Nature Notes: Glad to see the end of summer

I had to laugh when I spotted this great blue heron on one of the Shelley Lake fish feeding stations, which are an attempt to encourage fish populations at the lake.

It kind of reminds me of the problem with feeding birds at places cats hang out. In this case it's a matter of feeding fish where birds hang out.

Since so many of my nature shots of birds are shot through my bedroom door, I thought I'd show you the set up. On the left is the door and in the middle of my deck are some makeshift bird baths.

On Thursday I caught a threesome of birds through the door.

On Friday a finch was fussing at a cardinal for hogging the bath.

The female cardinal wasn't going to be intimidated by a little finch.

On Saturday I was keeping an eye out through my front window at my oak trees. I lost a lot of leaves and small branches but no real damage at my house during the storm.

I can't believe how early the leaves are changing colors this year. Granted, not that many but everywhere I go I see a few changing. These are at my house.

On Sunday it was a beautiful day and we went on a walk at Lake Lynn.

It's quite close to Shelley Lake and I enjoy the similarities and differences in the water birds there.

Lake Lynn has some funny looking ducks (above) and swans which I don't see at Shelley.

It's close to my house but with Shelley Lake in my neighborhood I don't go the extra couple of miles to Lake Lynn all that often.

The lake side of the boardwalks weren't noticeably higher (water level) but the other side was.

Below is the side of the boardwalk at Lake Lynn that is usually wetland with more land than water so it was noticeable how high the water was after Irene passed by.

I was talking to Bill about how I usually saw great blue heron at Lake Lynn and was surprised there weren't any. He said, look there and pointed and sure enough there was one fishing.

Monday morning I decided to check out the Shelley Lake trails and see if there was any storm damage. I had to stop while the city workers cut up a tree that was across the path with a chainsaw.

In a way the fact that the city worker were clearing trees from the Shelley path just two days after Irene demonstrates that where I live had minimal damage from the outer bands of the storm.

In the late 1990s when Hurricane Fran made landfall on the NC coast and tore through the state, including where I live in central NC, it took forever to get all the roads clear and they put tape across the entrance to some of the Shelley paths saying they were closed. Actually a friend and I stepped over the tape and explored and I remember wondering if the woods would ever grow back because so many trees were lost back then. That was about 13 years ago. So many people ended up with trees on their houses and I was lucky that my oak trees didn't land on my house back then. That's part of why I was watching my oak trees during this recent storm but they are still holding firm.

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