At the start of the month spring had finally taken hold. A few short 4 weeks later summer seemed well entrenched.
But then there was that "derecho" that hit us.....
FAV Picture of the Month
Ostrich ferns emerging.
The face in the fiddlehead and the other ferns in the grouping reminded me of this sculpture at Vigeland Sculpture Park in Oslo Norway that we visited in 2009.
Each year, the new fern growth always catches my eye....
Two ferns in different stages of unfurling.
The spring wildflowers were a little slow making an appearance. In the first of the month, a few hepatica were blooming and the trout lilies were in bud in the Woods near Almonte.
Later in the month the white trilliums were fading, a few foam flowers were blooming as were some violets. Surprisingly there were some fresh mushrooms and some fungi.
At Mud Lake a Canada goose found a "throne" on which to build her nest. Its really is a tree rotted stump in the water.
She was sitting on at least three eggs, when we came by 2 weeks later two geese were inspecting the stump with no sign of egg shells. We saw only two goslings on the lake during that later visit.
A female hairy woodpecker was busy looking for grubs at the base of a stump, about 4 feet in front of us.
Each spring the warblers pass through Mud Lake, bird watchers gather in groups to find them.
They are NOT easy to photograph as they flit about, but I did manage to catch a yellow-rumped warbler between branches and then surprised myself catching one in flight.
A juvenile cooper's hawk resting on the trunk of a fallen tree.
More birds arrived
(Scroll over picture to see captions)
Canada goose goslings
Juvenile raven
Yellow warbler
Catbird
Black-crowned night heron
With the warmer weather, the turtles were out basking. Mainly the many painted turtles, but one of the very large snapping turtles, top left, was relaxing in a somewhat inaccessible photographic location. Another day a map turtle, with a "renewing shell" joined the painted group, as did a female hooded merganser duck.
Snapping turtle relaxing
Painted turtles
Painted turtle on left and map turtle on right
Female merganser enjoying the company of the painted turtles.
The bull, and green, frogs seemed to be enjoying the warm weather.
Green frogs look like bull frogs except they have two ridges down the sides of their back.
bull frog
bull frog
green frog
A muskrat enjoying a small fresh branch.
More flowers started blooming at Mud Lake....
Lily of the valley
Trout lily
Choke cherry
Honeysuckle
Honeysuckle
Who knew Ottawa had tulip fields (other than the NCC flower beds)?
In the village of Edwards, in the city's east end, there is a smallish field of tulips. They offer U-pick flowers and photo-ops.
The Insectarium in Montreal has a new building which is part of our annual pass for some of the museums in town.
They have a few out-of-the-norm insects on live display as well as a wonderful collection of mounted insects in shadow boxes. These are just two of some 30.
They also have a butterfly aviary, I was, as usual, taken by the Blue Morphos.
I was fascinated with a display of leaf-cutter ants. A 30' dead grape vine connects a nesting area to a cut tree trunk on which small branches of leaves and/or flowers are provided for them. Visitors can watch the ants hurrying from one end to the other.
There were lots of spring colour at the Botanical Gardens...
One small plant of skunk cabbage was in one bed. I used to love photographing these many year ago coming up through the snow in one particular Toronto park.
The second week of May was unusually hot, the animals at Parc Omega were feeling it....
Some of the fallow deer had managed to squeeze into the boars' "condo", the elk and some of the bears headed for the water.
I liked the way the elk was staring at the mallard ducks swimming by him.
With spring came an increase in the bear population:
one black bear cub was born, and triplet cinnamon bear cubs arrived.
The triplets were taught very quickly to climb a tree for security, with mum coming by the base of the tree from time to time to check on the cubs.
