A Summer Day in Buffalo Town

 

Today it was summer!

Just a few days after my freezing Artist's Date just last week, suddenly, as Howard said, it was as if we all flew to North Carolina. It was almost 70 degrees! My friend Ryan and I went and sat on the beach and took the sea air. And earlier, I took the picture above when I walked around Delaware Park.

The water was so clear.

 

I kept hoping I would see the giant snapping turtle again. I am on complete Turtle Alert and I am sure he and I will meet up in the future!

In the afternoon at the beach Ryan and I sat on Adirondack chairs in the sun and it was so warm we could almost complain about the heat. That is always fun, the first time each year when you can complain about the heat. We are not quite there yet but we will be soon.

Our usual spot, Wilkeson Pointe, is closed for construction. They cannot keep their hands off of Wilkeson Pointe. Here all our other parks need fixing and nothing needs fixing at Wilkeson Pointe and yet Wilkeson Pointe gets the attention. It is like working in the garden. You gravitate towards the area where everything is doing well and all the flowers are coming up. And that patch of bishop's weed -- oh, you leave that alone.

What with the summer weather I am thinking about my next Artist's Way Artist's Date.  I am thinking a mani/pedi. Does that count as an Artist's Date?

I was thinking that being a pianist I should get a manicure. Leonard Pennario always got manicures. When I knew him he was still getting them. You need your hands to look good on a piano. I will have to tell the manicurist to make my nails short because I am a pianist.

This is a wonderful time of year, very early spring.

The possibilities are endless!
 

Spotting the Spotted Turtle

The other day I wrote about snapping the Snapping Turtle.

Today it is all about Spotting the Spotted Turtle!

I went to Tifft Nature Preserve after Mass on Sunday. I like swinging by Tifft after church because the Outer Harbor is just over the Skyway from St. Anthony's. It is thrilling at Tifft to walk those wooden walkways over those swamps where God knows what goes on. One Sunday a few weeks ago we saw snakes! Another girl there pointed them out to me.

"They are so gross!" she shuddered. And I agreed.

That did not stop me from trying to get the snakes' picture for my Seek app however it was not to be. The Seek app, as I have written, is finicky.

Which brings me to yesterday, Sunday. I was at Tifft and now I am canny, I am alert for turtles. I spotted one at a distance however it was not close enough to get a picture. Then, heading over one footbridge, I saw the handsome chap at the top of this post.

Looking at him now, he looks like a Painted Turtle. However the app was having none of this turtle -- amazing, considering how much better photo could I have taken? I took more and more. 

These are just two of many pictures I took. It grew maddening to tell you the truth. The app kept sniffing that no, it could not identify it. It was some species of Box Turtle, then it was simply an Animal, and so forth.

I did get into conversations with sympathetic Buffalonians and one gentleman told me there were more turtles to be seen up the way. I went where he suggested and that was where I found this specimen.

The app ate this one up right away and said it was a Painted Turtle.. 

So I went happily on my way. Although I had affection for that first turtle.

Later on yesterday, I re-submitted to the app a couple of pictures of that first turtle. That worked before, with the Snapping Turtle. The app finally reconsidered and identified that photo I took, which, come on, was excellent.

This time the app, after a bit of back and forth, relented, and barfed up that it was a Spotted Turtle.

I looked up Spotted Turtle and to my distress I found that it is rather rare, and threatened, and endangered. Sure enough, on my app, it said that there were only four other sightings in the area.

This seems to be a bit of beginner's luck I am having in the turtle department. I hope some of that luck rubs off on this cute Spotted Turtle. It is funny, I found myself thinking about it later, pondering the Spotted Turtle and its plight, hoping that the species would rebound and flourish.

Another picture of my new friend.

I hope I will see him next Sunday!

 

Snapping the Snapping Turtle

Yesterday I was walking around Hoyt Lake in Delaware Park and who appeared?

The turtle!

I believe it was the same turtle we met back in, yikes, 2009. There is no reason to doubt that as the Common Snapping Turtle, as I now know this to be, can live to over 100 years old.

I now know this to be the Common Snapping Turtle because of my Seek app. The Seek app has been preoccupying me lately and when I was walking yesterday, I was on complete Nature Alert, trying to sight new species.

Right down by the lake's edge, trying to avoid the goose poop, I all of a sudden saw this turtle in the water. It was just hanging out in the shallows. At first I thought it was a rock. That is how the turtle is designed.

Then I caught my breath because I recognized it for what it was.

Quickly I snapped the snapping turtle with my app camera. Incredibly, seeing that the turtle was right under my nose, the app did not recognize it and did not give me credit.

That is where you are in trouble with the app. You take another picture and you lose the first one. I hurriedly got onto my phone camera and took more pictures. The app did not accept them either. That is the problem with Seek. It can be finicky.

Breathlessly I tried again.

 

I can see that these challenges I am participating in are not nature sighting challenges as much as they are photography challenges. It is hard to get pictures of these creatures!

Meanwhile the turtle was swimming away. Can you see it?

 

Later, miraculously, the app did accept one of my phone photos -- the one at the top of this post. However because I did not take it with the Seek camera, I see it does not count toward my challenges. One of those is the Lakes and Ponds Challenge which I have been really working on. That was a disappointment.

But still. Whether or not the app accepted any of my photos really does not matter now that I think of it. Here is a good thought that struck me:

Without the app, I would not have seen the turtle! 

I would have been walking obliviously past the way everyone else was. There was a couple walking past and I wanted to show them the turtle, however they did not look at me and they were talking so the heck with them, they miss out. That would have been me. 

Thank you, Seek app, for keeping my eyes open!