Windigo's journey from inception to present

After the waterfowl lake, Windigo, was excavated, we breached the berm to drain it so that the dump trucks could drive to the compost piles and be loaded. This left an empty lake area that needed to refill with the fall rains. In anticipation of a new life, we also left several inches of clay and detritus on the bottom to hopefully cultivate a weed food source for the birds and protection for the minnows and frogs, etc.

Of course, we also left the little islands as nesting sites for the ducks and safe areas for does to have their fawns in the spring, where they could hopefully escape the omnipresent coyotes.

When the water began to refill the lake, the grasses and cattails appeared along the berm. Not knowing if there would be a weed cover as a food source for the ducks, in the previous fall I purchased and cast 100 pounds of wild rice throughout the lake. In the spring the ducks ate the rice shoots up so fast that there were none left intact to reseed itself in the fall -- thus a failed experiment, and an additional disappointment for me cause I was planning on harvesting some wild rice myself!

However, a lovely delicate weed appeared spontaneously and completely covered the bottom of the lake, and the ducks love it!

Even the rare Blandings turtles found it a good place, under water in the weeds, to consumate their mating ritual.

The Blandings turtles look a little different when they are walking across your lawn. Note below  the bright yellow color of the throat and chest. The majority of turtles in the lake, however, are of the painted variety.

In the second season, the lake was full of blue and green winged teal, mallards and a 'resident' pair of geese. The wood ducks had not yet shown up, largely because I had not yet build nesting boxes for them (a different posting).

The most successful of the nesting birds were the mallards. The hen that laid these eggs has been here every year for the last five seasons. She is easily recognized because she limps on her left leg, Which doesn't seem to bother her consort at all. But then we know about the minimal requirement for males 😏.

That same season the lake was worked steadily by six black terns. I had never seen one before. As seen in the picture below with terns flying in the foreground (Find Waldo!), they flew endlessly around the lake during daylight hours catching insects. Life was good.

But then the summer of 2012 arrived. When the drought began, the water level in the lake dropped, and eventually dried up completely (along with all the marsh-land south of Windigo). As it did so, the animal life became intensely concentrated, and the hunting opportunity for the wading birds became wonderful. That year during the water recession, for several weeks we had 6 full time great blue herons a variety of others, like night herons and American bitterns, but amazingly 14 great white egrets. This is the only place in Canada where they show up -- just a little spot west of Ottawa, shown in Roger Tory Peterson's Field Guide to Birds of Eastern and Central North America.  We had another 4-month drought in 2016, but we didn't see egrets or herons that year, for some reason, like poor recovery of the minnow population.

Once the food was gone, these wading predators all left too. I read that 'draining' a pond every few years is good for it, as it rejuvenates the weed growth in the coming year. However, it sure is tough on the minnows, frogs and water insects that were in the lake since they all have to start again in the next season, if they can!

The various droughts, however, did not seriously impact our trout pond, even though the water levels there dropped by about 6 -8 feet.

And despite the drastic drop in water level with a concomitant raising of water temperature, beautiful trout were still available to be invited for dinner. Here we see one brook trout and a similar size rainbow trout, which I periodically take when required for a meal.

When Windigo dries down, you get to see who is cruising the area by the tracks they leave in the mud. In this case, a good sized black bear has been through, who often makes a mess of the neighbor's corn fields. In such cases, it too can be invited for dinner.

This year, with the vast quantity of rain that we have experienced lately (see my fourth posting), the odds of a drought occurring is very slim -- thankfully. But that doesn't mean that Mother Nature can't still throw us a curve. After all, June is still a couple of days away.