Ojibway Prairie Reserve, Windsor:

We traveled to Windsor on May 25th. The weather was great and we luckily had time to visit the Ojibway Prairie Reserve. We walked the trails along the nature centre and the old rail trail.

A small Boardwalk provided nice viewing of the aquatic life below.

One of 2 Common Snapping Turtles swimming through the pond.

The much larger Snapping Turtle!

Midland Painted Turtle

Blue Gill prefer warmer lakes and ponds with slow-moving water and some weed growth.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/bluegill

Common Green Darner pair laying eggs: The female uses a scythe-like ovipositor to inject her elongated eggs into plant stems. (We could actually see the tip of her abdomen penetrating the underwater stem.) Eggs are also injected into leaves, rotten wood or debris that is at or near the surface of the water. Occasionally the eggs are injected directly into the stream or pond sediment.

https://dragonflywebsite.com/dragonfly-life-cycle.cfm

Eastern Forktail, resting on a lily pad. This is the first of many Forktails that will be seen this summer.

Tadpoles in the pond - likely American Toad Tadpoles.

Shapes in Nature! - curled underside of aquatic vegetation forming an almost perfect equilateral triangle!

Silvery Checkerspot caterpillar

A tattered female Eastern-tailed Blue

It's still early in the season for flowering plants. This Fleabane (sp) was covered in hungry insects.

First Hobomok Skipper of the year! Many Hobomoks were flying, but most of them speedily zoomed past us.

Rattlesnakes have been reintroduced at the Ojibway Prairie.

We chatted with a couple who had been doing a butterfly survey. The discussion turned to snakes and we were given a view of the scar that the male received after being bitten by a Massausaga Rattlesnake that he had picked up when he was a kid. He mistakenly thought it was a Fox Snake which are not venomous.

We didn't encounter any Rattlesnakes but did find a couple of other species. Common Garter Snake above.

Eastern Milk Snake