Bona Dea Update

Bona Dea on this Tuesday was mostly cloudy with a little sun and nice to be out and about. I bit off a little more than I could chew today. Ended up going all over the place at the park. Ran out of photo space and still had things come up that I could shoot. The Cormorants and Pied-billed ducks were still in Lake Dardanelle across from the park. There were Robins on the grounds at the eastern parking area. I first went on Swinging Bridge Trail and the female nesting goose is still there with her mate not around anywhere. I fed the Brim fish for a little while and then decided on a whim to go across the spillway on the deer trail to Button Bush Bayou to check the log to see if the Aligator was there. It wasn't. I then went to a place I had not gone to for a couple of years and that was upstream on Prarie Creek which runs into the park from the town of Russellville, AR USA. I crossed the park boundry into a remote section that no one goes to. Well, guess what? I found a goodie. A big Cottonmouth snake. Just like the one I saw and took photos of a few days back and found here in recent posts. These photos are of the one seen today. I went further upstream to a low usually underwater area to see lots of deer tracks and a photo of one closeup. Also saw some really hugh and I mean big Mushrooms growing on a big rotten log. These are Pleurotus Pulmonarius for you scientific folks. The single plant photo shows one from 10 to 12 inches in Diameter. That is big. Looks like a dinner plate.Then a photo of a clump of them. The other Mushroom photo is of a smaller variety of the same specie on a dead tree trunk but this was across from Waldon Pond. This specie is: Pleurotellus Porrigens for you even more scientific folks. They look like small sea shells don't they? There are photos of a spring type inflow and then water going underground and coming out into Prarie Creek. Also a very big beaver dam all the way across the creek. The Beavers keep this dam there all the time each year. When it floods a few types a year it is destroyed and they keep coming back to the exact same spot to construct this dam. 3 photos of this. Look at the one looking upsteam to see the height and length of it. I saw a Muskrat in Waldon Pond on the west side real close to the trail and Gray Squirrels were more frequent on this side of the park. Turkey Vultures out today more than of late. Northern Cardinals were singing away all over. Also in the creek by where the Cottonmouth Snake was a pair of turtles and I believe they were American Snapper ones were moving around in the water stiring it up. I say this because several years ago at the exact same bend in the creek they were doing the same thing and a male snapper came along and the male with the female attacked the single male and they banged their shells together like bumper cars more than twice. Over by the Aligator log mentioned above, I took this fuzzy shot of a Hackberry Emperior, what a name, Butterfly. Don't ask me the scientific name. So you see I sorta over did it today.