are quite clean, never stink. I love the bright yellow colouring on the underside. I took several pictures of this one as it slid through my fingers, then turned it loose into the foliage beside the front door so it could continue on doing what it had been doing before getting near-trampled by a tired clumsy human.

Promethea moth

About 3:00 a.m. this morning, when Tanka had to go out, I spied this moth at the windowsill of my cabin. It was cold, and I tickled it onto my finger and brought it inside for a closer look. It had a lot of spiderwebs stuck to it, I pulled those off gently with the use of a pair of tweezers. I set her in a dish where she stayed quietly til morning. I took her outside, set up the camera, tickled her onto the trunk of an old oak tree, and managed to get some pictures before she warmed up and took off into the trees.

Mantisfly

Sometimes I'm amazed what I find in our house. Today I was picking up my laundry basket, and right beside it on the wood box was a mantisfly. I ran and grabbed my bug catcher and put it into the aquarium, then set up a box with a screen to try to photograph it. It was not the most cooperative model, kept moving off the milkweed leaf I had set up for it, but I did manage to get a few shots. It's windy today, I'm hoping if things calm down and cool down after supper, I'll take it outside and see if I can get a few shots before it flies away. I was happy to find this rarely seen insect, it's only the second one I've ever found.

Moving turtle eggs.

The other night I saw a painted turtle laying eggs in our volleyball court. Being only an inch deep and in the right front position, it was guaranteed that these were going to get trampled, so I decided to move them to a corner of the beach where they wouldn't be disturbed. Dad came up with the idea of digging down around the nest, and picking up the whole clump of sand, eggs and all, in one lump. So that's what we did. Dug a moat around the nest, pinned a towel around the lump to hold it together, and then slid the big square shovel under it. We dug a hole down at the beach where we've seen turtles put their nests, and carefully tucked the lump into the hole, filled the sides with sand, and pulled out the towel. For now we have some cinder blocks around it to keep the raccoons from finding it, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so once the smell of human and turtle is gone, we can remove the blocks and just let nature take its course.

Second hummingbird nest

I am not a morning person. It takes a few cups of coffee and some time to pry my eyes open. This morning, I was sipping my coffee, standing in front of the window, and peering sleepily out at the landscape, when what to my wondering eyes should appear? A hummingbird. I watched her land on a birch branch about 15 feet from the window. She wiggled, adjusted, and settled, and it took me a few seconds to realize that she was settling onto a nest. She's been on and off, looks like she may just be completing construction. I showed Dad, took a couple pictures, and now we're staying away from the front windows, we want her to settle in comfortably. All these years of checking trees by the house, and now we've finally got one that we can see from the comfort of our livingroom.

Snowshoe hare

A couple new pics of one of our residence bunnies. They're pretty bold, pretty much ignore us. Got this shot of Dad putting the new tire on the wheelbarrow, you can see Bun sitting right behind him about 6 feet away munching on the clovers, couldn't be bothered. In the second shot you can see that there's still a wee bit of winter white fur on the legs.

Leaf Beetle

Doing a bit of housecleaning on the laptop, organizing some photo files. On April 25th I had been taking pictures of some hepaticas, and spotted this beautiful little beetle with deep dark green markings. I looked it up in my insect book, looks like it is some kind of leaf beetle.

Lousewort

Lousewort, or wood betony. Looks like a fern crossed with an orchid. I don't see many of these around.

While I was taking pictures of the lousewort I looked over and spotted this treefrog curled up and snoozing on the sarsaparilla.

Hummingbird nest

I kept checking the clump of maple trees where a hummingbird has nested the past 3 summers in a row, and this afternoon I was delighted to see yet another nest, although this one is in a higher branch. Better for her, more difficult for me to see and photograph the action when the youngsters are growing.

Lilacs

One of the lovliest sights of spring: lilacs in bloom. And along with it a host of insects feeding on the nectar. I actually had a calm sunny afternoon and a few minutes' free time to spend photographing a tiger swallowtail and a few clearwing moths.

Snowshoe hare

These are from May 6th. One of our resident snowshoe hares showed up still sporting a bit of its white winter coat. Looked like it was wearing white stockings. It doesn't seem to have much fear of us, we can get within 10 feet of it before it hops off, and then only for a short distance. Of course, it doesn't take much distance to attract my German shepherd's attention. Last night I had the Beastie out for his walk, and BunBun decided to hop around the corner of a building right under his nose. Beastie exploded into the chase. Having one hundred pounds of dog hit the end of a leash at a full run tends to pop even the biggest and heaviest of us off our feet. Fortunately I've learned to brace for impact, knees and elbows flexed, bringing Beastie to a full stop. I'm glad there's not many around to watch this performance, it must be highly amusing to bystanders.

(Reminder to self: sprinkle a bit of pepper around the hostas before bunny finds them and enjoys a salad.)

Hickory buds

One of my favourite things to see and photograph in spring is the opening shagbark hickory buds. The small buds suddenly explode to the size of a tulip, then start to expand and open up, revealing enlarging leaf bracts.

Black Rat Snake

This morning, while prowling about with the camera, I came across my first black rat snake of the season, basking on the drive beside our garage. I reached down and gave it a little tweak of the tail and it responded by curling up into the classic curled aggressive/defensive position. It wanted nothing more than to be left alone in the warm sunshine, but Dad had the tractor out and about and I didn't want it sitting in the road, so I took several pictures and then carried it off to the side and shooed it out of harm's way. It wasn't until looking at the downloaded pictures that I realized there was something odd about this snake: it has no tongue.

UPDATE: I've been informed that snakes can retract their tongues all the way back. It just looks wierd, I can't recall having an encounter with a snake that didn't, at some point, flicker the tongue at me. I took 46 shots, not one of them shows the tongue.

Spring

In the midst of cold rainy days, we had a brief respite, another warm sunny day. Hard to believe we're supposed to get snow and rain over the next couple of days.

On the way out to the cottage today, I checked a spot along the road where I always see my first Dutchman's Breeches. I wasn't disappointed, there in the rocks were leaves, and even a few blossoms coming out. Out by the cottage, in the sunny places on the rocks, the first leaves were just appearing.

There is a sunny hillside up from the lake where hepaticas grow, there were several coming out in bloom.

My favourite roadside pond had its usual show of turtles out on the logs.

One turtle closer to the road was reluctant to leave its warm perch. There were 3 other turtles basking alongside this one that plopped into the water when we pulled up, but this guy held his ground, posing and showing off pretty spring colours.

"Our" loon is back, I can't recall having seen one return to the lake so early. Many mourning cloak butterflies and a few tortoiseshells were out and about.

The ponds are screaming with spring peepers and chorus frogs, thought I heard a few woodfrog quacks in between, but can't be totally sure due to the cacaphony of sound.

At Glenburnie I'm finally hearing the woodcock peenting.

Painted turtles

It was a gorgeous sunny spring day today, so we headed out to the cottage to check on things. On the roadside north of Loughborough Lake coltsfoot was blooming in the roadside ditch.

In one of the roadside ponds turtles were out on the logs.







We saw 7 mourning cloak butterflies along the way, on the walk back out the lane I managed to catch one of them with the camera. It was stubbornly sitting there with wings folded, it would let me close enough for a good shot, but wouldn't open the wings. I finally thought to cast my shadow upon it, and then it opened the wings, and I stepped aside to take the shot of it in the sun. I also saw an anglewing, probably a tortoiseshell, flitting past me by the lake. There was one little orange jobbie along the lane but it took off before I could get a shot.



We picked up 4 large bagfuls of pine cones off the lawn, there was a bumper crop this year. Judging from the piles of chewed up cones the squirrels had plenty to eat over winter.

The phoebes are back, they serenaded us as we worked. One green frog jumped into the water when I walked along the shore. The ice is off the lake, except for the swamps along the shore.

During the drive back there were half a dozen wild turkey hens trotting on the road, tried to get a pick but they got into the brush too quickly.

Took a walk out to the lake, another lovely spring day. The ice is starting to melt back from the shoreline. I checked along the boat beach, and found a green frog sitting at the edge of the ice. Some chipmunks were scurrying about and a robin was singing. On the walk back out the laneway there were 3 flocks of midges flying about 4 feet above the snow.

The other springtime ritual witnessed along the way was the annual race-yer-snowmobile-over-the-open-water-at-Loughborough Lake. Flocks of people milling about on the bridge hoping to see one of the sleds stall out and sink, an assortment of vehicles lining both sides of the highway for almost a mile, cops aplenty, ride checks either side of the milling masses, and one enterprising person taking advantage of the whole gathering with his hotdog stand. I would have liked to have stopped and photographed these antics of Homo sapiens, but had my father and the dog with me, both of them tired and wanting to get home.

Amherst Island

Yesterday I tagged along with the Teen group of the Kingston Field Naturalists, they were headed over to the KFN property to check the purple martin nest boxes. It was a lovely sunny day, along the way we saw a killdeer, many robins and redwinged blackbirds, Canada geese, common mergansers, and flocks of other ducks. On the shoreline of the property there were 3 big piles of ice that had been shoved up by the wind, always an amazing sight to see.

There were 6 Teens and 4 adults on the outing. Martin houses were tipped down and inspected, some swallow boxes were also cleaned out, and we looked for other things of interest. One snowy owl was hunkered down in the rocks, hard to see from a distance, we didn't go near so as not to disturb it. A rough-legged hawk and a redtail hawk were flying about, as well as some crows and ravens. There were signs of an abundance of voles, we even saw some scampering through the grass. Some owl pellets were found and examined, one of the boys gave me "the look" when I referred to it as owl puke. Anne does an incredible job with the Juniors and Teens. I've never been good with kids, but I think that one of the most important things that the KFN does is education for young people.

On the ferry ride back we looked for birds, didn't see any unusual species, but we did get some entertainment from a gull chasing a crow. The crow had a piece of fish in its beak and the gull was bound and determined to steal it from him. The resulting aerial acrobatics demonstrated what skillful fliers both these species are.

When the weather is cold enough and conditions are right, I get some really interesting frost formations on my porch windows. These were taken March 1, 2009. It's one of the few joys of winter, I never get tired of photographing these.

Porcupine den

On Wednesday, March 4th, we headed out to our roadside pond to cut some firewood. The beavers had flooded the area a couple years ago and killed off a bunch of trees. I got the bright idea that while the snow was crusty, to have Dad cut some of the trees into lengths, and I could drag them to the road. To one side of the pond are some rock outcroppings, ever since I can remember

there's been a porcupine or two using the sheltered spaces for dens. While Dad got started cutting a fallen ash tree on the hillside, I clambered over the rocks to check to see if there was any sign of porky.

There were tracks, fresh droppings...and the tail of a live porcupine. You can see how it would be well protected from predators with only the backside and quills protruding. I didn't have time to investigate further, had to get back to the chores.

Here is my father, carrying a log over his shoulder, chainsaw in the other hand. The man is 84 years old. I hope I'm in half as good a shape at that age!

We made sure we left the larger "nesting trees" for the birds. There were a couple of fallen trees on the hillside that were a bit too rotton for firewood, I had Dad cut those into 6 foot lengths and hauled them onto the ice. I set them up in strategic positions with one end that would rest on something solid. Hopefully when the ice melts these pieces will settle into a position that provides sunning perches for turtles. This is one of my favourite ponds, there are plenty of wood frogs living here.