In Depends Dance Day Weekend. July 3rd and 4th.

We were both work-free on Friday, July 3rd and made plans to visit Andrea's mum. But being the intrepid adventurers that we are, we wanted to check out the Green Snake place before heading over. After all, we hadn't seen a Green yet on the year. Spoiler alert: we still haven't.

But the good thing about this place is that you can see loads of beautiful Garters, too. And we did. A few crawled away without photos, so we tag teamed this little squirmer to try to defeistify him. He wound up looking like a Margaret Keene painting in the photo.


Most of the Garters were still snoozing. Like this Ball Garter.



Um, no... I'm not going to look over there.


This guy, while not photographed very well, had gorgeous jet-black sides.


One last cutie before we left.


We went over to Andrea's Mom's house to shoot the breeze for a while. Naturally, knowing that the DeKay's Snakes are back, I poked around. I found two teeny little buggers among the small rocks and one inside a brick!


I actually got the first one fairly close to snake-hater Marge for her to look at. She's getting there.

The next day was July 4th. My initial plan was to go to Plymouth County, but I'd let Andrea sleep in and the road to Plymouth is also the road to Cape Cod and the traffic would have destroyed our souls, so we stayed in Norfolk County and hit a spot there for the first time this year. It was already very hot and sticky so we didn't expect to stay very long. We started off with a Painted Turtle. Nothing weird about that.

Except it was the only one we'd see all day!

Another interesting thing about this particular place... we see plenty of toads here and they all seem to be of the Fowler's variety. Most of our Fowler's spots are further south. This guy is a big beauty, too.


I added three birds to the count this day. I never tire of watching Double-crested Cormorants (#52) dry their wings.


This small/ medium sized Snapper was enjoying a bask in the sun.


I'd had a bit of a scare as I'd photographed a very distant turtle up and when checking the camera in the field, it had a yellow chin. There are no Blanding's here that we're aware of and the build of the pond seems all wrong for them but I went for another shot just as the turtle was diving in. Missed the chance.

Once I got to look at the first shot better in the car, I saw it was a Snapper. The yellow chin was just yellow compared to the rest of the photo.

Andrea spied Tiny Toads, likely Fowler's.


Here's a medium Fowler's, which made me wonder if they eat Tinies of their own kind. I would.


We took a path we don't often take but it was shady and we were very hot. It paid off when we spotted this full-bellied Garter.

He also won me a free smoothie... we had a "Whoever finds the first snake" contest going.

Andrea topped that, however, when she spotted this Ribbon in the bushes.

That's a new species for us here.


This is likely the same Snapper we'd seen basking a couple of hours earlier, just on a different rock. But wow, what a magnificent beauty!


While we were watching the Snapper, Andrea noticed a Musk thinking about climbing up to a rock, but then changing its mind. I had very little chance at a good photo, but managed this:


One more amusing sight before we left... Snapper butt raised to the sky, saluting the flag.


Turtles make the world go 'round.