Thursday, September 9, 2010

Georgia the explorer



Lily's back at school.

I let Georgia decide what to do today and she wanted to go exploring for animals.

She found her binoculars and off we went.

She picked a quince off a neighbor's tree. SO SOUR!

We walked a long way and it was getting hot. We had to abandon her trike when we got to the woods. She was getting frustrated we hadn't seen any animals, when I spotted this hornet's nest dangling in the wind. She was curious about it, but it certainly didn't satisfy the "animal" part of our adventure.

We found some grapes that made the air smell purple and sweet.

Then, at the golf course pond, on the way home, we spotted a great blue heron, but Georgia would not believe that it was real. She said it had no head because it was partly under a branch. We went closer and closer until we got to the end of the pond. Then I saw an enormous snapping turtle laying in the shallow water of the edge of the pond!

"Georgia look Georgia look Georgia look!" I said as I squatted and got a photo. While I was fumbling, the turtle picked its head up out of the water, turned, looked at us, then swam away into the murky middle of the pond. It was big! The shell was bigger than a dinner plate. I totally missed the heron flying away, but Georgia saw it, so she finally believed it was real.

Pretty good animal adventure.

Then she spotted this beautiful Oblong Winged Katydid on the windshield.

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/walker/buzz/007a.htm
Is a link to a photo and its song, which is much quieter than I thought it would be. I guess the really loud song I hear is a True Katydid which looks much more like a round leaf.

pretty cool.

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