Birds! Birds! Birds! at Fernan Lake

Question what you think you know.

Grebes

I thought, “I don’t need binoculars to identify that bird.” Nobody’s got a bill like that but a Northern Shoveler. The drab, dull brown feathers mean she must be a female, and she’s kinda far away for a good picture, so I keep driving. Further down, I see another bird on the water with a different shape, so I pull off the roadway to look through my binoculars. It’s a red-necked grebe!

Then I scan to my right to check out the “Northern Shoveler.”  It’s also a red-necked grebe with a fish in her mouth swimming determinedly towards her chick! Once she gets closer to the chick, they turn to swim towards her, meeting halfway. The mom carefully gives the live fish to her chick, who proceeds to drop it.

She fishes it back out and puts it back in her chick’s mouth. This scenario repeats itself a dozen times over before the chick finally gets the fish oriented to swallow. I wonder if the dropping is an important part of the learning process.

The chick floated off, and the mom resumed fishing. After watching her fish unsuccessfully while the chick tooled about further and further away, I decided to move on.

Lily Pad Bay

We’re in a record-setting heat wave. It’s going to flirt with 100° today. At Fernan Lake, I’m 90 miles from Canada. It shouldn’t be so hot. The heat will likely concentrate wildlife activity to the ends of the day more so than usual. Consequently, I’m out early.I stopped at a picnic table, drawn in by water lily blossoms along the shoreline. Movement catches my eye. Waves of grass are undulating along the shore, indicating something swimming through the vegetation. This can only be a muskrat. I watch the blades sway, tracking her course. She pops into the open, moving purposefully toward the dense lily pad beds her tail propelling her quickly over the open water. When I first glimpsed her, she had a mouthful of sedges. She emerged empty-mouthed, leading me to conclude her den is along his shoreline.

She disappeared into the dense, invasive lily pads. I watched a pair of dragonflies (twelve-spotted skimmers?) with their dramatic light blue and black spotted wings. Dragonflies hunt on the wing, and these two don’t take a break.  They are too small, and too fast for me to catch in flight.

Flowers

There is shade at the boat launch, and the sun will be behind me, allowing less glare and easier observation of lake activity. As I park at the launch, a flight of swallows zooms past. They’re behaving like gulls when one has a fish (or french fry) and the others want it. Mine! Mine! As with the dragonflies, these guys are too fast and too erratic to photograph. An osprey soars high overhead, searching for fish. Kingbirds pluck insects from the air. Lily flowers bloom propped up on stalks above the water. I’ve only ever seen these floating on the surface. I wonder if this is related to water levels or if it’s a different species.

More Than Birds

For an instant, I think I see a river otter. My heart leaps. I pull my binoculars to my eyes to see it’s just a curled lily leaf! A turtle warms himself in the sun on a curled lily pad.

A large beaver lodge catches my eye. Birds are perched atop the dome, backlit by the morning sun. Maybe kingbirds? I move toward the inlet to get the sun behind me so I can see them more clearly.

Swallows

Before I get that far, I see violet-green swallows nesting on the cliff face along the road. They are busy catching insects to feed their young.

The nestlings are the color of earth. It isn’t until I stop to really look that I see that they are perched all over the rock face. There are nests in seemingly every crevice.

There are cliff swallows, northern rough-winged swallows, barn swallows and violet-green swallows.

I can hear a great blue heron hoarsely croaking, a duck quacks, and then a big splash. The lake is obscured from my view by bushes. So much is happening at once! I don’t know where to be! I stayed with the swallows a bit longer.

Turning back to the lake, I watch cedar waxwings pluck insects from the air and alight in the shoreline bushes. These lily pad beds provide an insect buffet.

A Surprise Sighting

Walking further east again still trying to get the sun behind me, I hear an abrupt squawking from the tall pines. It sounds like a crow and I don’t investigate further. I take a few paces and a responding call comes from the thicket in front of me. I use the Merlin app to identify birds by sound. They’re not crows! They’re Steller’s jays!! I love these iridescent blue corvids. Once again, distracted from the lake, I try to make out the form of the dark shadow in the bush. The jay launches from the bush to the bare cliff for the briefest of moments before disappearing into the shadows of the pines. How lucky was that!?!

Back to the waxwings, beaver lodge and great blue heron with his turtle entourage.I didn’t know what to expect from Fernan Lake. I knew photographers came here, and occasionally, river otters were seen, so I’d put it on my (ever expanding) destination list. I didn’t know about Lily Pad Bay or the Fernan River gorge that feeds the lake. I just set my alarm, packed my camera bag, and set out to see what might come. As Winnie the Pooh’s Piglet says, “I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today.”If you’re interested in purchasing or licensing any images you see here, please email me at SNewenham at exploringnaturephotos.com, and I’ll make it happen.

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