Loch Leven

There is ice on the lake, so we couldn’t go out in the canoe. We broke through the ice at a dock and did the few tests…no Secchi. The water is super clear, no problem seeing the bottom, likely about three feet where we were. About 2” of snow last week.

Two redneck grebes; one cormorant; one bald eagle; one turkey vulture; two small unidentified shore birds;four western painted turtles; numerous Canada geese around the lake. The photos are turtles today, and our snowfall one week ago today!

Loch Leven in Cypress Hills is still ice covered, so our first observation will likely be in May...the photos were taken on April 17 and 18.

Water sampling at Loch Leven is done for the year! Beautiful day to snowshoe, however!! See you in the spring...stay well everyone!

Water is MUCH clearer...no waterfowl or turtles seen today. Wind got up a bit, so was hard to get the water depth. Beautiful fall colours showing up in Cypress and the turkey vultures are still here, as you can see in the picture!
Hopefully, we can do one more test at the end of October🤞🙃...

Once again there are a lot of weeds, so it was difficult to find the real depth. Beautiful sunny day, after a very windy day yesterday . We saw four turtles, one that was “shedding”, which we’ve never seen before.

We could not get a depth due to weeds. Beautiful clear day, no wind. Saw a bat flying, kingfishers, mallards, pintails, red-neck grebe, cormorants, turtle and a small shorebird.

There were a lot of weeds, so it was difficult to get the disc to the bottom. We saw mallard adults and ducklings, two cormorants, 4 turtles, a pelican.

The reason for not doing our tests on May 31 was it was SO windy!!The water today was very clear. We could not see the bottom where we were testing, but the disc stopped going down at 3 meters. The only wildlife we saw were Canada geese...many adults and four goslings. We had seen a grebe a few days ago, sitting on a nest.

The lake water has become quite green, but not a lot of large weed beds on the surface like some years. We saw redneck grebes, mallards,cormorants, painted turtle, leopard frog, pelicans. We checked the invasive species tube and it was clean. I forgot to measure the depth of the water, but it should be about the same as last time.