the Way of the Turtle

14.4 Mile Ride Along the Mohawk Hudson Bike Path
Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Tons of work to do tonight... but the weather was simply too good to stay indoors, so I packed up my bike and headed over to Lock 8 to do some riding on the bike path that I ran last week...

Initially I didn't think I'd be doing much more than riding, but I encountered an incredible amount of wildlife tonight. Two beavers - one in the Mohawk River about half a mile from the Lock 8 dam, and one down at the end of the old Erie Canal at Scrafford Lane. A kingfisher. Two muskrats. A female wood duck with a whole passel of wood ducklings (one nice thing about the ducklings - until they get older she can't really fly away, so it's a good photo op if you can get the shots before she leads the little ones under cover.) Two green herons. Two geese with a group of goslings. Turtles and a couple of big fish. And lots of the usual birds - catbirds, robins, and red-winged blackbirds. All in all a good evening for photographing critters... and for getting in a few miles on the bike!

JMH