First-time encounter with critter at YMPP

In my sundry visits to Yates Mill Pond Park over the years here in Raleigh, I'd seen geese, ducks, heron, crows, hawks, other birds, turtles, deer and snakes (and even a dog, which aren't allowed at the park) at some point or another. 

Then on Saturday, as I was on the return trip on my morning walk and approaching the smaller pedestrian boardwalk off Creekside Trail, I halted in my tracks as I saw the critter in the lead-off photo approaching me. 

It was my first-ever raccoon sighting at YMPP. 

I took several photos, the last of which (in the lead-off photo) was the best. I'll present the only other presentable one below, and it happened to be the very first one I took. 

Right after taking the lead-off photo, the raccoon looked up and noticed me not far from it on the trail, and it then took a radical left turn and scooted off the trail into the forest area in the direction of the creek.   

Not longer after that, as I made way onto the Millpond Trail to do my last 0.6-mile, I saw a couple turtles perched on a tree branch in the pond and took pictures of them and put away my phone. But a very short time later, I saw a couple geese on the pond paddling toward a tree that would soon put them out of my sightline. 

So I hurried to get my iPhone out again, and by the time I had it in position to take pictures, only one goose remained in view. 

Below the raccoon photo are the only presentable pictures of the turtles and goose. 

Canoeists, heron and a few orange leaves

There is a point on the return trip of Creekside Trail at Yates Mill Pond Park in Raleigh where a walker or runner can look left and see the pond and main pedestrian boardwalk over the water before actually reaching the boardwalk. 

That's where I was when I took most of the canoeist photos in this post. 

I'd never seen canoeists this close to that shore portion of the trail before, so when I did see several canoes in the water on Tuesday, I stopped my walk and grabbed some pictures. 

Not long afterward, as I bypassed this boardwalk and continued straight to begin the Millpond Trail, which begins on the other side of the boardwalk, I came upon a heron that was perched in shallow water close to the shore, also to my left. 

Up until this point, I had covered 2+ miles on the Creekside Trail without stopping to do any photography, but I was willing to stop for these sights ... and took in some autumn color as I proceeded further on the Millpond Trail.

As usual, all of these shots were taken at near maximum zoom using my iPhone 13 Pro, so the sharpness is not ideal. But ... I present these anyway. 

Finding autumn colors ... and looking up

On Tuesday, I experienced another one of those 52-minute walks that ended up taking me an hour and a half to finish. (smile)

That’s because after starting to take pictures of geese in the pond at Yates Mill Pond Park, I decided to make my regular walk another photo adventure, challenging myself to find autumn colors (there are some, but they aren’t plentiful yet) ... and to look up for tree and/or color compositions. 

Most of those “looking up” shots ended up giving me nice silhouettes and/or shots with a beautiful blue sky as background.  

The batch image-size shrinking I did (using the IrfanView app, which was free, by the way) to get copies of the pictures to put in this post counted 200+ images in all that I made Tuesday. That easily exceeded my two recent previous hour and a half walk/shoots at the park, which had numbered in the 120 pictures realm or thereabouts. I tried to keep the number that I used in this post to 170 (just kidding!). 

I stuck to the challenge for most of the 3.1-mile stroll, but as always, I found a few compositions outside those boundaries that I couldn’t resist making. 

The photo leading off the post was part of the challenge. Those leaves were still on a tree, and I found them while “looking up.” Most of the colored leaves I found were on trees along the pond side of the Millpond Trail. I wondered if having ready access to water like that — during a summer of protracted drought — might explain why the leaves are turning colors before leaves on other trees. 

And about those geese ... unlike others I’d come across on the pond in the past, these four in the smaller portion of the pond along the main boardwalk did not seem to care how close on the boardwalk I came to them. It appeared they were too busy grooming to care, actually. 

As always, to view a larger version of a photo, simply click on the image. To view a full gallery of images I took Tuesday, follow the link in this sentence.