Marsh Diaries Part 7

The lake was a different place this weekend.

After five days of record-setting torential rain and wind, we were among a handful of the fool-…brave campers in residence. The first thing I did on our arrival was check on the baby Brewer’s, and was saddened to see three lifeless bodies in the bottom of the nest. As tempted as I was to give them a decent burial, reason prevailed and I left them for nature to look after.

At least their nest was still in the tree. This was the Eastern Kingbird nest, and look at all the plastic in it. I don’t know if the babies had left the nest or not, as it was too high for me to see anything more than parents coming and going last week.

The little pond at the end of the lake has flowed over its banks after this wet spring, and the sedges have exploded into existence. I also couldn’t see any sign of the Marbled Godwit nest that was there last week. Hopefully they’ve fledged already.

We are camping in what is supposed to be arid southern Alberta. Walking through the grass, I noticed a lovely collection of fungi springing up everywhere, which is a pretty good indication of the lack of sunshine around there lately.

As I walked along the lake shore, I heard a terrific thrashing in the cattails. I was looking for the coot, or muskrat or whatever large critter was making the noise, when up popped this little guy. We were both surprised, but only one of us burst out laughing.

We have a screened add-a-room on the front of the trailer, and I’ve discovered it acts as a blind. While sitting in there on Saturday, I was astonished to see a House Wren bounce across the campsight right in front of me. He was followed by a Grasshopper sparrow, who landed in a nearby shrub and sat there buzzing away. My fingers were just itching to grab my camera, which was sitting right beside me. For all the good that did.

I silently watched a Richardson’s Ground Squirrel eating his way towards me. He would grab a dandelion stem, bite it off about half way down and with one end in his mouth, proceed to chew it in like a piece of spaghetti. He worked his way up until he was about a foot away. Nope, no picture of him either.

Just prior to dusk, I walked into the screen room from the trailer, and noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. There were two Little Brown Bats walking around on the inside of the screen! I love bats, but my first thought was geez, it’s a good thing my sister isn’t here or we’d be deaf right now. As I watched them walk around on the netting, I wondered how they managed to get in there. The door panels were fastened back leaving a big opening, but what happened to echo-location?

I nudged one of them towards the door, and just as he flew away, I remembered I had a night setting on my camera. I did manage one blurry shot before the other one found the opening, and flew away into the dusk.

While I had been editing photos inside the trailer, my husband was sitting at the fire with his back to the add-a-room. He was as astonished as I was about the bats. You can bet I’m going to be waiting for the same thing to happen again, but next time I’ll be a little quicker with camera, instead of standing there with my mouth hanging open.

And then I went back into the trailer and had to rescue and release two big moths. The work never ends around this place.

Oh, and can anyone tell me how far the call of a Willett in flight carries? I can still hear it after I’ve been home a day or two…

Birds Added This Trip:

• Redhead
• Grey Catbird
• Western Meadowlark
• Grasshopper Sparrow
• House Wren

Little Brown Bats

Total Bird Species Seen To Date: 62