About an hour's drive SW of Ottawa is Limerick Forest. The forest is a 6092-hectare community forest owned and managed by the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville. Conifer plantations (red pine, jack pine, white pine and white spruce), account for approximately one third of the total area of Limerick Forest. The remainder of Limerick is comprised of wetlands and second growth mixed forest, in roughly equal proportions of one third each.
We didn't go looking for birds or anything in particular. We just wanted a nice walk through a mixed area and hopefully mosquito free. No luck on the mosquitos, there were lots, so out came the small mosquito-repellant emitting gadgets we have. They clip on to a belt or hand carried. They worked very well thankfully.
Bumblebee on joe-pye weed and white-faced meadowhawk dragonfly
Fruit of various plants: chokecherry, buckthorn, clintonia, Indian cucumber (2x). I hadn't seen (noticed) Indian cucumber for many years.
Meadowsweet, marsh calla, white water lily (2x) yellow water lily
The path came to small clearing where we could see the main marsh. Four trumpeter swans and a wood (?) duck were not far away, but they were more silhouettes with the bright sun behind them. Photo-editing brought them a little out of the shadows
And talking about light direction.... Same two lily pads photographed left, with sun dead ahead, right, with sun off to the side
European frog's-bit got its name from an old Latin translation meaning "frog bite," because people long ago thought frogs nibbled on its floating leaves
Can't say I had ever seen northern wild rice growing before
Pickerel weed and cattails in the boardwalk marsh
Way far off in the boardwalk marsh were three great blue herons. Usually the reeds hid them, but every now and then would fly up. A small crop enlarged of the distant herons
Four Canada geese weren't quite so far away
Arriving back at the main marsh a distant egret was fishing not far from what looked like a map turtle
Frogs were making themselves heard and after much looking and searching we finally found a leopard and a green frog
A beaver lodge looked like it had been there a long while
A viewing platform gave a better look at the swans and the geese
We carried on south afterwards to the Iroquois lock. We were sure the ospreys had fledged, but thought we'd check. The nest was growing weeds indicating it was empty. The only birds around were ring-billed gulls
