We finally got a sunny, warm Saturday so we decided to head into Bristol County to look around one of our favorite spots. Unfortunately, I figured "how crowded could it be... Memorial Day weekend just started." Oops.
Most of our reliable places in this State Park were empty. We'd hoped for a Milk Snake but came up short. We didn't see anything until we got to a quiet part with lots of Painted Turtles and Red-bellied Turtles basking on some mud-flats. Here are a few of our muddy shots.
It's always fun to watch turtles being turtles.
Less fun is reaching what used to be a lovely pond and having it over-run with campers and kids fishing and having a lot of dead Sunfish floating around the water's edge to show for it. I do wish folks would teach kids how to fish properly. I did way back when and I'm an idiot. It CAN be done. Mercifully, nobody saw this oddball pair of Water Snakes gettin' jiggy between some rocks. I'm sure that big mama (that little guy has his sights set high!) would be called a Cottonmouth!
Over on the quiet side of the pond, a chorus line of Painters were practicing for their big show. That massive lump in the front is a Redbell.
Another mixed group of Redbellies and Painters.
A mini-Bullfrog from a secret pond. Shhhh!
A Green Frog enjoying a private mud-puddle.
More astounding still was this one which we thought was a tree root from a distance!
This one is a monster!
Heading back, we got to check out some stones that were covered by humanity earlier. We finally scored our first Fowler's Toads on the year.
Heading back, over by a good snake place (that wasn't good this time) this small Fowler's went tearing down the path at an amazing speed. It was hilarious. This shot is him on an inhale. He was out of breath. Maybe he had just seen a snake that we'd missed.
That was it for this place. We went and had some Mandarin Buffet, then went over to another spot to look for Musk Turtles. The water was rushing pretty hard and we saw no turtles, but I photographed a few insects. Here is a River Jewelwing.
And a good ol' Red Admiral.
I've gotta say that I'm not super thrilled with myself for choosing such a human filled place but at least I learned my lesson. Do not go after April to this spot. And avoid it on Memorial Day weekend above all.
No comments:
Post a Comment