Take only photos and walk softly on the Earth!

After being so totally inspired by my blogger friend Louise I decided to take the opportunity of the sunny day and went for a drive to Mountsberg Wildlife Centre and went for a hike there on Thursday. Omg it's been a long time since I have been there, the boys were still little, and it was cold and snowy, we were there with my dad for some maple syrup festival.Mountsberg is a natural environment park, it is about 472 hectare big, with lots of wetlands, forests, fields and a 202 hectare water control reservoir. It is also a wildlife sanctuary and environmental education centre. It includes about 16 km of nature trails, a demonstration sugar bush, a wildlife walkway as well as a barn. Of course the barn was my first stop, but no donkeys....there were a few horses, some goats, chickens, sheeps and some bunnies that were hopping around wherever they wanted. Somehow this little guy found himself on the other side of the fence, hmmmm, but I couldn't get him or her back to the right side, I could have let all the other ones out instead.:)

I then took the Wildlife Walkway, which is about 1.6 km long, because I wasn't sure how muddy it was going to be and how well my knees would cooperate with hiking. But the trail was well groomed. It passes several specially designed enclosures with hawks, owls, eagles that are non-releasable due to permanent injuries. And it was nice to see all these majestic creatures close up.

 Hawk

snow owl

At the end of the trail there was a boardwalk out to a Lookout Blind that overlooked the reservoir. It was dragonfly galore there at the water, lots of sunbathing turtles and I saw an Osprey in his nest.

Osprey

Since the trails were well groomed, there were hardly any puddles or mud and I decided to go on the blue trail, the Lakeshore lookout trail next. I didn't do the whole trail, but there were several loops of trail that would connect to it, so it was easy to keep going and going and I ended up doing also the sugar bush trail and a little bit of the Pioneer Creek trail, but that one was getting really muddy as it was just straight through the woods, so I opted out of that one early.
The blue trail led me past Swallowville, an area of over 20 swallow nesting houses, which in the spring and summer can house about 150 swallows, there was a constant coming and going.

 

I climbed up one of the 10 m high observation towers to take a look over the water for a while and then took the loops back through the forest and wetlands to arrive back at the barn area. It always amazes me how many marshes are in this area.

Well it was a good two hour hike, not too challenging and I had fun. I loved just listening to the noises in the underbrush and the different birds chirping away. Wonder where I will be heading next week.....I know I want to do the Royal Botanical Gardens, especially the Rock garden, since I have never been to that one. We will see...summer is just beginning.