Monday, September 6, 2010
After walking through the gardens by the nature center (where I spotted frogs in the water garden and quite a few different birds at the feeders) I headed down to the Heron Pond and spent a while watching the heron catch his dinner.
While I was doing that I could hear a group of ducks making quite a racket; when I walked out onto the bridge I was able to watch them splashing around in the water like little maniacs. My guess is they have new feathers coming in and were trying to relieve the itching.
Saw quite a few squirrels tonight, all scurrying around looking for food. It's that time of year...
I was surprised to spot fish off one of the observation decks... someone may have been feeding them, because they went after a leaf that fell in the water fairly voraciously. This whiskered fellow (perhaps a bullhead?) was especially active.
Frogs, frogs, and more frogs... it's always comical walking near the ponds because every step or two one of the smaller frogs squawks and leaps into the water. The bigger ones seem to have figured out that it's not worth the waste of energy, or else they're more confident in their ability to get away, since they often remain right where they are.
Spent a while watching the swallows swoop and soar around the research ponds... it's incredible how maneuverable they are. As I was walking back toward the parking lots I even spotted a ladybug on some of the goldenrod.
Rustling in the bushes told me someone was out and about, and I wondered if I was going to see the racoons again... but in this case it was two deer. One with a greyish-brown coat, and one with the more brilliant reddish-brown coat. As is often the case with the deer at Five Rivers, they were fairly unconcerned about my being there and just went on with munching their dinner (or perhaps breakfast, if they were snoozing during the day.)
JMH
