Before the Sickness... Friday, August 12th.

 Hey, we get a break in the heatwave! Friday was supposed to stay in the 70s. We started out early and went to our spot in Plymouth County where we always get our hearts broken. But, there's always a chance! We made it down there by 8:30 AM and by golly, the breeze was cool! Our first sight was a small Fowler's Toad.

Surely we'd see some snakes!

Down in a particularly snakey looking area, we didn't see one... but we saw a Spring Peeper.

Because this is 2022 and everything is fucked up... this is our First of Year.

Another little Fowler's playing King of the Hill!

We'd been wondering about the vernal that we love so much. The heat and drought this summer had us worried. Well, it was smaller than usual but it was still there and a few Bullfrogs were hanging out in it.

On the way back to the car, we saw some Monarch Caterpillars munching away on the Milkweed. Beautiful little bastards.

Our next stop was, as always, the bogs. We geared up to see some frogs. Well, we didn't see a ton of them but here's a Green, then a Bull.

We had a couple of nice, long sit-downs on that stretch. Then we headed over to our "best" snake trails. We saw plenty of Fowler's Toads on these paths but none as impressive as this first fatty!

The pond water was very low, of course, but this Green Frog had a puddle to call his own.

Turtles? Well, one distant Painter.

I'll give us some credit. We did the whole trail, out and back, adding in side trails and scoped the place as best we could for miles, but saw no snakes. Oh well, maybe it's just not going to happen whatever he temps are.

We went over to the last spot before hitting the road in hopes of seeing more turtles. Well, one molting Painter is better than nothing.

Ah well, whatever. We'd done over 6 miles of hiking and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the woods. We saw dozens of Fowler's Toads. We sat at the edge of a pond resting our weary bones before hitting the road home.

We'd been sitting there for at least 15 minutes before I decided to stretch my zoom lens out and see what was way out there...

So that's where all of the Redbellies were!

A couple more, and maybe a (big) Painter in the middle.

Here's a Painter stick.

So that was a nice way to end a day. Sure, we'd have loved to see more but we're always happy with what we see. Do you realize we've seen one snake in August? One.

Another testament to how lopsided 2022 is, it took me to #89 to get a Rock Dove on the year. I'd seen them, but not when I had a camera. His look says it all... looking down on me in disgust.

We got home and that night Andrea was saying "there must be something there I'm allergic to... I feel crappy". She started feeling crappier. She has Covid. We weren't able to go out the rest of the weekend and she felt miserable.

By Tuesday, I was feeling crappy as well. By Wednesday, I tested positive for Covid. I still (Saturday) feel shitty, though my fever is lower.

Fuck you, 2022.