PhotoStories - Mud Lake

We visited Mud Lake several times, as usual, during the month.

There seemed to be a little less activity than normal, but it might well have been due to the females ducks and geese being off sitting on eggs in their nests.

One of the very few female woods ducks who had not gone to nest was being "encouraged" to do so by her mate.

For the first 2-3 three weeks the screech owl continued sitting in the same place. (Might well be that there is a female in the hollow of the tree, sitting on a nest.)
However in the third week, the owl had moved much higher into a freshly leafed tree and was difficult to find.

A juvenile cooper's hawk spent less than a minute on a fallen tree, but allowed me to grab a few shots. This was only the second hawk I've seen at Mud Lake in the many years we've dropped by.

A bright red cardinal stayed still long enough to get a shot and I managed to pull off half decent pictures of yellow-rumped warblers. Last year's turkeys are still around and it is likely that mom is sitting on a nest someplace.

The first black-crowned night heron we found was sitting behind some fairly dense branches, a few weeks later we found one more in the open.

The stumps of trees seemed to be attracting some hairy woodpeckers. One visit it was a female going after grubs at the base of a stump, another visit had a male at the base of a live tree.

The young ravens were making themselves known with their loud calls to their parents for food, but one newly fledged found itself down at ground level. It was opening its mouth to call, but didn't. Presumably it managed to get back up to the tree tops to be fed.

The turtles - painted, map and snapping turtles, lay their eggs in early June. They spend much of May basking in the sun being rejuvenated from the long cold winter they endured at the bottom of the lake.

The large snapping turtle, off in a non-photogenic spot, is in both pictures in the middle row. Another snapper is swimming in the last photo.

The map turtle is in the fourth picture, with the shedding shell.

Snapping turtle with painted turtles

Map and painted turtle

painted turtles

painted turtle

Female hooded merganser duck resting with the painted turtles

Snapping turtle

Only for diehard snapping turtle fans, the video below is a 3:50 video of a slowly swimming snapping turtle. For none-diehard fans, see the video at the end of this PhotoStory.