Leaf Lookers Loop, Lounge and Lunch!

Ausable River Channel: Several friends gathered for an 11 km walk through Pinery Provincial Park.

Most of the 40 bird species that we saw were quite distant except for some Canada Geese flying overhead.

Water droplets show-casing inverted images of the surrounding forest.

After an earlier "missing persons incident" more clear directions were applied at a turn in the trail.

Most adult fireflies die before winter arrives. (It is the larvae that survive the cold weather by burrowing into the ground.) However, adult Winter Fireflies emerge in the fall and overwinter on the bark of trees. Adults have no "lanterns" and are diurnal, unlike most flashing fireflies. The larvae are bioluminescent.

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/125627-Ellychnia-corrusca

Trumpet Lichen growing alongside moss.

Oak Apple Gall: In the spring, a female wasp injects an egg into an oak-leaf bud. After the larva hatches, the gall structure begins to develop, protecting the immature wasp on the inside until it emerges as an adult in June or July. The gall is green and spongy at first. It becomes brown and papery after the adult emerges in the summer and eventually drops off the tree in the fall or winter. The empty gall case can provide shelter for other insects. Entire ant colonies have been found inside a single Oak Apple Gall!

https://newengland.com/living/gardening/oak-apple-galls/

Asian Ladybird Beetles taking shelter on some driftwood along the Lake Huron shoreline.