Let the turtle tracking begin.

Preparing to track turtles. Most important piece of equipment - coffee cup.


Two canoes ready for turtle tracking.


Laptop tracking setup. The turtles are wearing transmitters which give off a consistent signal. We tune the receiver to the frequency of each individual turtle's transmitter, follow the signal to the location where the signal is the strongest (I rarely see the turtle with the transmitter on it while it is in the wild.) and note the location and time.


Here is a deer skeleton I found while tracking turtles. One of the turtles was hanging out next to it. I also encountered a sluggish snapping turtle basking out of the water on a log. I thought it was dead and was able to get a picture with the project camera. I would have photographed it with my phone for inclusion in the blog but I bumped the log the turtle was basking on with my boat. The turlte swam away before I could take it's picture.

my critters!

Basking Traps

Trap repair in progress!

Emily and Deniz get married

First, the bride and groom at the post-welcoming-party-party. In place of a rehearsal dinner, Emily and Deniz had a welcoming party at the Carriage House at Penn. Deniz recently recieved a PhD from Penn in Economics and attended pre-school at the Carriage House. Emily is a PhD candidate at Princeton in Sociology.


Amy and Julia at the reception. The wedding and the reception were held at Philadelphia's magic gardens. I had a great view of the band. They were just behind Tash, who sat across the table from me. After dinner our table was removed to create a dance floor. Most of the Pomona girls were at the same table and I'm pretty sure we were seated at the table that would be removed to make room for the dance floor because we were likely dancers. Most of us danced for most of the rest of the party. The band was from New York and included a clarinet player (from Australia, here on an artist visa), a trumpeter, a banjo player and a bass player - his bass wasn't made from a washtub but was similar. The music was great.


Emily and Julia outside of Sabrina's after the bridal shower brunch.


Two former Peace Corps volunteers, my amazing (and gorgeous!) friends Tash (now a kiteboarding instructor, also has been employed as a photographer) and Anjali who is famous (in certain cicles) for producing Democracy Now!


Julia, giggling at wearing a super shiny lip-gloss. We went to play at the Mac makeup counter on a whim.

Here is the friendship gate in Philadelphia's Chinatown. It was built in the 1981 and is the first authentic friendship gate in the US. I don't know what qualifies it as authentic, but it was made by Chinese artisans. I am surprised that 1981 arrived before any other authentic friendship gates were built in any of the numerous Chinatowns in the US.

The view from the kayak. I've been tracking a few turtles this season. Hopefully we will have traps in the water next week!

Proper footwear for turtle trapping.

First Turtles!

Red-eared sliders and painted turtles.

First catch of the season! The freshman bio class had their field trip to John Heinz yesterday. We caught some turtles for them. Several other groups of people stopped by to ask questions as well.

Home again!

I'm back home in Pennsylvania. Yesterday the dog got several walks in the woods to find a grove of Showy Orchis. Here are some of the pictures. Near these plants and mixed in among them were many yellow morrells. We harvested a few and ate them this morning with eggs. Also in this section of woods are a great number of beech trees. There were many tulip poplars at one point but they were cut and sold in the 1960's. Last week (in the rain) we found yellow lady slippers on a nearby hillside in the woods.

Above: Three beautiful pictures of Showy Orchis.