Thursday, March 21…Turtle Blues (Janis Joplin)

   I finished needle felting a hammerhead shark last night and had to wait until this morning for a name.  As soon as I was out of bed, I texted a picture of it to the Charlevoix WonderKids to see if they could tell what it was (yes, they all got it right) and then asked Dylan for a name.  He didn’t have to think about it, his reply was instant. Basher has been welcomed into the group and is comfortably nestled in between Bill the Turtle and StarBright the Hippo.  Clayton will get the opportunity to name the next critter.

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   Last night we talked about going somewhere today where we could walk around and see nature in action. Listed all our known places, then Kim suggested ‘that place with all the red-eared turtles’. Took a minute for us to come up with the name: Agua Caliente. So that’s where we went.

   Agua Caliente has multiple ponds with walking paths around and between them, some paths are paved and some are dirt. The main pond is near trees, which provide shade and a constant breeze; the other ponds are in a desert environment.  No shade and sometimes a breeze.  And it has birds, as well as turtles… red eared slider turtles, river cooters and a big ol’ spiny soft-shell turtle.

   There were so many red eared turtles.  Heads visible above the water, then suddenly gone, only to resurface a distance away. Very difficult to get a picture of those red ears in the open water like that.  Have to catch 'em when they're sunning or they swim under the bridge.  We watched an interesting show being put on by of them…a little one was chasing a bigger one and then it would get face to face with it, as if to slow it down.  The bigger turtle would bat at it and swim away.  The little one would not give up…and then a second joined in the chase.  We soon wondered if it was an attempt at mating.  Walked over to a bridge where the shade made it a perfect spot to turtle watch.  Watching from above, Kim noticed a strange behavior: when the smaller turtle (male) managed to get in front of the object of his affection (female), it would wiggle its claws in the female’s face.  But, the female would push it aside and swim away.  “If Boaty McBoatFace (David Attenborough) were here, he could tell us what’s going on.” We saw this happen many times and figured it had to be a mating thing.

   When we got home, I googled “red eared turtle mating ritual” and a 4-minute video entitled “Red eared slider turtles mating dance” popped up.  Of course, I clicked on it and watched as a pair of red eared turtles named  Glen and Maggie performed a mating dance, complete with claw wiggling. The difference between Glen and Maggie and the pond turtles was that Glen and Maggie were wiggling their claws together and the female pond turtle was pushing the male away as he wiggled his claws. So, no mating dance for the male pond turtle, despite his persistent attempts. The female’s indifference might have had something to do with the fact that the male was less than half her size.  Turtle watching at Agua Caliente is fascinating.

   Walking to the back ponds, a bird flew in front of us followed by a flash of red, then another and another.  Three males cardinals were simultaneously trying to woo a female and chase each other away from her.  She seemed to be hiding deep in the middle of a bush. They were still stalking her when we walked away.

   Finally, we made it to the back ponds where we saw a Great Egret stalking its lunch. Kept my eye on it as we circled the pond and managed to pick up on its routine: it would walk slowly and deliberately, stop dead still, quickly jab at something in the water and then tip its head back to swallow.  As we got close, I tried to get some video and thought it interesting that it was audibly clicking its beak.  I googled that and found that egrets make that clicking sound during aggressive displays. Since we were the only ones around, I’m sure it was clicking at us. Didn’t think we were close enough to be a threat but maybe it thought differently.

   Other notables were the ring-necked duck with their wonderfully colored beaks and uncanny ability to dive underwater just as I took a picture; the pied-billed grebe, a bird whose hind legs are so far back on its body that while they are great for swimming, they make it difficult for it to walk on land (it’s acenter of gravity thing); and a lizard, identified as a side-blotched lizard, who was accommodatingly sunning itself on a rock near the path, like it was waiting for a photo op.  And I also saw a bird at the top of a tree that looked like a cardinal but I knew it wasn’t.  The Facebook birding page  identified it as a female Phainopepla. Say what?!  Someone sounded it out like this: Fay-no-pep-la.

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   We spent a couple of hours wandering round the park and then headed back to the campground. Stopped long enough to grab a bag of piggy cookies to take to Felicia before she left for the day and then headed to Coolidge where we bought an air mattress.  Since we took the couches out, we need somewhere to sleep when my mom gets here.  A 24” high air mattress ought to do nicely.

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   Kim is out imaging the Cigar Galaxy again.  Last night he ran into a problem with the micro SD card that the data was stored…it wasn’t playing nice with the computer when it came time to process the images, so he scrapped what he got last night and is trying again.