6/11/07

Vacation Nature Lesson

One of the neat things about fishing on vacation is that we get to see all kinds of animals in their natural habitat.

The first day, we saw a flock of Canadian Geese. Mike's Dad has always told our nieces that the geese follow him home from Canada every year and we call Canadian Geese "Papa's Geese". Steven saw the flock flying over and told us that Papa must be close because his Geese are here.


It's not hard to find lots of geese up there.


We also saw a Loon. They are pretty birds, about the size of a large duck, that dive for fish under the water. I've never seen one on land or flying and we wondered if they migrate seeing as they have kind of shorter wings than say a goose or duck. They sing/cry at night. It's really relaxing to listen to.


We talked about them a lot and asked many of the locals, but no one seemed to know if they migrate or where to. I looked it up on Wikipedia when I got home and found that they do migrate, but there is no one set place to which they go. You can read the entry here.

Next came a turtle. Matthew came in the cabin one day and told me that a turtle was right outside our door. He was worried it was a snapping turtle, but I assured him it wasn't. It did hiss at me when I picked him up and took his picture- maybe he's a little diva and I got his bad side, but he looked good to me.

We did see another turtle, but I didn't have my camera handy at the time. Matthew and I headed into town one day and our old friend, a huge mama turtle, was on the side of the gravel road where we see her each year digging a spot to lay her eggs in. It's like a tradition to see her there and she spends the whole day digging, laying the eggs and covering them back up.

On our way back from town on another day, we saw a coyote in the field right next to where Mama turtle lays her eggs. He was slinking through and froze when he saw that we were turning down the road in his direction. As soon as we passed behind him, he was slinking off again. No pic of that one, but it sure was interesting to me.

A couple more fish pictures for you. The first one is a teeny Red-ear Sun Fish. It was so small that I thought it warranted a photo. The second one was a Small Mouth Bass that was so small that I didn't even know it was on my line until I got it up to the boat. I thought I had a small weed on my hook. Steven wanted to pet it and pose with it.

Here is a Great Blue Heron Crane. He was standing in some cattail reeds and lily pads while we were fishing one afternoon. You can really see how those long legs and narrow body are good not only for standing in the water, but for camouflage as well. He blends right in with his surroundings.

The only animal encounter I forgot to mention is the seagull that wouldn't leave us alone one night while I was grilling. He landed on the roof behind me. The guys and Matthew had to keep chasing him off.

So that is my little nature lesson for now. Hope you enjoyed the wild views we had as much as we did!

1 comment:

Scribbit said...

I love the turtle--how fun.

My daughter was chased by a flock of Canada geese one summer and we still like to tease her about it :)