Shadows, light, lines, patterns ... plus a blue heron with a turtle at Yates Mill Pond

It wasn’t until I got home from Yates Mill Pond Park on Thursday that I realized the vast majority of pictures I had taken earlier (yes, while on my regular walk) had vertical orientations. 

Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong with that. But with this blog, I try to present in the lead-off position (at the top) a photo with a horizontal orientation so there is there not a lot of wasted space up there. Worrying about wasted space is a concern that goes back to my days as a newspaperman in Indianapolis. It’s not critical in blog world, I suppose ... but it’s still something I try to avoid. 

My photography mission Thursday didn’t occur to me until I was on the far west loop of the Creekside Trail heading back to the start, about a mile or so away from the start point. But boy, did I find lots of compositions to photograph for the category of shadows, light, lines and patterns. 

And as for the bonus — the blue heron and turtle — that’s something I had photographed the previous day. I’ll save those photos for the bottom. But I was intrigued by the proximity of the heron to the turtle in the pond. My photos were taken with my iPhone 13 Pro, so the quality isn’t the best because of the distance. 

But the first three shots of the heron and turtle were taken with 1) a brief light on the heron’s beak just before 2) dipping the beak into the water, presumably for a snack, and then 3) coming up. The fourth photo is from several frames later, about 30 seconds after the heron did a very slow strut to get closer to the turtle. 

By the time I decided to leave the two and resume my walk, the heron remained in this position; I don’t think it intended to do the turtle any harm. 

The final two pictures are from the forest landscape that I grabbed during my walk later that morning.   

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug

More mushrooms and geese at park, but lower water levels and falls stream

On most recent previous post about Yates Mill Pond Park, it was mushroom day. I'm calling today's post "geese day" at the park, although you'll find at the bottom there are yet more mushrooms. More about that later. 

In that previous post, I used a couple photos of a farm implement harvesting the annual crops in the field adjacent to the 2-mile Creekside Trail I use for my walks at the park. Apparently, the implements leave behind morsels of whatever crop (corn, soybeans, etc.) that they harvest. So scores of geese descended on the field two days ago when I was there for my walk, and spent the morning picking the fields clean. 

The photo leading off the post is a procession of geese on the farm field perimeter honking warnings that they had spotted me on the trail.

The photos above and below show small sections of the field (and geese) feasting on the leftovers. These photos have been cropped to bring the geese closer to you, the viewer. 

Above and below: These were among the few mushrooms left untouched on the Mill Pond Trail on Monday. I also was at Yates Mill Pond Park on Aug. 6 (last Thursday), and while I saw more destruction or disappearance of mushrooms, I also noticed new ones. The pictures below are about those.

 

All of which brings us back to geese. When I started my walk last Thursday, there were about two dozen or so geese on the pond itself, hanging out in a very shallow area that was only slightly covered by water (see photos below). 

This spot in the pond was just a small distance south of the main boardwalk bridge over the pond, which is how I was able to get a photo from a relatively close distance. Of course, the geese were honking their heads off as soon I stopped to take their pictures. 

The drought here hasn't totally disappeared, so given that we haven't had a good rain in a week now, water levels on bodies of water are receding. Yates Mill Pond is no exception. When I was there Wednesday, the waterfall stream had been reduced to two streams on opposite ends of the ledge. 

Check out my traveling photographer blog, Travelin’ Shutterbug.