Dispatch From Petrie #163, October 2025

I arrived mid-morning on a overcast, very light showery day not expecting to find much wildlife, but Petrie is more than that and stands on its own. There was a walking group of about 15-20 who walked from the culverts to the end of Bill Holland Trail and back. Then sat on lawn chairs back by their cars for a good chat. There were mothers out with babies, toddlers and preschoolers. All very welcome visitors, but that’s likely one reason there was little wildlife for me to photograph.

No four legged creatures (no beavers, muskrat, deer), however I did see a mink, but it disappeared into tall grass before I could get a photo of it. No photo – the mink never existed 😊

There was still fall colour, more than just the yellows I expected, some small birds, a few ducks and lots of Canada geese.

I arrived just in time to catch a rainbow with Petrie being the Pot of Gold at it’s end.

A lone male merganser was swimming well out in the marsh to the west of Tweddle Road. Its feathering seemed a bit off, maybe just coming out of its moult?

The fall colours were showing off just as I was entering the parking lot and continued elsewhere

The sumac reminded me of a clothesline….

The young basswood trees with their huge leaves certainly stood out walking the trails

Some young dogwood shoots and poison ivy

A nice bit of red and green amongst the finished purple loosestrife

The Quebec shoreline looked nice even under cloudy skies

Muskrat Bay

The trails look very different throughout the seasons. The fall look is the best?

Three wood ducks (centre and far left) were mixed in with the mallards in Turtle Pond

With the lower water levels the weed beds are now more of an island in Turtle Pond. The Canada geese and mallards were resting amongst the reeds and starting to make their way to open water as people passed

The mallards were flying sometimes rather than waddling through the reeds

Further on, a group of four cormorants (likely two juveniles and two adults), were not impressed by my quietly watching them and took off. They need a long runway and a clear flyway ahead to get airborne. Muskrat Bay didn’t offer them that, so once airborne, they had to turn around in front of the trees and fly east to gain altitude.

A pair of lesser scaup ducks were well out into the Ottawa River. A photo of one of them barely made the cut

Three blasts from hunters’ shotguns on the Quebec side had 100’s of geese flying overhead

A ruby crowned kinglet and a chickadee were keeping a close eye on me at one point

A male downy woodpecker was impatiently moving about a small tree

A small flock of robins were in one area, checking out the berries and looking for worms

I mis-spoke myself about no four-legged creatures, a black squirrel was scampering away…

The low water levels made walking along the Ottawa River shoreline easy. Walking where racoons and deer had walked earlier, leaving their tracks in the sand.