What Looks Like A Sandpiper But Is Not A Sandpiper?

It rained during the night. Despite the fact that I was using my mother's tent that was mostly all screen walls with a fly on top, I was happy to find that I remained dry and warm the whole time. It was quite comfortable actually. 

Unfortunately, my dining tent did not fare as well. I hadn't bothered to peg it down and the wind had tossed it around and one of the legs was broken. I was able to prop it up for the rest of the time we were there, but upon folding it up to put away, the leg tore off of it completely and it is now beyond repair. So, I will just save the screens as back up screens and buy a new one next year I guess. 

I had breakfast and then headed down to the beach to see if I could find the sandpiper that was mentioned the previous day at the Discovery Program. It was not at the beach and I even tried the dock at the boat launch but it wasn't there either. 

I did, however, see the family of loons that we had been hearing over the past couple of days. 

Since the sandpiper wasn't at the beach I decided to drive down to the other beach to see if maybe it was there or to see if there was anything else of interest there. 

As I was driving I noticed a Ruffed Grouse on the side of the road. And then I saw another and then another. It was a mother Grouse with her family of baby Grouse. She must have had at least six to eight babies with her. 

And they were attempting to cross the road. So, I stopped the car and waited. The mother sat in the middle of the road calling to her young and watching them cross one by one. However, the little ones were taking their sweet time crossing so this was a bit of a slow process.  As I sat there waiting another car came up behind me and slowed down and stopped. The gentleman got out of the car to see what was going on. I pointed out that the momma was in the middle of the road and was refusing to move until all her babies were across and that they were not wanting to come when they were called. He chuckled and got back in his car and we both waited until we were slowly able to pass the Grouse family and continue on. 

The Day Use beach that I was headed to, also doubles as a dog beach. 

The Day Use beach is a nice, sandy beach with a nice view. 

However, just like the other beach, it was flooded too. 

It was flooded enough to make frogs feel right at home. 

Here too the Water Smartweed was growing in pretty, pink, bunches. All the pretty flowers floating in the water but no sandpiper to be seen. 

I took a walk around the area and discovered the park office. The laundry room is located in the bottom half of this building. 

The covered picnic pavilion is also in the area. 

I also took a quick look at the baseball diamond. It is one of the better baseball diamonds I have seen in a park. Most of the parks I have seen lately have let their baseball diamonds get over grown and are pretty much abandoned. But this one was in great condition and even had picnic tables around the perimeter so that people can sit and watch the game. 

I returned to the campsite and asked my mom if she wanted to hike the Recreation Trail with me. She thought that was a good idea. So, once again we left dad to read his book and off we went to hike a trail. 

The Recreation Trail starts at the road and circles around back to the road again. 

It runs all through the woods and does not go around or near any body of water at all. 

This trail has fewer pines than the Lonesome Bog trail did and so everything was much greener here. The Alder Trees had nuts that looked like little, tiny, green, pine cones hanging from the branches. 

The ground plants were different here too. Interrupted Clubmoss lined the edges of the path in some places. 

There were poisonous mushrooms. 

And there were edible raspberries.

A Dot-tailed Whiteface Dragonfly landed to say hello. 

The Recreation Trail is a fairly short trail and, despite taking our time, we were at the end of it in no time. 

We were still in the mood to hike so we decided to do a second trail. The Prospector's Trail which starts down by the Day Use beach. 

As we approached the trail head, we looked across the lake and noticed a tee-pee structure just barely visible among the vegetation. There was also a dock to the far right. Looking at a map later on, we found out that there is a small parcel of land that belongs to the First Nations on the other side of the lake, as well as a Ranger Camp of some sort. The general public is not permitted over there. 

The Prospector's Trail begins right beside the Fish Cleaning Station. 

So when we saw this blue and red contraption near by we wondered if it had something to do with the fish cleaning station. It was strange looking and we didn't know what it was. 

The trail is more of a road than a trail; at least most of it is. However, access to public vehicles is blocked off. 

A little ways down the road we came across another strange contraption embedded in cement. Once we saw that we realized that this, as well as the blue and red contraption we had passed, were both parts of drilling machinery. Of course! As if I didn't realize that right away! After all, it is called the "Prospector's Trail". 

A little further down the trail we saw a yellow mining cart on display. The trail was like a mini outdoor museum but it was lacking any information about any of the displays. 

The trail runs parallel to the shoreline of the lake and from time to time we could get near the waters edge and see the frogs hiding in the weeds. 

At one spot there is a big bat box hanging up on a post. I thought it was a great idea, however, it was painted black and it was sitting in the direct sun on a hot day. I suspect that bats might not be too comfortable in such heat, so I imagine it was probably empty. 

Shortly after the bat box, the trail that used to look like a road turned into a much smaller path through the woods. 

The birch trees were big and beautiful. One of them jutted out in an "L" shape which I think is somewhat unusual for a birch tree. The wooded part of the trail is rather short and soon we were at the road. The trail is not a loop so in order to get back to the car we had to turn around and go back the way we came. Mom didn't want to walk all the way back because she wanted to stay and explore some places along the side of the road. I wasn't interested in doing that so, I walked back to get the car by myself and told her I would drive over to her and pick her up. 

On my way back I saw a Two-striped grasshopper laying eggs in the dirt.

And I saw a female Blackpoll Warbler watching me from the tree top.

I picked up mom in the car and we drove around for awhile and looked at the various campsites at the other end of the park. We were scoping out some potential sites for my parents RV if they wanted to come back next year. As we drove along we started noticing that some of the permit holders has a big "S" written on the permits instead of the usual writing. Turns out the "S" stands for "Seasonal". The Ontario parks have started up a new seasonal camping program where you can put your name in, and if you are chosen, you can pay a seasonal fee to use the campsite for the entire summer. According to the Ontario Parks website, more and more of these parks will be offering the program. Some of the parks have 30 or 40 sites available for seasonal permits.  I am not sure how I feel about that. It seems like a whole lot of prime sites being given to people who will not even necessarily be there for the whole time. For example, the site right beside us,( # 67) had a seasonal permit and they had only stayed for the weekend. The other days we were, there was no one on it (which explains why it was so quiet).  I think maybe a few sites (10 or 12 at most) is one thing for seasonal sites, but 30 or 40 seasonal sites... seems rather unfair to the rest of us. After all, isn't that what trailer parks are for? At least at Selkirk Park there are only monthly reservations instead of the whole season. I dunno... I think it would be disappointing to want a particular site only to find out that you can't have it for the entire summer because someone has a season pass on it; you know what I mean? 

After hiking the trails we went back to camp and had lunch. We took a nap and then we played dominoes for awhile. 

Just before supper I took a stroll down to the beach again to look once more for the sandpiper. And there it was! At least I thought that was what it was. In the end, it turns out that it wasn't a sandpiper after all. There never was a sandpiper here. It was a case of mistaken identity. The sandpiper turned out to be a "Greater Yellowlegs" bird.  (Yeah..."Greater Yellowlegs". I don't know who named it but they could have been more creative, don't you think?) 

It spotted me and began to nervously make it's way across the sand towards the children's playground equipment. 

When it reached the flooded area behind the jungle gym it joined up with two more Greater Yellowlegs.  There was not one, but three of them!

And to top it off, there were a couple of mallard ducks there too. 

​I stood very still and watched them all for awhile. Eventually some other people came down to the beach and I knew that the birds probably wouldn't stay much longer once the beach filled up with people so I went back to camp. 

When I got back to camp I sat at the picnic table and tried to relax but once again, like each of the previous days I had been here, I heard the sound of something chewing on a tree. It was only very faint and I could only hear it when no one was talking. It was driving me crazy not knowing what it was. So I got up and started searching for the source of the sound. 

The sound led me to a pine tree with a pile of sawdust (also known as frass) at the bottom of it. I looked up as far as I could see but I didn't see any animal or any large holes in the tree. Nor were there any birds. It looked like just a normal, every day tree.

The sawdust was mixed with little black things that looked almost like mouse poop only smaller. As far as I can tell it was some sort of wood boring insect causing this. Perhaps a group of carpenter ants or a Pine Engraver bug or something. I guess I will never know for sure. 

As the sun was setting over the trees, so too was it setting over my camping for the season. We have to go home tomorrow and soon I would be back to work. I was all out of vacation days for the year so I had to be content with keeping all the beautiful things I had seen this year in my memory. I will anxiously await next years camping season and I will spend my winter planning out where I will go to next. There is always another adventure and another provincial park just around the corner.