Pymatuning / Linesville Spillway

It was a beautiful autumn day...considering it's the last weekend in November...it was a superb day! :) Mid 60's, lots of sunshine and a few white fluffy clouds. The Mustang has to be off the road by Dec. 1 (per insurance purposes)...so we gassed it up and took off for one of my dad's favorite spots. We all use to do a lot of waterfowl hunting...and *the* place to do that in this area is the Pymatuning Waterfowl Reserve. It's managed by the PA Game Commission and is near or is part of the Pymatuning State Park. Beautiful farm lands, huge corn fields and thousands of geese and ducks! And these geese are SMART! They know where the hunters are and where the "reserve" is...it's rather annoying to be sitting in the blind and be able to see the geese flying your direction and then veer off to the "reserve" land instead of coming into the cornfield with the blinds. And you are only allowed to hunt until Noon in that area...well, let me tell you...those miserable geese *know* when noon is! When you are hauling your stuff out of the blind and to the truck, they are flying in by the hundreds! After hunting, we always went down to the spillway to feed the Carp...then we stopped to feed ourselves. Anyway, here are a few pictures...

The Geese at Pymatuning

OK, where's the geese? Honest, there were geese in this frame when I took the picture! LOL OK, this is why I *need* a new digital camera...one with a zoom lense...for Christmas.

OK, here's some geese coming in to land. Yes, this is the same tree that is in the above picture...and there were geese in the field before these ones came in. It was about an hour before sunset when I took these pics...the geese were coming in off the water for their bedtime snack.

These are the same geese that are in the above picture...they are now landing in the grassy area between the mowed corn and the standing corn. Go head, squint, you can see them...the bottom tree branch is pointing right at them! :) They are so intriguing to watch. The come in for a landing, arc off to the side a bit, cup their wings, stick out their feet, then tip their wings and drop right to the ground, running a few steps while folding in their wings.

FINALLY! A few geese close enough to the road to actually see them with this camera! And, isn't weird how close something looks to the naked eye compared to how it looks through the camera lense?

The Linesville Spillway

Here's the spillway. You can't see the fish in this picture at all, but they were there. It's kinda cute to watch a duck get too close to the edge of the spillway and get sucked down into this circle. They swim like the dickens, some manage to stay out in the lake, others are sucked into this area. From here, it goes under the road and into the lake on the other side of the roadway; but, of course the ducks can fly right back where they were...

Here's a bubbling mass of Carp, all fighting for some bread I threw into the water.

More Carp...

Here's where the fun starts. There are so many Carp in the water, all rising to the surface fighting for the bread...that the ducks can literally walk on the fishes backs. Now since it's almost December, the migatory birds are gone and that means not as many ducks...so this isn't as spectatular as usual! :( But, you can see a couple ducks sticking up out of the water, walking on the fish (two female Mallards in the very center of the picture).

The Gulls

And what fun would water be without Sea Gulls? These were nasty ones, almost always beating the ducks to the bread. Heck, most of the time when you threw bread to the duck, it never hit the water! Yup, the gulls would catch it in mid air...sooo, this prompted us to throw the bread straight up in the air for the gulls...what a show that was. I felt like I was in the Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds!

Did you know a gull can stop mid flight and hover? Well,that's what the one on the left is doing!

Not clearly in focus, but it was too cute not to post. We laid a piece of bread on the pole to coax the gulls in close. Well, let me tell you, those buggers are FAST! This was the third attempt to get the picture!


Some Closing Pictures This is a little cove that was in the lake, across the road from the spillway. I loved the way the trees were reflecting into the water...and the orange/red tint to the trees and bank on the right. That tint is from the setting sun that was behind me.


And, here is the final shot of the day...the setting sun reflecting in the lake. The fence-thing you see is the railing across the top of the spillway, where it comes out from under the road into the lake on the opposite side; hence the rippley water. This is the calm side of the lake...even without the sunset.

As usual, after the spillway...comes food! We found a lovely Italian restaurant and had a great meal...and a long dark drive home!