Hibernation fail?
January 15th, 2010
Down to Mud Lake today to scatter sunflower seeds for the chickadees and nuthatches, and see whatever else I could see. Which turned out to be not much.
Except for this: I came to where the path meets Cassels Rd., and found that, thanks to the mild weather of the last few days, there was a tiny patch of open water at the edge of the pond. Amidst the water I saw what looked like banks of pebbles. I don't usually think of Mud lake as a pebbly place so I wondered if someone had put them there for some reason. I trained the binoculars on them, and saw that in fact that whole patch of water was heaped with tight-packed masses of...somethings.
They were moving. Not just in a shifting-in-the-wind way, but in an organic, creepy-crawly way. Just a bit. It was so unexpected my brain malfunctioned at first, and I started wondering ridiculous things like whether bats hibernate in water. Them it kicked back into gear and I figured they must be fish or amphibians of some sort, but as long as I watched them, I couldn't figure out exactly what they were. All I could see was these lumps, and I would have taken them for just lumps if not for the fact that occasionally, one of them squirmed.
The other part of this tableau was a robin, who had pulled a fish (one of the multitude?) out onto the ice edge. It looked more like a heron meal than a robin meal, but he was giving it his game best. The whole ten minutes I watched he hopped around, pulling pieces off it to eat. Yay, winter protein source! Meanwhile, the nearby masses of somethings made no reaction to his presence nor mine. Question: what happens to all those little guys if a bunch of robins (or starlings, or crows) discover them? Are they basically doomed now that the protective ice layer has melted in the middle of January?
It looks like the mild weather is going to persist for at least a few more days, so I'll likely take the camera out soon. In the meantime, here's a chickadee pic from back in December.
1680x1050 wallpaper
January 15th, 2010
Down to Mud Lake today to scatter sunflower seeds for the chickadees and nuthatches, and see whatever else I could see. Which turned out to be not much.
Except for this: I came to where the path meets Cassels Rd., and found that, thanks to the mild weather of the last few days, there was a tiny patch of open water at the edge of the pond. Amidst the water I saw what looked like banks of pebbles. I don't usually think of Mud lake as a pebbly place so I wondered if someone had put them there for some reason. I trained the binoculars on them, and saw that in fact that whole patch of water was heaped with tight-packed masses of...somethings.
They were moving. Not just in a shifting-in-the-wind way, but in an organic, creepy-crawly way. Just a bit. It was so unexpected my brain malfunctioned at first, and I started wondering ridiculous things like whether bats hibernate in water. Them it kicked back into gear and I figured they must be fish or amphibians of some sort, but as long as I watched them, I couldn't figure out exactly what they were. All I could see was these lumps, and I would have taken them for just lumps if not for the fact that occasionally, one of them squirmed.
The other part of this tableau was a robin, who had pulled a fish (one of the multitude?) out onto the ice edge. It looked more like a heron meal than a robin meal, but he was giving it his game best. The whole ten minutes I watched he hopped around, pulling pieces off it to eat. Yay, winter protein source! Meanwhile, the nearby masses of somethings made no reaction to his presence nor mine. Question: what happens to all those little guys if a bunch of robins (or starlings, or crows) discover them? Are they basically doomed now that the protective ice layer has melted in the middle of January?
It looks like the mild weather is going to persist for at least a few more days, so I'll likely take the camera out soon. In the meantime, here's a chickadee pic from back in December.
1680x1050 wallpaper
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raju
November 3rd, 2015 at 6:44 am
this is valuable information for learners.thanks