Woke up on the morning of the 24th to see our only neighbour pulling out….not quite believing our good luck we set about enjoying the day. After a leisurely breakfast we headed out for a walk over to ….
Leighton Lake – notice the nets in the corner there….fisheries had the spillway between Tunkwa and Leighton netted off…
There is now lots and lots of dead fall where ever you get away from the campground itself. All those pine beetle killed trees are decaying at the bottom and being blown down but have been allowed to stay where they fall with only the immediate trail cleared…the first open spot you come to was alive with Yellow-rump Warblers…as was most of the park!
this gives a slight indication ….the trail is actually the grassy area…and there is another warbler…
in the distance we noticed a lot of swallow activity over the lake – we’d noticed this the previous evening over Tunkwa lake as well…
then we noticed, up ahead, one of those dead pine trees, absolutely alive with Swallows….
there is a close up of just one small section of the tree – mainly a mix of Tree Swallows and Cliff Swallows although I think there were a few Northern Rough-wing among them as well…
it was an amazing sight….any stumps or dead falls in the area were decorated with swallows!
in not quite the same numbers and in not quite the same location, other trees were decorated with Chipping Sparrows..
there is a more detailed look at one of the Chipping Sparrows…
back at Tunkwa lake it was a calm, but cool and over cast morning…
The Yellow-headed Blackbirds were there – it looks to me that some of them weren’t even in full breeding colour yet, or maybe this is just one of last years youngsters and not quite in adult plumage..
There were a number of Bald Eagles around…this fellow in first year plumage, must have been from last year, he was often flying with or near the adults, then other times he was completely on his own….it seems early for a bird from this year to be out on its own, and at one point we saw an adult flying with what appeared to be nesting material – although it seems late for eagles to just be nest building…
of course there were also Osprey and they obviously had youngsters in a nest as they were constantly fishing and then heading off in the same direction…. and I think at this stage I’ll upload this and then continue the day on in part 3…
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