Critters and creatures and reptiles, oh my! - a picture post

I'm not great at catching wildlife pictures on our trips. If only I had a picture of the eagle we saw last fall! We're experiencing the wild as we come across it, which is really the way to do it. Being in a canoe my camera is often in a dry bag sitting behind me on the floor of the canoe. Trying to wrangle all that into position to catch a magnificent, strong eagle just isn't happening. I will carry my smaller camera in a Ziploc bag in the front pocket of my life jacket. But that can take a bit of time to get out, focus and snap the picture as well. 

My other whiny excuse is that I don't have a great telephoto lens. I think that is an essential tool to get those great animal and bird photos I see posted online from other Algonquin Park enthusiasts. This coming season I might have access to more pictures as LT starts to use the new GoPro he got for Christmas. 

In the meantime, here are some of the different wildlife we've captured in pictures:

A raft of loons, I never tire of seeing them

Osprey nest with birds perched over on the right

Merganser duck taking off

Blue heron

Butterfly

A frog hanging out at the top of Stacks Falls

A chipmunk who bit my finger right after this was taken (it's not his fault my finger looked like a pistachio nut)

Magnificent Moose!

Not a bear, but bear scat - I'd rather see that than the bear that left it!

Not a beaver, but a beaver's home

Snake skin

We got severely harassed by an island full of seagulls on Cedar Lake once. But we see those birds so often in the city I wouldn't think of taking their picture.

We've also seen, but not photographed, snakes (I've seen TWO!), beavers, otters, crows, that majestic eagle, turtles, red squirrels, slugs, minnows and lots and lots of mosquitoes, deer flies and black flies!

Probably the most surprising animal behaviour we've seen is a swimming chipmunk 10+ meters from shore. We witnessed that twice on the same day in very different lakes. No word of a lie.