Coffee On Thursday. #8

Good morning everyone! It is another cloudy day and rather cool as well. There is a fairly strong north wind blowing which makes it feel even cooler. We are supposed to get rain and thunderstorms this afternoon. We missed the bad weather yesterday. They had warnings out for severe thunderstorms with hail from golf ball to tennis ball size. Plus the possibility of tornadoes, which I am glad we did not get.

There was one west of us, it looked rather large in the picture I saw. But it turned out to be quite nice and sunny here even though we were right in the path of that bad weather. Speaking of sunshine, I mentioned yesterday about our trip out along the highway on Monday to visit some lakes and get some pictures. So, yesterday I showed pictures from the first lake we stopped at.

There are two babies by the female and another over by the nest.

Today I have some photos of the second lake that we visited. You will see a nest on a rock in one photo. That is a Herring Gull nest, with the female watching over her 3 little ones. Those babies are not very big and look so cute, little bundles of fluff around the mother’s feet while she takes a nap. To be honest, I did not even notice those babies when taking the photos, I was concentrating too much on the gull and the nest.

The male is standing off to the right on a submerged rock, watching over his little family.

I was thinking there would still be eggs in the nest. The way the sun was shining on my camera made it a bit hard to see as well. So I was thrilled to see the babies when I downloaded the pics to my laptop. The male is off to the right and at first I thought he was swimming, but he is actually standing on a submerged rock. It is actually part of the same rock where the nest is located.

According to records there have been Herring Gulls nesting on this small rock each year since 1974. Though one year the water was so high the rock was completely covered and unusable and one year just a tiny part of the rock was showing and waves washed away the nest.

Further down the lake.

But otherwise it has been in continuous use for nesting. Other gulls nest on more rocks further down the lake. Only a small part of the lake is visible from the highway, as seen in the other photos. It is a nice picturesque lake though.

Another photo showing further down the lake.

There is no picnic area at this lake, but there is a nice place to pull off the highway and park, to enjoy the scenery. Well, those clouds are looking kind of dark out there right now and I think it is time for more coffee. I hope you all have a wonderful day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2024 Steve McLeod.