Agate Lesson

This morning I parked my car in a turn around area near the railroad tracks to monitor my streams. After working with the stream I put my stuff back in my car and went for a walk on the gravel road that leads to the snowmobile trails. Along the way I saw this traveling painted turtle. She had just come out of the ditch on my left where the dew was so heavy her shell had drops of water on it. She was crawling across the road toward the stream that I monitor. As I squatted down to take her picture her face struck an attitude of "What are you looking at?" I left her alone. Not many vehicles come down this way so she had plenty of time to cross the road without my help.

An hour later, on my way back to my car, I was lucky enough to get several pictures of this yellow rumped warbler. If you look closely you can see the beak is open because the bird is singing. Photographing warblers is very difficult because they are so  twitchy and hyper and unable to sit still. I was lucky this one was singing from a dead tree. When I came back to my car there was a man in a green safety vest looking at the ground near my car. I wondered what he was doing. As I got closer to my vehicle he started walking down the road a ways. I saw a white truck with railroad wheels on the train tracks. This guy was a railroad employee. I was curious. I walked up to him and asked if he was looking for agates. He was looking for agates. I asked him to show me how to find them because I am not good at finding agates despite being shown several times. He suggested I look for transparent surfaces on the rocks. He found a little red one for me and showed me. Then he pulled twenty larger agates out of his pocket to show me his findings. He said his wife loves to polish them and make jewelry. I laughed and said I would prefer an agate ring to a diamond ring. He said hunting agates was one way to spend his lunch hour. Maybe the next time I walk down that road I should keep my eyes on the road for agates and turtles and not up in the trees for birds.