We headed to the Refuge today, anticipating clouds of biting insects, leaving us with the pleasure of remaining in the vehicle during the entire driving loop (7 miles), and thus protected from their damage. Ehem, air-conditioned vehicle—high today in the mid-80s (hence the pleasure). Which is darned hot here. And it’s humid.
A visit to the Refuge is often about pattern recognition. The first photo has white dots. In the foreground they are water lilies. In the background, they are swans. It seems to be water lily season right now, as we saw rafts of them in some areas, as in the second photo. White dot recognition lesson over.
We also saw other waterfowl: loons, Canada geese, ducks…not a lot of variety or head-count, however. We looked and looked for turtles, increasingly populous over the last few years. We had not spotted any in the spring…perhaps too cold? Well, today was not cold. We finally found two, but most of the “turtle logs” previously likely to support turtles were bereft. We don’t know if there was a die-off, or…?