No matter when they arrive, Clark Lake welcomes a variety of species.  Here is the first of two recent natural encounters.  On Wednesday, May 26, 18 mergansers took their first plunge into the lake.  The young were incubated in John and Diane Deming’s wood duck box, occupied by a mother merganser.  Diane comments “we used to have many more wood ducks nesting in our boxes, but the mergansers seem to have taken over in the last 5 or 6 years. We are pretty sure that there were several different females that laid eggs in the box.  Eighteen hatchlings is an unusually high number.”

Video: Diane Deming

From his location in the Kentucky Point Cove, David Wiemer photographed a pileated woodpecker visiting his side yard on May 20 at 7 pm.  Below are two photos, one on the tree, and the other, on the ground.   David acknowledges they can be loud, but “this one was not hungry and came and went without eating,  but I have heard them before.”

Some are not always happy with woodpecker activity.  David recalls “one was trying to put a hole in our aluminum siding a few years back!  And I had one knocking holes in our apartment when I was stationed at Ft. Gordon in Augusta, Georgia.”

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