Autumn stroll at Yates Mill Pond Park

 

Wednesday was a day to decompress from Tuesday's unfortunate presidential election, so I spent an hour or so strolling the mile trail around Yates Mill Pond at the state park in Raleigh. 

Trees there were showing autumn colors, but I elected to lead with a photo of the wooden pedestrian bridge reflected in the almost-still waters of the pond (above), captured across the way while traversing the trail. 

We saw little wildlife Wednesday, other than squirrels, a few turtles and a beautiful blue heron. Sadlly, the heron flew over us quickly as we cross the bridge in the photo above and landed too far from us for our iPhone cameras to do it justice. Nevertheless, I gave it a try, and my best shot appears among the other shots below. 

Above and below: The pond, reflections and fall colors. 

Above: Wild, dried grass draped over the fence marking the park's southeastern perimeter. 

Above and below: Horizontal and vertical orientation shots of a root cluster and the corresponding tree trunks found along the trail. 

Above: A mix of yellow and red leaves from stacked branches of different trees in front of me along the trail. 

Above: A downed tree trunk off the beaten path, er, trail. 

A tree trunk whose branches of varying directions and configurations struck me as interesting.

Above and first two photos below: Shots of the trail I was on.

Above: Leaves with differing autumn colors.

Above: A short tree trunk stub that looks like it's been in this abbreviated state for some time.

Above: A few turtles not far from the trail on the far side of the pond.

 

Above and first two below: A few different framings of the mill, the first integrating foliage immediately in front of me across the water, the two others after I found unobstructed openings to grab shots without interference. 

Above: This shot shows the most autumn color, but unfortunately it was taken in a backlight situation. Hoping to add some definition and contrast, I ran a copy of the image from my high-dynamic range (HDR) software. After slight crops to the top and bottom and a slight enhancement to the orange, red and green colors, I got the photo you see below. One enhanced definition I was particularly pleased with was the reflection in the water of the red leaves from trees along the shore. 

Above and first six photos below: views of whitened branches and foliage on trees along the shore of the pond on the other side of the pedestrian bridge. I've always liked these tree shapes, whose appeal increases during autumn when they take on this white coloring. 

Above: Resting amid this foliage is the blue heron, but I was so far away from it, that my iPhone couldn't do it justice ... and cost me some sharpness to boot when I elected to use near maximum zoom. 

Above: A cool fall color combo on these leaves.

Heron, squirrel, deer and Millie the cat

We humans seem eternally curious about the Animal Kingdom, and I count myself one of those ... at least when I have a camera in my hand. 

And nowadays, thanks to the convenience and much-improved quality of cameras in cellphones, we technically have a camera at the ready at all times.

So in recent weeks, I pulled out the iPhone to capture images you are seeing in today's post. They feature yet another deer grazing in our backyard, a squirrel foraging for food on the roof of the house immediately outside my office window, the house cat, Millie, cavorting about outside and on the stairs to the second floor in the house and a blue heron that did not seem to fret when it saw me and/or other park visitors who were walking the trail around Yates Mill Pond. 

It turns out, each shoot carries a little story. I've already told you about the story about the heron -- it being unafraid of being so close to two-legged human creatures, although it did tread carefully. I'd never gotten that close to a heron before, so a part of me wished I had my DSLR with a zoom lens. That's not to say I didn't use the iPhone camera zoom for my shots; I did. But I was still closer to a heron yesterday than ever before.  

And I've seen squirrels on the roof before, but in the past, as soon they'd see me looking at them through the window, they'd bolt. It's possible that because we've had many of the limbs of a nearby crepe myrtle tree trimmed -- especially those that were falling onto the roof -- that squirrels don't have nearly the quick escape they used to. This squirrel (see photo above) even paused long enough to drop the berry or nut it was eating to look me square in the eye and, perhaps, dare me to make a first move toward it. I didn't. So it went back to its business (first two photos below), keeping an eye on me all the while.

I took advantage of this squirrel's decision to linger to get as many shots as I could with the iPhone; even though my DSLR camera case was nearby, I didn't want to risk losing any time. 

As for the deer ... well, we'd seen one in the year about two weeks ago, but it didn't hang around long enough to photograph. This time I sucked it up and shot through a house window. Unfortunately, a back deck plexiglass window stood between the house window and the deer, so many shots had two gradients of light exposure. The combination of that plus the fact that I'm pretty sure my iPhone zoom was maxed out made the resolution quality less than optimum (see photo above).

So when I had my fill of those shots, I went out the front door, quietly snuck around the house to a corner near the backside and grabbed a few more shots before the deer got wise to my presence (first photo below) and paused about 4 seconds, apparently to see if I would make a move. I didn't, so the deer decided to make one itself and bolted into the safety of the wooded land before it (second photo below). 

In an unfortunate footnote to the deer story ... residents of my neighborhood learned a couple weeks ago that a developer has submitted plans to put 253+ houses on 95 acres of wooded land that touches many of our properties. My home in particular -- which sits just outside the wooded acreage property line -- will be affected by the development. 

One of the things I enjoyed about our new home was the serenity -- and sounds of birds chirping -- that those woods gave us in the six years since we've been here. In the near future, that will all dissipate if the developer is successful in getting his high-density housing project approved adjacent to the two low-density neighborhoods (including ours) that flank the woods. 

The woods was an unofficial sanctuary of sorts for various wild life, including the deer who'd stray into our yard from time to time. But we've also seen a variety of birds and hawks, not to mention rabbits, turtles and snakes in the time we've been here. We wonder where those land-borne critters will run to after the heavy equipment comes here to start leveling the trees and creating the new homes. 

We'll have to wait and see, I guess.  

The deer and squirrel pictures are really the best of the lot, so I fill out the post with a few others of Millie and the heron below. You'll get to see Millie in various stages of her regular outdoor romp routine. I was able to photograph the heron from several angles, and unfortunately the mid-day sun did my compositions more harm than good, rendering -- at least from one angle -- me almost silhouettes. In the first heron photo below the pointing thing sticking out from the water in the background is simply a piece of driftwood. I chuckled when I first saw it; it reminded me of a shark or dolphin fin. 

Enjoy.