Nature’s Snugly, Ugly & The Ant That Sucked Life Out Of Him

Anna Lozyk Romeo — Sun, 27 May 2012 03:37:06 +0000

The Nokiidaa Trail link boardwalk section of the St. John’s sideroad is now fully adapted – one visit is not enough to discover this short and popular trail on the boardwalk. It is also hard to believe that just last year in March the boardwalk was still under construction. The adaptation process went very well for everyone.

Hello There! Lady Wood Duck With Brood

The population of the lady Wood duck is booming and the ducklings look so snugly and adorable. As a matter of fact this one looking in my direction is reminding me Mumble from the Happy Feet movie.

Hello There Again!

The Lady Bugs found are the real ones, not the Asian one which were released few years ago to get the aphids under control. I still remember when they used to crawl into our house, or seeing a cloud of them flying on our backyard. They were biting as well and had this orange juice coming out of them – yikes.

Beautiful Lady Bug

Who likes spiders? Not me, but they are nice little creatures great to photograph. This one is less than 10 mm in length, including the limbs. Not very big, but good light does help to get nice sharp image, okay, and a good macro lens as well. If you like spiders no worries many many different species crawl everywhere.

Ouch A Spider

I don’t know what kind of insect on the photo below that is but I had to do lot of body bending around to get him to look at my camera.

Used To Be Beautiful

The sad part is that the red ant was sucking life out of him. I didn’t notice at first, but I did notice that he didn’t look too good. For some reason an ant was attached to him and probably trying to kill him, while he was crawling around and anticipating that it will eventually get lost.

Ant Sucking Life Out Of Him

But what I did not notice was that little creature on the stone when I was processing my images. I could be wrong but I think I photographed a tick (bottom left corner photo below), that means I was so close.

Perhaps not all ticks cause Lyme disease. Perhaps the one bit me many moons ago was not the blacklegged tick. I was five or six years old when I was bitten and my mom took out fat tick from my wrist. I did not get any reaction and lost some blood thrown away with the dead tick.

Only forty five minute spent on the boardwalk today yet so much we discovered and only partial journey shared. I will share more stay tuned.

Presumably A Tic

‘Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known’. ~ Carl Sagan

Wildlife Camouflaged, The Best Of First Observation Deck & Deceived

Anna Lozyk Romeo — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 03:42:51 +0000

‘Fast, fast the flying Great Blue Heron! Over there, look over there!‘ – she directed me.

‘Here do you see Green Heron? Come here. Can you see him?‘ – she pointed out.

The Great Blue Heron landed on the tree behind the leaves and branches. No chance to take a single photo. For love of me I couldn’t see a single hopping Green Heron in the direction she showed me.

Green Heron

Now I had her back. ‘Matthew go, go fast tell the lady we found the Green Heron‘ – I told him. She came and we both started to take photos. She was very nice, moving away and letting me take photos from her spots.

She had much smaller camera. I felt bad, so I offer her my camera on which I had telescopic 100-400mm lens. The lens I have is like binoculars, you can zoom in on objects to see them closer. ‘I show you something‘ – she said as I was trying to hand over my camera. ‘Here look in my viewfinder‘, and I did.

A viewfinder? Who uses viewfinder to view photos these days. Obviously her. I looked inside. I couldn’t believe. Her Green Heron was closer than mine. ‘Ouch how did you do that?‘ – I asked surprised. Well, she had camera with lens extender and with her current lens she ended up with telescopic zoom, probably 500mm. And who said that the bigger is the better.

Killdeer

That was deceiving. Her too – she was a pro in everything, photography and wildlife. She was also right about looking through viewfinder. During bright day light it is hard to see pictures on the LCD view panel, which she obviously did not use.

Time passed, and I was still at the first observation deck. We drove today, so that was a short walk. But we had fun when we started to see all the camouflaged wildlife in the pond, the Green Heron, Killdeer and Sandpipers especially. The pond was abundant in Mallard and Wood ducks.

Sandpiper

Oh, no I just remembered -I have not seen Canada geese today.

So we were having a great conversation. We talked about wildlife and photography, and everything else. Looked like her main thing today was the Green Heron. I never had an opportunity to shoot Sandpiper, so this was my lucky day to get nice collection of close ups. He was hovering all over and looking for food. It was definitely a juvenile Sandpiper.

The Green Herons are much smaller than the Great Blue Herons. We saw them catching frogs and fishs for lunch. It is interesting to watch them fish, especially when they stretch their necks and do not move for periods of time. A very common characteristic. When the time comes, with a split of a second the herons dive their heads for whatever they were looking for.

Also, I don’t know why the would do that, but they like to perk up and all their feathers on the head stand up in the shape of Mohawk. They also have this amazing ability to sway their body side to side vertically from head to toe, just like a fish when swims. A very graceful movement.

Now speaking of ducks. They were everywhere. Speaking of turtles. They were everywhere. At some point I saw seven turtles (Red-Eared Sliders) surrounding one duck that was sitting near by.

Mallard

Matthew was hovering around the lady. Greeting everyone passing by. Talked to all the children that showed up at the deck. At some point Matthew was hovering around lady’s lunch box on her back, and I know why?

Mallard Again

We continued to talk. It was time for the introduction. ‘Matthew meet lady Patricia‘ – I said once we introduced ourselves to each other. ‘What do you have there?‘ – Matthew asked and pointed out to her bag. ‘It is a mint-chocolate candy‘ – she replied, and hand out one each. So this is why he was hovering around her bag. What happened to my shy boy? The small and shy boy he once was.

Yes, Mallard Again, But Why Not?

It was almost lunch time, and I was still at the first observation deck. More visitors arrived. At some point it must have been 10 of us standing, at least four groups. I can see that children do really enjoy this boardwalk, and they will for many years to come.

Pond's Architecture

By the time we left, the Great Blue Heron was gone and we didn’t even notice his departure. I never made beyond the first observation deck, but we had great time conversing with Patricia, observing wildlife together, photographing and socializing. It was one fun day today.

Living in Aurora, Town of Aurora, Ontario » Wood Duck

Nature’s Snugly, Ugly & The Ant That Sucked Life Out Of Him

Wildlife Camouflaged, The Best Of First Observation Deck & Deceived