Wildlife
Christmas Lake is home to a number of native and introduced species of fish, the most prevalent of which are largemouth bass, bluegill and pumpkinseed sunfish, crappie, northern pike, carp, and rainbow trout. However, due to the small size of the lake, the fish (with the exception of carp) do not generally grow to large sizes. Some fish consumption guideline restrictions have been placed on the lake's bluegill, carp, northern pike, and white sucker due to mercury contamination.
For the first time in recent memory, trumpeter swans have been using Christmas Lake as a stop-over on their flyway during their winter migration south. In 2004, a small number of swans stayed for a few days, and in 2011 that number had grown to over four dozen in three different groups who stayed on the lake for more than a month. As Christmas Lake is deeper than surrounding lakes, and is usually the last in the neighborhood to freeze over, the swans are able to swim and feed later in the season.
Read more about this topic: Christmas Lake
Famous quotes containing the word wildlife:
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)