One ordinary day with snapping turtles

[pameladean]

Trying to catch up with hiking posts before I forget everything. We try to hike every week but have missed a number of weeks because of the weather. But here's another one we managed

Comments

[seekerval]

Sounds like quite the little trek through water hazards, dragon...flies, and snappers. Glad you and Raphael made it back safely. :-)

[pameladean]

Hee! I'm glad the snappers were out in the water. They can move surprisingly fast on land and their beaks are scary.

P.

[seekerval]

As a child, I was occasionally regaled with tales of the wisdom of AVOIDING snappers--complete with examples of NOT avoiding them, of course.

[cat_sanctuary]

What a delightful memory this brought back...the first time I actually saw a juvenile green heron, also on a Labor Day Weekend, it was prowling around a lake in Maryland acting sort of, well, juvenile. It stood still, looked at me, and went "croak." I looked at it, thought "What in the world is that?" and managed to hear its noise as "Go--back to the Commissary and get a cheap camera to snap a photo!" And back around the lake I sprinted! Of course it had moved on, but then I knew where to look for it, so my husband and I were able to spy on the silly little thing again. At the time green herons weren't established so birdwatchers went into a flutter of verifying whether it was a juvenile green heron or the rare, dark least bittern, also an occasional visitor in Maryland. It was, of course, the more common bird. It was still full of juvenile overconfidence, and great fun to watch

[pameladean]

I hadn't realized that green herons were a recent classification. I really love them, even though they aren't as fancy as the more well-known herons.

I would not at all, of course, mind seeing a least bittern, but it doesn't seem likely. We've occasionally encountered real birders when out and about and they've been very kind about showing birds to us, but basically they have a kind of tenth sense or something. I was staring right at a barely-leafed out tree once when a birder who had temporarily adopted us said, "Look, there's an olive-sided flycatcher." You couldn't prove it by me.

P.

[cat_sanctuary]

Oh no, sorry...I meant the population wasn't established. I think the species definition has been split and re-lumped over the years, but serious birders have known the difference between green herons and least bitterns as species for a long time. Knowing which one you've spotted, when you've not seen either one before, was the point of confusion.

[pameladean]

D'oh, you can see I'm not even properly familiar with the terminology. I'd never heard of a green heron until I first saw one at this same park about fifteen years ago. They're fairly common around here, on the whole.

P.