After lunch is a country restaurant and a visit to a goat cheese producer (my spouse is a goat cheese aficionado) we went to Refuge faunique Marguerite-D'Youville. It is located on Île-Bernard just off Chateauguay. Aside from a quick visit in the spring, I had not been there in over 10 years. Then it belonged to the Catholic Church with a large convent being the main building. Now it is a nature preserve. What a delightful place to walk. There are paths that you around the island.
We walked first on the side that faces Lac St-Louis - a wide part of the St. Lawrence River. The water was perfectly still. There is a lot of wildlife on the island as, in that small space there is a variety of ecosystems. We walked through meadow, forest, shoreline and past wetlands. We spotted chickadees (two young women were feeding them by holding out bird seed in their hands), nuthatches, woodpeckers, egrets, a few kinds of ducks and many birds I could not identify.
We spotted a number of deer. They ambled across our path not quite afraid, but always keeping a wary eye out to check our behaviour.
Next visit we will remember binoculars, put on the telephoto lens and once again take time to be in the moment.
