… not all who wander are lost, or so says October’s calendar page. There have been many variations of this witty gem (if you’ll pardon MY pun here), dating as far back as the 12th to 13th century, but the quote is likely attributed to William Shakespeare who wrote “all that glistens is not gold” in the 16th century. The locale for this photograph is right here in Michigan at Tahquamenon Falls State Park, which encompasses nearly 50,000 acres and stretches 13-plus miles in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
As I have done for most of my 2023 posts marking a new month and turning over to a new page of my nature calendar, I am once again writing about a trek to Lake Erie Metropark, my favorite weekend venue for walking and taking photos. I have certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of my Metropark pass this year. You may recall my recent posts at that venue were filled with the excitement of seeing and capturing images of a sweet doe, the Osprey family, a Mute Swan family, a Wood duck and ducklings and my joy in getting up close and personal with a pair of Sandhill Cranes. These were all good times for sure and that “glitter” drew me back again and again.
But then one day, Saturday, July 22nd to be exact, I set out from the parking lot at the Shore Fishing area and, while the first hour of my trek was indeed a “walk on the wild side” it was not really what I had planned.
Walking on the wild side – it’s not what you’d think.
Really, if you go to this 1,607-acre venue with its three miles of shoreline and can’t scare up a few feathered friends, (besides Luc, the injured resident eagle who has no choice but to be there), you need new glasses or you need to find a new venue.
So, after several glittered-filled trips in a row, I hustled out there to see if I could continue my streak. Seeing wildlife at Lake Erie Metropark is not always a sure bet … but after three successful treks in a row, I had great expectations.
But, while some critters are great to see up close, there are others, like several wasps that insisted on buzzing around my face and the camera lens, which I could have done without. Although I had heard Tony Bennett’s signature song “I left my heart in San Francisco” umpteen times the day before on the day of his passing, I felt sure I should be crooning “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” instead. Why were these wasps buzzing around my face? I wasn’t wearing perfume, not did I have flowers in my hair. I finally gave up and left the Shore Fishing Bridge and would look for my Sandhill Cranes later.
So, the wasps were up close, but most of the critters were far away.
In the distance, I saw movement and there were several deer wading around the Water Lotuses.
One stopped munching long enough and looked at me as if to say “don’t be judgy – there are plenty of Lotuses to go around.”
I thought of the one deer I saw up close last year, knee deep in a Lotus bed, munching on those blooms and leaves, wherein we humans will pay a hefty fine for removing a single Lotus from the bed.
A shadow from a large bird passing overhead made me swivel my head up. Taking the photo in sun glare, I wasn’t sure what I saw and reasoned it might be an Osprey from the fire station Osprey family or most likely a Turkey Vulture.
I was happy to discover when going thru my photos weeks later that I had seen an adult Bald Eagle, albeit the shot is a bit fuzzy.
And, speaking of Bald Eagles, I stopped at Luc’s cage as I always do to say “hey” and chitchat a bit. When I arrived, Luc was in a sour mood, glaring down at a small dog that was barking at him.
The dog finally cowered behind its owner’s knees and peered out at me when I gave it a look for disturbing the peace.
I was lucky to get a few photos at the marsh near the boathouse dock …
At the beginning of the Trapper’s Run Trail I stopped to take this photo of a park bench with its sweet sentiment.
I have a collection of equally sweet park bench sentiments from Bishop Park to share in a later post.
There was a scrawl professing love on the wooden overlook …
There were zero Barn Swallows on this day – they must’ve been sleeping in.
Lots of cattails filled the marshy areas.
The American Lotus beds were just “getting there” – no blooms and the leaves weren’t that large yet.
But there were WILDflowers to take note of … here are a few of them.
On what had been a hum drum jaunt, I decided it was time to leave as I was feeling a little wilted from the sun and photo pickings had been scarce. Enroute to the car, I stopped again at the Shore Fishing bridge, hoping the wasps were picking on someone else. They were – whew!
Here I saw a Great Blue Heron doing its best “Where’s Waldo” impression, as it was embedded in one of many Water Lotus beds.
And there were my Sandhill Crane friends, similarly wading through the marsh.
I stopped at the Fire Station and only one Osprey was lurking about that morning.
So I guess my “walk on the wild side” was tame, but hopefully you won’t find it lame.
While driving home, I decided to bop over to Memorial Park, a fortuitous stop and what became a bonus post for me after I encountered the cellist and violist, a tattered butterfly and many tattered trees.
So maybe my greed for glitter was rewarded in the end after all.
Linda Schaub
WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY 
Love the critter shots!
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Thank you – glad you liked them Kat!
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Nothing like photos of what you see in nature to put glitter on your day.
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Glitter is good Ally, especially out in nature.
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Your photos and prose glitter.
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Thank you Anne – I am glad you think so. It turned out to be a lucky, glitter-filled day after all!
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Excellent photography. Nice your October golden colour celendar. Beautiful shanhill Crane!
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Thank you Raj – I was happy to see the Sandhill Cranes again.
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Welcome, Bridgette. I like Sandhill Cranes.
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Are bulrushes the same as cattails, Linda. I like the lines in that photo. Whatever flower that bees is fascinated with if gorgeous and the photo equally gorgeous. I’m an all time daisy lover just after roses. So those photos are the winner of my heart with this post! As far as birds, the Heron takes off to flight is my second favorite.
Interesting quote on October calendar. More fascinating is the history lesson. My exterior house is painted Gold, but not glittering gold. The color certainly makes a statement in all the pale yellow, beige and gray houses.
Your walk was nice and tame and absolutely not lame! I love your ending post with a fun rhythm.
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Well I have to admit to you TD that I have used the term “bulrushes” and “cattails” interchangeably for years. I don’t know why, but I am glad you asked me if they were the same – they are not. Oops! These are cattails, so named as they resemble cat tails, fuzzy and long like a tail, however, bulrushes are similar but could have more than one fuzzy tail clustered in a bunch and the spiky leaf configuration is different, so I will correct that mistake later (if I edit it now, someone might be reading the post and then can’t read while I edit).
I’m glad you like the Heron taking flight. I never know how it will look once I see it on the screen and it’s often a blur, so I was pleasantly surprised. I like daisies too and there are a lot of wild daisies out there … they are very hardy.
I never knew the origin of the saying, but I often find when researching a phrase or word, that Shakespeare might have originally wrote it.
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What a beautiful area, Linda! The variety of wildlife is amazing. Of course, the poem from Tolkien is perfect. Before I scrolled down past the eagle pic, I saw that flash of white in your image and already knew that it was a bald eagle. Great place to see raptors! Glitter indeed!
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I do love walking here Terri – there is lots to see and the past year or so, it seems every time I go there, I find a different bird or critter to photograph (like last week’s fox, which was my first time seeing a fox). I did a double-take when I saw the eagle on the computer screen as there was sun glare galore when I took the photo. My first bald eagle at this park, though I know there is a nesting pair there. Indeed it was a glitter day!
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I hope Luc wasn’t too bothered by that yappy dog! I’d put it inside Luc’s cage! I’d give it something to bark about!
Yes,I saw the white tail and knew it was a Baldie as Terri did.
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I knew you’d get a kick out of that Bald Eagle Wayne – my first at this park, though I know there is a nesting pair, but I’ve never seen the nest, nor any eagles and I have walked every part of this park, especially since they closed the pool and concession stand area, there are less cars and people, so I can cut across the park now and see more critters. The look that Luc gave to that dog as it was standing back a bit and barking at him was great. So I gave the dog a look and he was more terrified of me than Luc and hid. 🙂
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the dog is more familiar with human faces then eagles faces. Probably the first eagle it has ever seen?
Luc would make a small meal out of it at any rate!….maybe some leftovers for the next day?
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Yes, you’re right – maybe it was cowering after Luc looked at it for barking … maybe it barked as it was scared? That’s the first time I’ve ever seen someone bring a dog near Luc’s cage.
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I bet these photos will warm you up on a cold winter’s day in a couple of months. I’m glad the wasps only annoyed you and didn’t cut your walk short by actually stinging… yikes! Poor Luc, I’m sure he’d love to be able to join that other eagle.
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Yes, these photos will take me through the dead of Winter Janis. I have a lot more walks from this Summer to share … I am always behind writing about my walks. This walk started off badly with those annoying wasps buzzing around my face and the camera – very frustrating. Yes, you have to feel sorry for Luc as he was wounded and is blind in one eye and one wing was injured so he can no longer fly. He’s been there since 2009 and was injured a few years before when he was five years old. I am sure he is wistful sometimes when he sees eagles and other raptors take to the skies, especially during the migration when thousands of raptors pass through this park.
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Miss Linda………………………………..I enjoyed your narrative about “all that glistens is not gold”………………………………….beautiful pictures of Sandhill cranes and the Osprey which I’ll probably never get to see up so close……………………………………….thank you……………………..I enjoyed it
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Glad you enjoyed my feathered friends Ann Marie – I hope you get to see them up close one day as well.
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I’d say the day wasn’t lame at all, it had plenty of critters to win over some fame from your blogging fam! I love the second heron (right?) photo – the reflection is awesome. I am with Terri in seeing the white on the eagle and recognized it as such right away. And those are cattails to us, I admit to never hearing the technical name bulrushes. 🤔😊 All in all, Linda, it was a golden nugget kind of day!
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Glad you liked this post Shelley and I like the idea of a golden nugget kind of day! I was hoping that heron taking off wasn’t too blurry and was happy to see it turned out okay, plus a bonus reflection as well. I was happy to see the eagle on the screen – the sun was in my eyes, so I wasn’t sure what I was shooting. I think it had a stick in its talon, so I just assumed it was an Osprey gathering sticks for its nest at the nearby fire station. I don’t know where I got “bulrushes” from? Maybe a Canadian thing? Cattails it is and I just fixed it. I’m glad it wasn’t lame to you or other readers. 🙂
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It was a great day – you seized the moments as you discovered them. I call that a win for you and for us! 😍🤩
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Thank you Shelley!
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You’re welcome!
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Enjoyed this flashback to July — all the pictures look so hot and sunny. Loved the deer giving you that look from the lotus bed. Loved seeing the cattails, too. And that was a cool shot of the bee (or wasp?) hovering beside the first wildflower. Shakespeare had such a gift for using the perfect words to convey universal truths about us humans and our foibles.
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Our last day of Summer-like temps is Wednesday, then it will be Fall-like and this sunny, warm day in July will feel like eons ago. I laugh at those deer munching the prized lotuses when humans are fined for taking a bloom or even the spent seed pods. That deer stared right through me Barbara. 🙂 I didn’t I.D. that yellow flower but just did a Google image search and it is Yellow Mullein, but it didn’t I.D. the bee or wasp hovering around it. I am amazed how often phrases are traced back to Shakespeare and how his words of wisdom have been modified through the years.
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Speaking of walking on the wild side, I admire the deer and Sandhill cranes for nonchalantly wading through the marshes. I would never do that myself; who knows what lurks beneath all those lotuses! You chose a nice way to spend my half-birthday 🙂
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I would never wade through that water either Dave. I’d be afraid I’d be bitten by something. It’s worrisome enough dodging mosquitoes and/or ticks this Summer while out in woodsy areas. Every so often I’ll be walking along in these marshy areas and a muskrat will be paddling furiously, its long tail streaming out behind it. Also, there are beavers who build dams, plus flesh-eating bacteria in some locales, not necessarily here. Not for me. You celebrate half-birthdays too! My mom and I used to celebrate our birthdays on a special day too. My mom’s birthday was on Valentine’s Day and unless it was a weekend, we never went out on her actual birthday due to it being the holiday and snow and ice as well. Instead, we picked six months from her birthday, August 14th, to celebrate and I used to take a vacation day. My birthday is also on the 14th, so our celebration was four months later for me.
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I Love that quote Linda! You got some great pictures that day. Wow! an eagle encounter!!! I had an eagle encounter a couple weeks ago too. I was mowing our back field and noticed two birds soaring high above our neighbor’s pond. One was an adult eagle because I could make out the white head. I assume the other was a juvenile. I stopped and watched them for a couple of minutes before the mowing took me in the opposite direction. By the time I was heading back in that direction they were gone. A while later I was mowing the very back path in our field, which is maybe about 40 feet from our neighbor’s pond, when I saw a huge bird (the eagle) fly up out of their pond. Oh my gosh it was huge!!! Of course, since I was on the lawn mower, I didn’t have my camera with me but what a sight!
Also a couple days ago when we arrive at the farm we discovered a blue heron had stopped by the pond for a late lunch, or maybe it was an early dinner. It did take off as soon as we let the dogs out of the van. I hope it got enough to eat. LOL.
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What a sight to see an eagle out in the open Ruth – you were lucky to see an adult and juvenile. This was my first eagle sighting here as much as I go to this metropark. Seeing Luc, all cooped up in the cage, is not the same as seeing a majestic bird like this soaring over top of you. I thought I saw a stick in its talons, so assumed it was an Osprey from the family that nested at the fire station.
Those herons are pretty smart aren’t they? A fellow blogger Diane (in Ohio) has a pond in her backyard and said she just gave up on the herons stopping by to feast on the fish. They think the pond is there for them, like yours. It’s amazing because you see a heron just keep standing there, catching fish after fish … as skinny and scrawny-looking as they are, they must have a bottomless pit!
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I swear Linda, you could walk the same trail every day and see something different. You brought back memories for me with the cattail plants. When I was a child we took a ride in the country every weekend and we would pick them when they were brown and take them home. They fascinated me and still do. Wasps are so annoying! We have a colony that made a nest in the soffit of our front porch and guess where they are going in and out at? Right by the front door, but on a good note it did get rid of a political woman campaigning. Haha
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It is amazing Diane that I truly can see different things every time I am at this Metropark. They do have a lot of cattails as there are so many marshy areas. I like them too and now they are bursting at the seams, kind of exploding with white fuzzy seeds inside. I never picked cattails but we used to have a creek at the end of the street and there were pussy willow bushes grew there and I remember breaking off some of those small branches to take home to my mom to put into a vase. I had some big black wasps by my door a few years ago. They came out of nowhere and had a very small hole above the screen door and were disappearing into it. One got into the house, maybe riding in on my hair. You got rid of the political woman campaigning. Keep those wasps around through November 2024 – no unsolicited visitors! 😉
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Linda, you got quite a variety of photos. I really like the deer in the lotus leaves and the sentimental park bench. There’s a group of Sandhill cranes that migrate here in the fall and spend the winter. Are they in your area during the summertime?
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It turned out to be better as the morning progressed Rebecca. I liked the sentimental park bench too. At Bishop Park this Summer, I took photos of all the park benches with sentiments on them. Some are very heartfelt, usually dedicated to family members who have passed away. I’ve been jumping around on my posts for different months, so I hope to feature those benches sometime in November. We do keep our Sandhill Cranes here in Michigan. There are a couple of large rookeries, both in marshy areas, so many of them fly there and stay the Winter. If they were smart, they’d go to Tennessee where it is warmer (if you don’t get those ice storms).
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You remind me that I have not been pestered by the bees and wasps that get so aggressive late in the summer. Maybe because it’s been so dry here?
Enjoyable photos, as always.
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You lucked out JP … we have had them here. Walking anymore is dicey, between watching for wasps, ticks and/or mosquitoes. We had a lot more rain than you which is probably why the wasps were angry. Glad you liked the photos – it turned out to be a better day as time went on.
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I find your walk wonderful and enjoy your photos as always. Such beauty surrounds you – except for the wasps. Perhaps you should make a small koi pond in your fairy garden and grow your own lotuses? Or maybe stock frogs and turtles.
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That sounds like a delightful idea Zazzy. I might be afraid that the raccoons will go fishing in the pond though. My neighbor found a raccoon family in his big garbage can one night. They flipped open the lid and were digging in there for food. I do not live in a rural area at all. Last month I found a huge hole/burrow in the yard at the house foundation. The critter dug through lava rocks and marble rocks beneath the lava rocks and made its home. I called in a pest control service – the trap was there for almost one month, but we got no groundhog, just two opossums. Yesterday, the pest control guy was here to pick up the second opossum. I was not amused about it as I had to pay for the opossums to be relocated to a wooded area ($75.00 apiece). Yesterday he said we can seal up the hole for good. I took some pictures and will be making a post about it in the next month. I would love to have a pond though. A fellow blogger in Ohio has decided to stop having her pond as she does live in a rural area and the heron ate all koi so she finally gave up having the pond.
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Yikes! That’s quite an expensive price for doing the kind thing. I haven’t seen much in terms of wildlife here except for squirrels, bunnies and the occasional hawk. I reckon the first two explain the third. My neighbor has had some issues with skunks. I never had trouble with wildlife back in Shell Knob although we were much more rural. The groundhog lived, or hung out, under the boardwalk out to the garden. The skunks, possums and raccoons came up and visited me while I sat on the porch smoking back in the day. Sit quietly and make no quick movements is the key. Mama skunk, who was nearly all white and quite beautiful, seemed proud of her babies and they all had to come up and sniff my feet. I did have a little trouble with some of the raccoons after Dad started tossing his trash in the general direction of the trashcan and not using the lid.
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Yes, it was expensive Zazzy and I was glad the guy agreed that it was time to close up the hole/burrow and take away the trap. I felt badly about the possums as I know they meant no harm and now are away from all that is familiar to them. The last one looked at me so woefully, I was tempted to tell the guy to take the trap but set it free again in the yard. I like that the skunks, possums and raccoons visited you back in the day. They were comfortable with you, even Mama Skunk letting her babies visit you. If you don’t make sudden movements and they get spooked, it is nice to gain their trust. It takes a long time even for some squirrels to venture over for peanuts … they are skittish and a sudden hand movement, or if I rattle the bag, they get spooked and scurry away.
Do you remember one time I did a post on Humbug Marsh and showed the metal sculpture with the silhouettes of waterfowl and I said I could not find the artist? You liked that sculpture and you also had Googled around to find the artist. So I follow the Refuge/Humbug Marsh on Facebook and sent a pic of the sculpture and asked for info on it. They evidently didn’t see my message, so last week their phones were broken and so they posted their e-mail address – I seized that opportunity and e-mailed them and asked again. I got a response and the person who is knowledgeable about the sculpture is on vacation this week and I was told they’d get back with me – so hopefully we will find out now.
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