Total Eclipse of the Rhinoceroses

 

Howard and I went to the Buffalo Zoo today to view the Total Eclipse.

We had been invited to an eclipse party we had really been looking forward to, however the traffic predictions were vexing, and Howard had been under the weather and was recuperating. The Zoo allowed us not to be in close quarters with anyone, in case he had had some bug that could be passed on.

And so we viewed the eclipse from outside the rhino enclosure! Those are the rhinos up above. 

The afternoon was honestly magical. I had ridiculed the eclipse beforehand. Why are all these people traveling to Buffalo, I had wondered. I would not cross the street to view an eclipse. That is what I said.

Then I did end up crossing the street to view the eclipse. The Buffalo Zoo is across the street!

Delaware Park was full of people with their eclipse glasses. Howard issued me a pair of eclipse glasses so we were set too. We ran into some people we knew. Other people were texting us. Everyone was excited.

When the eclipse really got down to business, everyone grew quiet. This facet of the eclipse was almost as astonishing as the videos. Here in Buffalo we never shut up for anything! Yet everyone was suddenly hushed.

I took these pictures.

And this video ....

 

LOL! You can tell how dazzled we were!

And then I stopped filming anything because you just have to enjoy, you know?

It was just so beautiful! 

The Zoo being plunged into darkness. I mean real darkness, aside from the lanterns were on of course, and there were other lights.But really, it was dark as night. No one could believe it. 

This eclipse, I had totally underestimated it. It made me think of a few years ago when the high-wire artist Nik Wallenda walked the wire over Niagara Falls. I had thought that would be no big deal. Then Howard and I were watching it with Jocko in the Hyatt and we all realized we had been wrong in underestimating it.

I will remember this the way I remember that.

Magical!

Rising to the WNY Hiking Challenge

There is a Western New York hiking challenge afoot in Buffalo -- afoot, get it? And my friend Barbara and I rose to it.

Today we went on our first hike, at Tifft Nature Preserve!

Barbara and I are new friends in the grand scheme of things. However we have certain things in common, one of which was, both of us wore sneakers today on our hike. Sneakers! Her friends are laughing at her right now on her Facebook page.

We are having one of those mild winters we get from time to time, and Tifft's trails are awash in mud.  We were like princesses trying to pick our way around this mud, treading on grasses and these tall cattails which thanks to my Seek app I now know to be the Common Reed.

So illogically wearing sneakers was one thing. Another was our shared preoccupation with the Wyeth art family. The conversation was always turning to Andrew Wyeth, Jamie Wyeth and the great, the one and only N.C. Wyeth.

Andrew Wyeth would have loved this landscape!

 

Or better still this one.

 

Slogging through the mud in our sodden sneakers, we paused to contemplate that.

Funny, we thought it would be easy. We went in laughing, la la la la la la. I mentioned the sneakers. Did I also mention I was coming directly from church? And so I was also in a dress and carrying a purse. 

Every hike in this challenge has a landmark, something you have to find and take a selfie with. We found the landmark easily, although it did take some muddy walking to get there. The landmark was called the Peninsula. Here I am at it.

We did not know at that point that our adventure was just beginning! 

We saw trees that reminded us of the Brothers Grimm. N.C. Wyeth would have liked these trees! They would have fit in well with some of his illustrations.

At one point, it began raining. That happened to be at a discouraging point, when we were trying and failing to figure out the map, so neither of us mentioned the raindrops. And after a while they stopped. 

Next came a light hail. Again, we ignored it, and again, it stopped.

Twice, to avoid a river of mud, we had to thrash through a forest of Common Reeds.You would think they could have sent us on an easier trail however they did not. It had to be this trail. Ha ha ... Barbara began singing "It Had To Be You," to the trail. That was a song we would return to several times.

Trail, it had to be you!

And so we just charged into the reeds, going for broke. The reeds were taller than we were and we were afraid for a while we would not come out. 

However we lived to tell the tale. And this is it!

Out in the parking lot, we greeted a big group of ladies heading into the park, and sure enough, they were also on the hiking challenge. Ha, ha! Lots of luck, ladies!

It is funny, something like this, it just takes you out of your life. Mass that morning felt like a different lifetime. Also, I had completely forgotten it was New Year's Eve. It was like going into a time warp.

That is what's called an adventure.

We can't stop laughing about it!

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!

The Seek app, my new obsession

My friend Melinda and I were walking the other day when she introduced me to this app called Seek, by a company called iNaturalist. You get to track your sightings of nature.

You know me, on my walks I love to observe strange creatures, plants, and trees.

So I immediately installed the Seek app and pointed it at a tree. It identified the tree however now I have forgotten what the tree was. I did not know you had to take a picture for the tree actually to be entered on your list of observations. That is one thing I love about the Seek app, that it keeps track of your observations.

Since then I have taken the Seek app on several walks. I have taken it to Forest Lawn Cemetery and to Tifft Nature Preserve. And around the Delaware Park Ring Road, where I observed the bunny up above. The app identified the rabbit an Eastern Cottontail.

This is just so much fun! 

The one drawback is, I have to say, when I first pointed the app at that one tree, I must have had beginner's luck. I am finding it is a challenge to get the app to identify things. Occasionally it identifies a species right away, however that is the exception rather than the rule. As a rule it is finicky. It tells you to adjust the angle, which I do, and take more photos, which I do. Even then I often end up having to give up on some element of nature and move on to something else. 

So that is frustrating. At first I embraced it as part of the game. However I watched a YouTube video of a guy using the app and he kept saying, "And it quickly identified this as..." He kept using that word "quickly." So now this gets on my nerves. I cleaned my camera lens, just in case that was the problem, however it is still finicky.

Here is a thought on that. I have learned that the app identifies things based on photos people have taken and posted to its sister app, iNaturalist. Many of the things I have been unable to identify are not the sexy plants, the plants everyone would be photographing and posting. They are these common grasses and weeds. Perhaps there are not enough photos of them. Maybe no one has bothered to take pictures of this grass I was trying to ID.

Another app issue: I am not sure how I am to take pictures of fish -- especially pictures that are up to the app's exacting standards. I am working on in the Lakes and Ponds Challenge but I do not think I will be able to include fish.

I have one sighting so far in that Lakes and Ponds Challenge. That is the Broadleaf Cattail!

 

I observed that fine specimen at Forest Lawn, in their wetlands area.

I still need 9 more items for this challenge. You need 10 items from: dragonflies, amphibians, fish, ducks, mosses, ferns, water lilies, bulrushes, and cattails. At Tifft on Sunday I tried to identify some cattails there however the app drew a blank on them. They were probably the same species anyhow.

However I did rack up three species observations at Tifft. I identified Colt's-Foo and the Common Motherwort/

And -- ta da -- the Great Stinging Nettle.

The plants at Tifft were not as diverse as I was hoping, my time was limited because the rain was moving in, and I was not able to get a good picture of any of the little birds swooping around. However I was proud of the observations I did chalk up.

Three more good things about Seek: 

1. It is free!

2. It does not engage in annoying behaviors like showing you ads or nagging you to upgrade to a paid plan. 

3. I am actually learning things! This was funny, I looked at a tree and was disappointed because I recognized it as a Saucer Magnolia. And I had already sighted a Saucer Magnolia.

Then I realized: Hey, I can recognize a Saucer Magnolia!

Imagine how smart I will become!

Into the Woods

Every day I try to get in 10,000 steps. Today I did not exactly get them in! That is because I was in Cheektowaga in the morning and I wound up afterwards walking in Stiglmeier Park.

I have hardly ever been in this park. I went there once with my friend Meghan to do Zumba. It was about 90 degrees and there we were in this parking lot doing aerobics. I will never forget that!

Today was memorable too however for very different reasons. One thing, I did not exactly get in my 10,000 steps. I was too busy standing still with my mouth open.

I could not believe this place!

I had sort of thought that I would be walking around parking lots and shelters and stuff. I did not realize there are these trails. The trails wind around through the woods and you just follow them.

This cracked me up: At the entrance to the trails they tell you, "Do not walk alone."

LOLOLOL!

If I did not walk alone I would never walk!

Good luck getting someone to walk with you, you know?

Anyway. Oiks and schufts would not be walking this nature trail on this 25 degree day, or whatever it was today. It was just this side of bitterly cold. My hands were cold in my gloves. So I walked the trails unbothered.

What was there was birds.

It was insane! Like being at a zoo exhibit. As soon as I walked into the woods, a chickadee flew right in front of me and stopped on a tree bough, inches from my face. A cardinal sat on a branch a short distance away. Below the boardwalk where I was walking, a whole group of robins were bouncing around.

Then I saw a woodpecker, right in front of me. I had never seen a bird like that so close! That is he at the top of this post.

I also saw another woodpecker however my hands were too cold to take out the camera at that particular time. Let's admit it, your phone being a camera can be kind of a pain. You cannot just enjoy your walk. You are always feeling obliged to shoot photos and video.

I also saw red-winged blackbirds, sparrows, and a deer.

 

There was a woman in the news a long time ago who made headlines because she would not stop feeding the deer in Stiglmeier Park. I will not make that mistake!

I felt like that line from Shakespeare: "I like this place, and I would willingly waste a lot of time here."

I walked the Maple View Trail and then the Timber Trail. By the time I was done I had only about 7,000 steps. I might have made up a few more steps in the Goodwill afterwards.

However that is another story for another day.

Sketching at the beach

 

Yesterday was a day to celebrate. It was almost 80 degrees! 

In Buffalo! In late October!

And so I went to the beach. We have the Pods for this purpose but we did not need them. Instead a group of us just gathered. At our height I believe there were seven of us. Plus strangers with whom we were interacting.

And their dogs!

A big poodle named Hannah came bounding up and ate the last piece of cheese off our cheese board! Then she kept trying to get into my backpack because she knew there was more cheese in there!

The dogs were playing fetch in the water and sailboats kept gliding by. It was a wonderful day off.

It is a challenge to sketch on the beach because the usual things I love to draw are not there. There are no traffic signals or parking meters or goose-neck street lamps or Do Not Enter signs.

Ha, ha! Once my sister Katie suggested I go with her to Allegany State Park where there is beautiful nature. She said, "You can draw there."

I said: "Draw what??"

LOL! Anyway at the beach I come up with sketches like the one pictured above. I did that the other day in the Pod.

Yesterday I sketched some dogs and sailboats and then simply zoned out and breathed the air and watched the sunset. 

It is good to zone out once in a while.

God rested and so should we!

The grasshopper and the cat

Taste of Buffalo, which took over downtown last weekend, left our cat out of sorts. I do not know if I have mentioned we have a cat. It is a stray who adopted us! It is the Bean Alley Cat because it came in from Bean Alley. That is not our cat pictured above. But our cat has similar coloring. It is a beautiful sort of tiger cat.

My sister Katie was adopted also by a stray cat. Here is a file photo of Howard with her cat, Jinx. That is my brother Tony asleep in the background.

Anyway. Our Alley is recovering now but for a couple of days she was acting sort of zonked.

I think it was the noise and the madding crowd. The cat is used to peace and quiet and now there was this generator roaring round the clock just a couple of feet from her territory. Generators are the noisiest thing in the world and the people who run them never give that a thought.

I am bothered by loud noises as Leonard Pennario was too so I think the noise was the culprit. But there is also the chance that the cat went out and dined off the fat of the land, and ate something she should not have eaten. Howard thought that was the case. Whatever the reason it was breaking our hearts because this cat is the sweetest cat in the world and you hate to see it under the weather.

However. Now she is better and today she felt good enough to torture a grasshopper.

Nature is not pretty!

Every time this grasshopper hopped the cat would streak after it and nail it with its paw. Then she would swat it around a little and hold it captive and then let it get away. Sometimes the grasshopper got it into its little grasshopper brain to play dead, hoping the cat would leave it alone. But our cat would wait it out and as soon as the grasshopper moved the cat would fly over and grab it again.

The cat never missed! That was what Howard said. I actually did not see this. He told me about it.

Once the cat grabbed the grasshopper and thrust it into her water bowl. It let it drown but then pulled it out before it was dead. And the game began again.

How horrifying!!

Lucky that cat it is not 100 times our size.Our relationship with it could be quite different, you know?

But there was a positive side to the grasshopper incident.

Our cat was feeling good!