YouTube video by Barry Octeau

A slow walk south along the D&R Canal towpath to Lake Carnegie Dam

Last Saturday I left home with no real plan. It was about 16°C outside, the sun playing hide and seek behind the clouds, and I just wanted to be somewhere other than indoors. I ended up at the Kingston Lock section of the D&R Canal Park Trail, X-T3 and XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR on the Black Rapid strap, iPhone 17 Pro hung around my neck on the Cross Body strap with Merlin ID running passively to catch any bird calls I might miss. I walked slowly south toward the Lake Carnegie Dam. Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) · Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 1250 · 1/2000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 600 mm · f/8.0 The area was still. Northern Flicker, Blue Jay, White-throated Sparrow — the usuals calling from somewhere in the bare trees. When I got to the dam, two men were setting up to fish, poles still on the ground. I stood there looking out at the water. A few gulls — Ring-billed, Herring, Lesser Black-backed, Great Black-backed — some geese, half a dozen cormorants. The dam was quiet in a way that made me pause. I wasn’t sure why. Double-crested Cormorant (Nannopterum auritum) and Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis) · Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 800 · 1/1000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 600 mm · f/8.0 I kept walking south toward a small island — maybe the size of a king-sized bed, two at most — sitting about five metres out from the towpath bank in Lake Carnegie, a single tree on it with roots visible at the waterline and a skirt of low shrubs around the base. Normally I find a Great Blue Heron or a Green Heron there, working the shallows. Not today. Today every available surface was taken by Painted Turtles. Dozens of them, along the shore of the island and across the logs from fallen trees that stuck out of the water nearby. Some were stacked two deep on the narrower logs, necks stretched upward, shells angled toward the light. I’ve walked this section of trail many times and never seen that many turtles in one spot. I stood there longer than I’d planned. Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) · Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 1250 · 1/1000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 600 mm · f/8.0 They weren’t doing anything, and yet there was something absorbing about watching them. Painted Turtles are ectotherms — they need external heat to get their metabolism going after winter. What looked like collective idleness was actually urgency. Each one had hauled itself out of cold water specifically to be in the sun. The ones on the higher logs had the better position; the ones still at the water’s edge were pressing up against the ones already settled, trying to claim a few more centimetres of warmth. Lake Carnegie Homes · Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 640 · 1/1000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 150 mm · f/5.6 Across the water, houses sat back from the shore behind bare trees, the kind of view that makes you wonder what it would be like to look out at the lake every morning. D&R Canal State Park Towpath · Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 400 · 1/1000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 150 mm · f/5.6 I continued south to mile marker 19. Before I got there I stopped at a sign I think was put up for Princeton crew races on the lake — it faced the water, so I couldn’t read it from the towpath. Looking down at my feet I noticed half a dozen skunk cabbage pushing up through the leaf litter, small mottled purple-and-yellow spathes, easy to miss. Behind me a crow landed on a branch — American Crow or Fish Crow, it’s genuinely hard to tell — but the sun had climbed enough that the shot was pure silhouette. I turned around there. Eastern Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) · Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 500 · 1/1000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 264.7 mm · f/6.4 Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 320 · 1/1000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 600 mm · f/8.0 On the way back I made a side trip to the Kingston Grist Mill, where sometimes a heron will fish in the shallows below the mill. No herons today, but more turtles on the remains of a fallen tree in the water. We’ve lost a lot of trees this past year, and the trunks that have come down into the water have become prime real estate. Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) · Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 2000 · 1/1000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 600 mm · f/8.0 Near the car park, a man sat at the tailgate of his truck, whittling. We talked for a few minutes about how the wooded area near the old Kingston Bridge keeps rearranging itself — new small islands forming as the Millstone River shifts through the trees. He’d noticed it too, how much the landscape can change from one week to the next. The overflow from the dam had reversed the flow somewhere along the bank, pushing water back around a cluster of exposed tree roots in an odd eddy. I made a note to come back the next day and look again. Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) · Saturday 21 March 2026 FujiFilm X-T3 · ISO 1000 · 1/1000 sec XF150-600mmF5.6-8 R LM OIS WR · 467.6 mm · f/7.1 Spring on the D&R doesn’t announce itself loudly. Just turtles in the sun, a man whittling, and the water doing what it does when the season starts to turn. ### Like this: Like Loading...

YouTube video by BBC Earth