A walk in the woods

Occasionally here, I will do a story, and the story may come with several images, rather then just one image, sometimes it will be a photographic study, with a whole group of images.  Today we get such a narrative.   I know there will be more then one image, but as I write the text here, I don't know how many.

So last Sunday I said to my other half, that I would like to take a walk in the woods.  She said it sounded like a good idea, and looked at a few places, here in Southern Ontario, in Canada, there are 4 systems of parks, that you can choose from.  There are Federal Parks, there are Provincial Parks, City Parks and Conservation Areas.  She suggested Heart Lake Conservation Area. It's not that far from home, and while I get my walk in the woods, she and the kid, can do a shorter walk and then use the pool at the site.  I think they walked about 1 kilometre or so, I probably did closer to 10.

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A walk in the woods, is a great tool for destressing, it's not always quiet, in fact a forest by a lake can be quite noisy.  Birds, insects and frogs can be quite noisy, but somehow the sounds of nature  is less noisy than a street full of traffic.     The trail we took goes from the treetop zip line, to the border of someones private property, I didn't go quite that far.  We found some small frogs, I suspect these are Northern Leopard Frogs, as you can see from the surroundings they are quite small, they could be from this years crop.  Seeing animals like frogs in a murky lake, often means it is a healthy lake.  Lakes that are completely clear and devoid of fish and aquatic reptiles, often means that the lake is dead, from pollution.  Which is a sad thing to see,
 

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When one wants images of wild life, you really need to remember 2 things, you need a big lens, and to proceed as quietly as possible.  In this case the lens is a 70-300mm Zoom, it's a little soft all the way out, but that's partly because I didn't have the opportunity to set up a camera support.  I found this little guy just chilling on a log, and took a few images, before he noticed me, and took off.  I took about 100 images on the day, maybe 5 of this particular chipmunk, then picked the one I liked the best for the posting.  One of the others may find it's way into a later post.  I think if my wife and 5 year old had been around, I wouldn't have gotten any.   I need to teach the little one, that it's okay to not be speaking, and that we can sometimes see things that we would not otherwise see, when we make noise.

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They were around, for the bumble bee though, and this was not taken with a long lens.  Sometimes Insects are tricky, especially ones that bite and sting, in that you don't want to scare them, if they feel threatened, they are more likely to sting or bite.  In this particular case though, I think this bee was too busy gathering nectar to take back to the hive.  Summer is winding down, and Bee hives need to prepare for winter.    Although honey bees and bumble bees can be very similar, bumbles appear scary hairy, and looking at this one it's most likely a bumble.  Interesting difference, with honey bees, a smaller portion of the colony winters over, with bumble bees only the queens hibernate.  Just in case you think all of the images I took, were of animal and insect life, there were some plant photos as well, like this last one.  

Looks like these plants are pretty much done for this year.  The seed pods have already burst, and spread their seed for the winter.  What I try to keep out of photos, is the fact that many parks have a single problem.  That is people, many people are dirty, they leave garbage everywhere.  I am of the opinion that the only evidence you visited a natural place should be the photographs and images that you took.  If you create garbage in the woods, take it out with you, it's not hard, and it means that other folks can visit a nice clean place.

We are actually coming into one of the best times to walk in northern woods, Fall adds the wonder of colour as the world gets ready to shut down for winter.

Thanks, all for this week

W