Bits of the Mission Accomplished

When I got back from Texas, a week after John and I sprayed, looking at the lake was pretty discouraging. Earlier this week, I was driving past our lake on I35E and I could have sworn I saw the outline of the route John and I took with the canoe and Roundup. Friday, we canoed out into the lake and discovered that canoeing is possible. Today, my wife and I ventured out on the lake with a camera and took some pictures of our lake and, I hope, you can see where John and I whipped up on the lilies; and where we didn't.

The recommended 2nd round of spraying would have really cleaned out the open areas. But you can easily get around the lake and if it's far from perfect it's also far from completely jammed with lilies. The large treated center section is considerably less populated than the untreated edges. Some of the pictures show the difference pretty clearly. The path around the island is less obvious, but in the right light from the right angle, you can see where we were. On the canoe, the cleared area is the only path around the lake.

Some of my wife's pictures show how badly the lake is infected with milfoil. I have no idea how we're going to beat back this contamination, but I suspect that we need some more life in the lake to help with this; animals and fish. There was more life on the lake this afternoon than there was all summer. We spotted a dozen geese, the same number of ducks, a couple herons, and a couple of least bitterns. If we can get an early start with the herbicide next spring, maybe some of the birds and animals will stick around for the summer. The lily infestation pretty much forces the birds to look elsewhere for habitat and hunting.

Bird Watching on Savage Lake

This has been a specially good May for bird watching on Savage lake. Early in the month, when the temperatures were barely above freezing, I walked down to my dock and surprised three large loons. I've heard that Minnesota's "greater loons" were large birds, but I was surprised at how large they really are. When the three startled birds rose from the water and flew to the middle of the lake, at first I thought the were geese. Really large geese. Immediately, I realized they were different birds because of their coloring and shape, but I didn't identify them as loons until they settled back into (I mean into) the water. I watched them patrol the lake for more than an hour before going to work that morning.

Our yard has been decorated with a variety of yellow winged and breasted birds. If I were more of a birder, I'd know what they are, but I know they are unusual for our yard entertainment. We have two sets of wood ducks nesting in our duck houses, also. Red wing blackbirds are back. Robins, too. At least three different types of woodpeckers. And the usual finches, sparrows, and bug eaters. For a week in late April, we had a lot of seagulls and even a severely lost pelican.

The black birds are keeping the hawks and eagles from getting too comfortable, but we did loose one early baby goose to a bald eagle in the first week of May. Snatched it right off of our beach. I've never seen that before.

On the mammal front, a pair of muskrats are making a home under one of our beech trees. I hope they survive this year. We've lost every family of muskrats who have come to our lake in the last five years.