A few days ago I went for a bike ride along the lake, but wound up staying close to home when my ride through Sam Smith proved too interesting to leave. Great blue heron, beaver, rabbit, kingfisher, wailing grebes and clouds of mixed swallows… this place is so alive in summer.
Stills from a zoomed-in video - the heron finally spotted something worth following. A tiny fish, I think… red ants snuck up on me and I jumped before capturing the head toss.
As I was watching the heron, I spotted an odd, then familiar sight: a tree swimming across the water.
Yup, beaver. I usually spot them across in the marina bay, but the trees here show telltale signs too so I wasn’t surprised when I realized what it was. Just a wee baby beaver grabbing snacks.
I wish I had words for smells of summer meadows in a lake breeze… incredible sweetness. Toronto skyline wavered in a haze, and hundreds of swallows (cliff, tree, barn, purple martins, bank and rough-winged) twittering cheerfully as they loop over the marina bay.
This park offers a glimpse into the future on the west side of our neighbourhood. Like this spot, the new park being built to our west will be a mix of planted and naturalized trees & plants, filling in the new landscape created by dumping rock into the lake to grow the shoreline. A lakeside refuge.
Truly. All of these places along the lake, wherever they build breakwaters to make marinas or parks… they all wind up sustaining an amazing diversity of wildlife. From big fauna like coyotes and beavers, to wee red squirrels and muskrats. Great blue herons to 5 species of swallow. Turtles, fish. 🩵💚🤎
