Saturday's Critters # 511

Welcome to Saturday's Critters!

Hello and happy Saturday!

 If you love all God's creatures like I do and also like to blog about them and take critter photos this is where you can share your critter post. Link up your post and share your critters, join in with my critter party ! You can share any kind of critters the real ones, pretend ones, statues and paintings, a new or old post!

I am catching up, I ended this post with photos from September.  These are photos from our local walks to the lake, on the local  fire roads and some from my back yard.  Several people have mentioned my header photo, it is a view of our local lake/Prettyboy reservoir and it is one of my favorite spots for neighborhood birdwatching.

1. Sightings from our walk to the local lake, the usual birds were seen in the usual places. Birds seen are the Great Blue Heron, Belted Kingfisher, Cedar Waxwings, a nice sighting of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo, Slider Turtle and the Canada Geese. 

2. A larger viewing of my sighting of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo.

3. A larger view of the Belted Kingfisher. 

4. Another day and another walk to our lake, the water level is low due to the drought. Sightings included a Double-crested Cormorant, the usual Great Blue Heron and the Belted Kingfisher.  

5. In my backyard, I am still seeing the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds and lots of the Fritillary Butterflies. 

6.  Another day and here we are again on our walk to the lake. For a local walk I am always happy with the sightings I see. There are lots of pine cones on the trees, is that a sign of this winter's weather? A good winter for the Finch sightings? The lake water level is still going down, the day's sightings were a Bald Eagle seen sitting in a tree across the lake from where we were, a few Great Blue Herons were hanging out on the shore, an American Robin seen in sitting in a tree above the trail, the Green Heron was seen in the usual spot too. 

I took a few photos of the Bald Eagle, until it flew away.  

7. More looks at the Green Heron seen at our local lake.  

8.  Just another walk to the lake, you can see the water levels are down even more now due to the drought. On this day I saw a Solitary Sandpiper, flock of Canada Geese, the Great Blue Heron, Mourning Doves and the Belted Kingfisher. 

9. I never know what bird I will see at the reservoir. The low water levels means there is more mud around which seems to attract different birds. This is the Solitary Sandpiper, we watched it for awhile foraging in the mud. 

10.   Sept 3, 2023 the second Maryland Cycling Classic was held, it was a hot day with temps in the mid 90's. We were able to watch them speed past our little neighborhood on their route around the Prettyboy reservoir. The race features world champion cyclists from 30 countries. The winner Mattias Skjelmose from Denmark finished the 121.4 miles in 4 hours 28 minutes. They were escorted with a line of police motorcycles, cars with extra bicycles and 2 ambulances in case of emergencies. The race ended at the Baltimore's Inner Harbor with a ceremony and a crowd of people to cheer on the winner.

Thank you for sharing your critters and post!

Thanks to all my visitors and for your past and present comments. Stop back to see any replies to your comments. I appreciate everyone who loves and respects wildlife. Thank you for linking up a critter post.

Here is my linky:

I am linking up to Heidrun's Mosaic Monday  I hope you can stop by and visit Heidrun and check out the Mosaic Monday post.