Life At The Pond

The first nice days of a young spring with temperatures in the upper 40s and lower 50s have arrived.  I’m trying to come out of hibernation and enjoy them, but it takes some getting used to.  A part of this is using my pickup to do a few small chores, but mostly just to enjoy riding around checking out the scenery.

Thursday, April 7^th, I was dawdling down a dirt road looking when I spotted a lone deer grazing in a meadow.  It was pretty far away for my camera to do justice, but I snapped this anyway.  It looked sort of scruffy to me, the result of  it being in the process of losing its winter coat of hair, as it acquires its nice new copper colored summer outfit.

After returning from that little sojourn I clambered aboard the Bayou Buggy, and headed to the pond to see what the day might have in store at that location.  Upon my arrival I spotted this little character swimming about doing whatever it is that muskrats do.  It seemed entirely unaware, or unconcerned, of my presence.

As the muskrat swam about on the dam side of the farm road, I glanced over to the other side, and a goose had seemingly appeared from nowhere.  It was slowly swimming about, and quite obviously keeping an eye on me.  As I quietly snapped photos I noted I could hear frogs announcing themselves after their long winter dug into the pond bottom.

Knowing that a gander will place itself between a possible predator and its mate, I guessed that there may have been another goose nearby.  You can note it in among the grasses in the background.

That seemed like a full day of my observation of pond life, but this evening I got the urge to return for a dusky look.  As I arrived I spotted Bucky Beaver lazily swimming on the surface.  I reached for my always carried camera to find it missing.  After a frantic pocket search I recalled I had put it on the battery charger, and never retrieved it.  Back to the house at the breakneck speed of about five miles per hour, grabbed the camera, collected Alex, and off to the pond again.  Upon our arrival—nothing.

We waited an eternity of approximately 30 minutes, and suddenly, from nowhere, Bucky was leisurely swimming about, as he studied these odd creatures up on the roadway.  I snapped photos as fast as possible.  Upon downloading back at the computer, I found I had taken 48 photos.  Here’s some of them.