Chris got his camera too and when the mantis saw its reflection in the screen it attacked it.

Fascinating creature.

The moth was about the size of my hand, so pretty big for a moth. Lets hope we see one again soon.

We have also started to see turtles travel across our land lately. Every year we see a number of Blanding’s turtles in the garden and we are never sure where they come from or where they are going, but we love them. Here is the latest venturer.

Then yesterday we saw a painted turtle. Although we often see these on our travels, we have never had one in the garden before. At least none we have seen.

When Chris lifted him up you could see more of his markings.

Soon after we saw him he zipped off to wherever he was going.

Also the other day we saw this osprey on a nest. Not the best pics as I only had my pocket camera on me, but you get the idea.

We have also had the hummingbirds coming and going. This is a photo of the female – not too good, but they are fast!

And here is a stunning moth we found on our porch. He is an Automeris io moth according to Wiki

You can see how really tiny he is when I picked him up to put him a little further along the deck out of harms way.

We had noticed one of the rabbits sitting on the deck and running round it only this morning – maybe this is why!

Almost immediately after entering the park and paying our $16 entry fee we spotted two moose, a mother and calf. We have been to Algonquin before and on one occasion spotted one moose, but never two before, so already we were really pleased and it made the visit worthwhile.

Here is the mother and her baby.

We carried on driving through the park to the other end, then turned round. Next we went to the visitors centre where we ate lunch and watched the birds outside on the feeders.

Here are some siskins, male goldfinch and a purple finch.

After filling ourselves with hotdogs and fries (we went for the healthy option) we carried on and then spotted another two moose. We had to do a quick U-turn to get back to where I had spotted them and it was again a mother and baby. Soon after we stopped, the baby moved into the woods, but I managed to get a photo of the mother. As soon as we stopped, other people saw us and they too stopped. Before we knew it there were half a dozen cars parked up taking photos.

All the moose we saw were very patchy with their fur. They must be in the process of getting rid of their winter coats and replacing them with summer ones. This is something we had to do ourselves as it got really warm. T-shirt weather for the first time this year, yippee!

After spending a few hours at the park, we drove home and saw another groundhog. So the total animal count was 4 moose, 1 deer and 2 groundhogs, not bad at all.

Last night it was announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by the US. Not sure how I feel about this as it could have bad repercussions. I doubt his people will let it go without a fight – literally! It is good he is gone, but there are plenty more when he came from.

Also, today is election day, so hopefully everyone who is eligible to vote will. Will we wake up to a majority conservative government tomorrow, or another minority? It does seem that if it is a minority conservative that it will be with the NDP in second place not the expected Liberals. We will have to wait and see.

Chris went out earlier to take some photos of them. As you can see many of them are pretty tolerant of us.

Here are a couple of the photos he took.

Well this winter finally took its toll on the steps and they were starting to fall apart and become unsteady, so Chris decided now was the time to rip them up and start again. So the other day we went from this:

To this:

We now have a lovely rockery area which we will plant out later!!

The next stage was building a main step from pavers and we are then going to build a deck and steps leading from this to the door.

Since the weather took a turn for the worse we, or rather Chris has had to stop, but we are planning on getting the wood for the deck & steps this week, so we can make a start on the rest of it.

Other news:

Yesterday we saw the pair of flickers for the first time this year. They were hammering away in the back garden. We also spotted the thrasher the other day, but not since.

We definitely have two black squirrels, one very black the other more ginger. They both turn up most days, usually separately. We are hoping they are nesting near by and will bring babies over. Our reds are starting to molt and their coats are getting very tatty. Chipmunks are everywhere!

Weather is still very changeable lately. One day we have 21C, the next it is 4C. We have had rain, snow, thunder and lightening, sunshine, you name it we have had it. The other night we had a huge thunderstorm which woke us up several times during the night. One particularly loud bang which rocked the house had us thinking we had been struck, but we could not see any damage. The next day we found out large areas surrounding us were without electric, but we were okay, so somewhere close definitely got hit.

Whilst I was on the phone to my aunt in Spain yesterday morning we went from bright sunshine, to cloudy skies then snow, all within an hour. She was a bit shocked we were still in danger of snow as it is April. In Spain they are in the mid 20′sC with bright sunshine, but have had quite a bit of rain. When we went to bed last night there was a light covering of snow on the ground, but it had vanished this morning.

Hopefully the weather will get better for May, especially when for when our daughter and girlfriend arrive. We have so much planned to do that it will be a shame if the weather spoils it.

Our black squirrels are still regular visitors. This is one on our deck. As you can see this one is actually pretty red in colour, but next to the real reds, he is pretty black. We know we have more than one black one as they vary in colour so much. Nice to get a bit of variety though.

Also we have lots of chipmunks running around. This is just one of many.

Spoke to my aunt and uncle in Spain yesterday and it is mid 20C there at the moment and no humidity, so pretty perfect.