Close Encounters
After endless winter, Spring finally sprang, albeit with plenty of rain, a spray of snow, and a frost or two. Everything seems a few weeks behind, and the lakes took forever to shed their crusty old skin.
I think I managed to get a few decent shots of the transition, but the most rewarding were some very face-to-face animal encounters.
A couple of weeks before the ice disappeared I took a trip to Grand Beach. Out on the ice I kept seeing a “rock” appear and disappear. I thought maybe the ice was shifting up and down imperceptibly revealing the top of some boulder, but eventually I got close enough, to my surprise it was an otter.
(Aside: there are a lot of shots, and while they aren’t great, they tell the story, so I’ve grouped them in the gallery views. The ones I like best are solo and viewable large.)
It slid through a puddle and climbed out the slush. After shaking itself off, it suddenly looked right at me.
I thought “Dang, the jig is up, it’s going to run away.” After all, I was out in the open on the beach (or really, in a snowdrift in the open on the beach, but I digress). But no! It headed right towards me, doing that “otter thing”: bounding a couple of times and then sliding in the snow.
Believe me, I was thrilled, and I kept snapping away as it got bigger and bigger in the frame. Every once in a while it would pause and stare, then run off to the side to get a different view of Mysterious Me:
At this point I was starting to wonder what the heck was up. I know otters have a reputation for curiosity, but I was in plain view and it was getting close enough I was having trouble tracking it. Was it…rabid? Finally it got close enough to see properly, or maybe smell properly, and I could almost see the exclamation point appear over it’s head:
Oops! Human!
And that was the end of that! Off it scampered, only daring to look back a couple of times (showing his little pink tongue), back to a crack in the lake:
(Aesthetically, I love how the water shapes their fur. With their hunched shape, they look like scaly little dragons.)
But the beach wasn’t done with me. Once the otter was out of decent photo range, I looked up and a couple of eagles were headed towards me. The wind was coming hard off the beach, which meant the eagles were making only slow forward progress. As I snapped away, it seemed like they were staring right at me. The second animal to do this in 20 minutes, I started to wonder what I looked like. It was only when I got home that I realized they were looking right past me, and had been tracking the otter!
Can I take it? I dunno, it looks pretty big…
This is an adolescent. You can tell because, like all adolescents, it’s absolutely filthy. 😉 Seriously, the white under the wings will give way to a golden brown, and the head and tail will turn bright white.
Needless to say, that day was quite the highlight, and a good thing because all my landscapes pictures that day sucked! 😂 On other days I played peek-a-boo with a ground squirrel:
And once again, while fruitlessly busy with some landscape attempt, a Yellow Warbler decided I meant no harm, and hunted insects practically next to me:
In keeping with the “close encounters” theme, there are a couple of macro shots I like, made on a cool damp morning with a lot of dew:
Not all the landscape attempts were fruitless, so I’ll end with a few of them. We’ve had so much water in our urban forest (Assiniboine Forest) that most of the trails are only an inch above the water, if that. This made for great reflections, and, like snow, really helps simplify a scene. So donning the rubber boots and wading in places where the water almost topped them, I found this scene:
Funny story about this day: as I was working on the above shot, I hear sploosh, sploosh, sploosh behind me. I look up to see a jogger running down the trail. I’m impressed with his fortitude: he’s only wearing a light shirt and shorts, and his legs are covered in mud. I meander through the park, and am working on the next shot when… sploosh, sploosh, sploosh …here he comes again. In true Canadian fashion he apologizes for running into my shot. “No worries,” I say, “you’re quite intrepid!” He laughs, and off he goes. Meanwhile:
I have to admit I’m fond of the above, I knew it would be B&W when I saw it, to emphasize the lines.
After that I headed off to a different part of the park, and not 15 minutes later… sploosh, sploosh, sploosh …
“This is hilarious!” I say. He laughs, “What are the odds?” Indeed. Judging by the parking lot, we were the only two people in the park, and it’s a huge park. How is it that when the parking lot is full I rarely see anyone, and when it’s empty I see the same person 3 times?? Close encounters indeed…
I’ll end the flood shots with this, like some kind of watery elven gate:
Finally, I’ll end with two recent shots on a bright and mostly sunny day, with a foreboding end:
And that brings “close encounters” to a close. However, I’m hoping for more in the next few weeks: as mentioned above, the birds seem to be a few weeks behind normal, so hopefully there is still time to get out and catch them returning, nesting, and feeding.
Until then, take care!
Cheers!
