Lotus covered pond – Click Image to see full Gallery
D-700, my hubby and I recently found ourselves in St. Louis, Missouri. Now while most people would probably go and spend the only day they had in St. Louis going to the Arch, we went about things a little differently. Besides, my hubby and I had already been to the Arch a couple of times before and D-700 prefers nature over manmade structures any day. This time around we decided to check out the August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area just outside of St. Louis.
The August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area covers nearly 7000 acre and boasts about having over thirty lakes. They do have over thirty bodies of water, but we Okies would call most of them ponds. I guess if they want to call them lakes; that’s fine by me. I really thought with that many lakes I would get to treat D-700 to an abundance of duck sightings. Much to our surprise most of the lakes had no birds on them at all. We mostly saw anglers casting poles hoping for a fish or two to strike.
There were two lakes that we found interesting. One was fairly small and pretty much covered in Lotus plants. By looking at the plants you could see about every stage in the Lotus plant life cycle. Some plants were just unfurling their leaves, some had buds, some were blooming, some had small undeveloped seed pods, some had more mature seed pods, and some were turning brown and dying. I have always found Lotus plants intriguing. I love the way water beads up on them. It looks like clear mercury sitting on the leaves. The second lake that caught our attention was very low on water and created more of a wetland area. This is where we found the most wildlife. We saw Great Egrets, turtles, Green Herons, frogs, flycatchers and Great Blue Skimmer Dragonflies. D-700 took pictures of it all, but many of the things we saw were just a little too far away for D-700 to capture a good image of. We would have liked to have gotten a little closer, but to protect the wetland area it wasn’t allowed. It was, however, a nice view and we enjoyed every minute of it.
T. Cole Photos 