Monday, June 13, 2011

Nature Walk around the Cranberry bog

After visiting my mother this afternoon at the nursing home I decided to take my dad for a ride around the cranberry bogs since the sun finally showed it's face.
I was happy to see lots of baby goslings with the mother and father geese walking around the bog dikes. I saw 2 wild turkeys walking around the edge of the woods, but the birds were too fast for me to get photos. Drat's !!!
I took a few pictures of  pond lilies at my dad's bog. The sun was fading fast, and I wasn't sure if I got the pictures until I got home and downloaded the photos from my digital camera. There are lots of white pond lilies everywhere, but there were only a few spots in the reservoirs that had pink lilies.
pond lilies pink at dad's bog1 pond lilies white at dad's bog
Also at the bog... near the top of the sand banks on the sheer cliffs of the sand pits we found some bank swallow nests. Unfortunately, with all the heavy rains we have had in the past few days many of the nests were lost due to the sand caving in at the top and the sand/nests collapsed and sheared off the face of the sand banks. You can see in the photo below some of the bank swallows nest holes in the big chunks of compacted sand that fell, but many nest survived.  The little swallows dig out holes in the compacted sand to build their nests. The birds were still using the remaining holes that were left intact.
bank swallows nest1
bank swallows nest2 chunks of sand that fell with nest holes
bank swallows nest3
bank swallows nest4 nest holes at the top of the sand pile
bank swallows nest5
bank swallow picture from bird book bank swallow info
Since last week, bee hives were placed around the bogs to pollinate the cranberry blossoms. The cranberry honey that they produce is very tasty. There were bees flying everywhere, and I just prayed none would fly in the open car window as I snapped a photo. I didn't want to get out of the car to take the picture and taking a chance getting stung.
bees at hives to pollunate the cranberries
photo below...cranberry vines with pink blossoms starting to open. You can see the tight buds that haven't opened yet.
cranberries in bloom2011
last week I shared photos of rebuilding a bog and setting out bare vines. The photo below was taken at my brothers cranberry bog 1 year after replanting last year.  A cranberry crop was picked off those vines last fall.
vines 1 yr old after rebuilding bog
It is always very peaceful being around the bogs. You never know what you will see for plants and animals. I
also enjoy the time  spent  with my dad who loves being at the bogs.
 elaine signature3

3 comments:

Joanne Huffman said...

A lovely view of the beauties of Nature. Great photos.

Anonymous said...

What fun looking around the cranberry bogs!
Diann

Anonymous said...

I'm having trouble leaving comments so hope this one will come through as I loved looking around the cranberry bogs. You always have such interesting things here! Diann