Lake critters

The lake is out in the quiet countryside. Quiet, if you don't count the loons, crickets, mosquitoes, and the occasional duck begging for a hand out.

After sorting through the photos that I took while at the lake, I realized that I had a lot of critter photos and though that I would share with you the wildlife sightings from those fine, fun, relaxing weeks.

The first is a white spider. This was found on one of our walks to take mushroom photos. You have to look closely to see her. Or him. I didn't ask.
And just outside the cottage is an old birch that has been being visited by some rather small, quiet woodpeckers. Again, you have to look closely to see it. Out of the 20 or so photos that I took, this was the best one. The little fellow is right in the middle.

Mira also found an interesting bug.

She took a picture from a different angle. I rather like the look of this little guy. I'm also glad that I am rather larger than he. Click on this one to see him larger. Please do.

One of the walks that we went on was to a place that the kids call Slow Lentement. (pronounced (by the kids) len-ta-ment) Lentement, as some of you may know is French for "slow". We live in a bilingual province (or so we have been told) and all of the road signs are in both French and English. I don't know if Mira knew this when , a number of years ago, she named the walk, but the name has stuck. In any case, at the end of a small road, there is a bit of a pond that contains some frogs.

They are just little fellows and they can hide very well. They come out of the water to sun themselves on the edge of the pond and when someone, or something, comes by, they all hop back into the water and all but disappear. I had to go away and come back a few minutes later to watch them hop away and keep an eye on where they landed in order to get a picture.

There are also a crazy number of bugs. This moth is about two inches from nose to wingtip. It wouldn't have been spotted if it hadn't decided to land on the part of the tree that had the pruning paint sprayed on it to protect the tree from burrowing insects. Talk about good camouflage.

Yet again, Mira's eagle eye spotted this little fellow on the way back from a walk one evening. It is actually not uncommon to spot snakes on the road, but usually they are a lot less lively than this one. And they usually have at least one flat part. This guy hung around long enough for me to run and get the camera and I was able to snap off a few decent pictures before he (or she) decided to head for the bushes.

And a few feet from the snake was this lucky slug. Lucky because he was also heading for home and was not destined to be a bedtime snack for the snake. This fellow was a good size for a slug. Stretched out he was probably between 1.5 and 2 inches. They can travel over a mile in one night.

I don't really care all that much for slugs. But the kids say that the fish like them. I guess that fish don't have much taste.

So there you have it. Apparently there are bears, fox, moose, deer, lynx, and bobcats around. But we didn't see any of these. I am OK with that. There was also, on the Sunday before we left, the reported sighting of a Sasquatch. Four people in two separate cars said that they saw something that looked hairy and over 8 feet tall cross the road in front of the cars. It was reported about in the local paper and people were wondering. But it turned out to be someone in a gorilla suit that was playing a joke on a friend and by chance crossed the road in front of the cars.

And to think that the lake could have been world famous. Oh well. I'm glad that it will still remain the quiet lake. So long as you don't count the loons.