Good Morning Presqu’ile!   Oh how I love you!

There are so many reasons to love Presqu’ile Park, no matter when you visit.You can show up early on a hazy fall morning, and observe as Presqu’ile’s beaches and offshore islands start to come alive with sound and activity.

Migrating shorebirds start to wake up, and begin their daily search for food.

If you sit or lie down very still, the shorebirds will walk right past you as they are feeding.   It is endlessly entertaining to watch them.

A fall drive around the park may reveal a Ruffed Grouse, foraging at the side of the road for breakfast.  Look at those gorgeous feather patterns!

As seasons change and the weather turns colder, the park becomes very quiet.    I think winter is when Presqu’ile really shows its magic.

Little by little the lake freezes over.   Depending on the wind and the waves, the lakeshore looks different every time I visit in the winter, and each time is spectacular.Presqu’ile is famous for its ice volcanoes.   When the wind is just right, water from the waves will spray up through these holes in the ice.  I like them best at sunset, when they are lit up like some alien landscape.   Snowy owls love to use the offshore islands to hunt. Even in the dead of winter there is so much beauty to be found at Presqu’ile.Spring comes to Presqu’ile, and with it, the busiest time of year.A walk along the boardwalk in Jobes Woods reveals little sprouts of green, and some unexpected company.Look who’s watching you now!Early spring also brings the arrival of waterfowl, who are great show-offs for their potential mates.   What characters. As the ice moves out of Presqu’ile Bay, huge “rafts” of waterfowl can be seen feeding along the ice edge.Spring also brings bugs- lots of them!   But isn’t that perfect timing? The migratory birds are on their way back north.

Lots and lots and lots of them!.   How exciting to be at the park when the trees and bushes are just full of colourful birds singing and eating and flying about.  I am very grateful to have met some very experienced and knowledgeable birders at the park, who can help me learn about all these birds, their names, and their habits.     The diversity of species at Presqu’ile is amazing!

One day I got stuck out in a thunderstorm down by the lighthouse so went into the duck viewing shelter to get out of the rain.   In the tree next to me were so many different kinds of little birds I could barely keep track of them.   Above is a little Yellow Warbler shaking off the rain.Oh, and “fallouts!”   A fallout is when weather or wind conditions cause many thousands of birds to come to the same area all at once.   I will never forget being at Owen Point early on a May morning this year, and experiencing a fallout of shorebirds.   They were everywhere the eye could see, in flocks in the hundreds, soaring around, and feeding on the beaches.

I think I took over 1000 photographs that day!    It was so great because the Ontario Field Ornithologists Young Birders were at Owen Point that morning too, and this enthusiastic group of young people got to experience this spectacle as well. I don’t think any of us will ever forget it.

Did I mention you could see a fox at Presqu’ile?   And if that’s not enough for you…How about watching a fox walk down the road and then having a deer cross right in front of it, say “Good Morning” and carry on.   Is this the Bambi movie? I don’t know.    Presqu’ile is so cool.On the first hot hazy days of the year, the momma snapping turtles will come out of the mud and start to lay their eggs at the side of the roads.     A couple of years I have been down there on just the right day and seen 4 or 5 of these beauties all in the same trip.  I love their long sharp claws!Of course, Presqu’ile is for recreation too!   Walter loves to swim and run on the rocky beach.    The sandy beach is for the shorebirds, and of course all the campers and day trippers that flock to Presqu’ile in the summer.No matter when I visit, Presqu’ile always has something beautiful to offer.    I’m never disappointed.

Presqu’ile Provincial Park is located on the north shore of Lake Ontario, just south of Brighton.   Check it out!

The post Why I Love Presqu’ile! appeared first on Leslie Abram Photography.

It’s always a good idea to get up early if you want to see wildlife.   That doesn’t mean I always do it.    But Monday, I took off for the Frink Centre.

Great Blue Heron greets me as I arrive at the boardwalk.

The HR Frink Centre is an outdoor education centre about 10 minutes north of Belleville, Ontario.   It boasts woodland trails, and an extensive boardwalk through a marsh absolutely brimming with life.

I have been to the Frink Centre countless times with classes of children, age 5-14.   It was always one of the highlights of the school year, and we were never disappointed. But going there early in the morning is a completely different experience.   Early in the morning, the Frink Centre reveals its secrets.

Marsh wren skulking around the cattails

All kinds of creatures are hiding in the cattails.

Who are you?

If you stop, and wait, life will eventually show itself.

The boardwalk

As my note read, my real target for the morning was Virginia Rails.   I had heard through Terry Sprague’s Quinte Area Bird Report that family groups of these elusive birds were frequently being spotted.   Baby Virginia Rails?   Oh my.

Gordie

As I walked down the boardwalk I noticed my friend Kenzo and his little dog Gordie were already there.   Kenzo goes to the Frink Centre a lot, with Gordie by his side.   He knows where all the creatures hang out.    So we waited together.

Painted turtle

We watched a turtle.

Looking good

Lots of frogs around too.

Woah there

Even this black water snake.

Baby Virginia Rail

Finally, from the edge of the marsh, we spotted some movement.   A little black juvenile Virginia Rail!   We remained very still as it made its way among the weeds, having its breakfast. They eat insects, insect larvae, fish, frogs, and small snakes.

Growing up

You can see it is starting to grow in some of the rusty coloured feathers of an adult.

Adult Virginia Rail

Speaking of whom, look who ran out onto the boardwalk!   I was so thrilled to see her, as my only glimpse of Virginia Rails in the past have been them peeking out of dense reeds.   They are notoriously secretive.

Pretty lady

Virginia Rails have many adaptations that help them be so secretive.   First of all, their feather patterns help them camouflage brilliantly.   When nesting, they build “dummy nests” to throw off potential predators.

Roll call

They are perfectly suited to live in their marsh habitat, with long toes, strong leg muscles, a laterally compressed body (they are skinny when viewed head-on) and extra-durable feathers on their foreheads to protect their heads when pushing through dense vegetation.

What a beauty

It was a really treat seeing Virginia Rails out in the open for the first time.  Although Virginia Rails are fairly common, they are rarely seen.   Worth getting up early for.

If you want a great morning walk, with guaranteed wildlife sightings, the Frink Centre boardwalk is a marvellous outing.  Here’s a link to their site, with directions:

Directions to HR Frink Centre  

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First,  perhaps the most surprising one: the Belted Kingfisher!

Last month my husband was talking to our neighbours who are in the process of building  their house.    As they all stood there chatting, they could not believe their eyes when a kingfisher flew in front of them, and right into a pile of topsoil they had in their backyard.

The Kingfisher had flown into its nest! Upon further investigation, we found out that Belted Kingfishers make their nests in tunnels between a foot and 8 feet long in the sides of vertical banks of soil.  The male and female work together to dig it out in the spring. Who knew?  Not I!

We had the unique opportunity to see the five little fledglings when they came out.   They could not fly, but were hopping around pumping their tails up and down, and rattling just like adult kingfishers do.

I didn’t stay long, as I knew the babies were waiting for food.  Adult Belted Kingfishers are quite wary of people (I have never actually gotten a good photo of one) so I fired off a few shots of these little ones and then carried on.

These little birds are fascinating! I found out that baby kingfishers have very acidic stomachs that break down the bones and exoskeletons of the fish and invertebrates they eat.   But as kingfishers get older, their stomachs become less acidic, and they actually regurgitate pellets to get rid of the hard parts of what they are eating, quite like an owl would.   I learned so much from this opportunity.   What a thrill.   They were adorable, in a kind of prehistoric way (pteranodons?).

Everyone knows that groundhogs live under the ground. No surprise there.  I have a special place in my heart for groundhogs, as they were the first animal I photographed when I got my telephoto lens.   I well remember lying on my stomach on the grass in Centennial Park in Trenton, and watching this little groundhog family go about its business. Luckily, they were the ones covered in flies, not me.  The telephoto lens allows me to get a great close up view ( count the flies!) of different types of wildlife and watch their behaviour, without being right up next to them.

After hibernating in their underground burrows all winter, groundhogs give birth to about half a dozen little ones in the spring, and the babies stay with their mothers for a couple of months. They gorge on food throughout the spring and summer, and return to their burrows to hibernate after the first frost in the autumn.

Although we most often see these charming members of the squirrel family on the ground, or peeking up from a hole, they are actually very good at climbing trees, and are also capable swimmers. The one in the photo above lives right beside a pond under a big pile of old logs.

Hey Big Mama! If you see a snapping turtle out at the side of the road in the summer, it is most likely a female.   Snapping Turtles much prefer to be in the water, and usually only come out to lay their eggs.  They like to lay their eggs in loose soil, such as at the side of a road, or in a garden.

These beauties hibernate in the winter, under the mud or silt at the bottom of ponds or streams.  At our house each year, a snapping turtle emerges from the mud in our stream,  lays her eggs in our garden, then climbs the 5 foot high page wire fence to get to our pond, where I assume she spends much of her summer.   When she reaches the top of the fence, she teeters back and forth a bit flailing her legs around, and then falls onto the other side. The first time we saw this, we couldn’t believe it!    And of course when my kids went to school and told their friends that a snapping turtle could climb our fence, nobody believed them.

Years later we finally got a photo, but I couldn’t find it for the life of me when I was writing the first draft of this blog. Somehow my Mom and Dad still had it, so after my Mom saw the blog she sent the photo back my way.   Saved!   See- snapping turtles CAN climb fences.

Snapping turtle nests can contain up to 50 round, white eggs.   The incubation temperature determines whether the baby turtles will be male or female.    I am not sure which this baby is, but if she is a girl, she will not be ready to mate and lay eggs until she is at least 17 years old.   Both male and female snapping turtles can live into their 70’s. Snapping turtles look prehistoric because they are- the snapping turtle as we know it has been around for 40 million years, and its close relatives walked with the dinosaurs.

So there you have it- 3 very different creatures who spend part of their lives under the earth, along with countless other animals we have never even heard of.

For more on Belted Kingfishers see the Cornell Lab of Ornithology pages

Visit the National Wildlife Federation site for more on Groundhogs

For more on Snapping Turtles you can visit Ontario Nature

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