Of nature and stray kittehs

This time of year, I like to grab a camera, and take the kids for walks through the local Elm Creek Park Reserve. It's a great place to get some good shots, and some nice exercise and spend some time in a little corner of nature.

We went both yesterday, and today. Yesterday we took a trip on a leg of the trails nearer to my home. There's a small bridge over Elm Creek that provided some good shots. The creek is up pretty high with all the rains, as evident by all the plants that are now under water.

Today was a bit more of an adventure than yesterday. We stopped at the Eastman Nature Center, which is quite a bit further up the trail system, and saw the one eyed owl, an owl who was born with one eye and therefore can't hunt or fly so now spends its days being an educational bird. Then we walked the 'Sumac Trail' which has a long wooden path, like a dock, that stretches out over a small lake or pond.

There were tons of dragon flies, and those little blue bugs that look like dragon flies, however, I'm not sure that they are dragon flies simply because I thought that a dragon fly's wings were always extended when they landed, and these fold up and have their wings in a slightly different configuration.



These are all the images that I posted to my deviantArt Gallery.

As we finished our walk, we found a stray cat that had been hiding in the brush. It had no collar, but was fairly friendly, even turning over for tummy rubs, and letting me pick it up without any qualms. There are quite a few houses nearby, so we thought that it might have come from one, although with the increase in foreclosures right now, there's every chance that someone just abandoned him there. We tried to get the cat to come with us back to the nature center down the road, so that they could have one of the park police officers take it to the humane society, but it wasn't having any sort of car trip. We didn't really have the time to walk it the whole way there, although on foot it would have probably followed us anywhere. I let the people at the nature center know where the cat was, and they were having the Park Police pick it up and take it to a shelter, so with any luck the kitteh is well fed and safe now.

I'm still thinking that I should post something to craigslist on the off chance that there's an owner looking for him, and they might be reunited.




UPDATE: As it turned out, the insect I couldn't identify is a damselfly. I find it odd because I swear I looked at the damselfly and ruled it out before deciding I didn't know what it was. However, it is what it is.