Weekend at Pelee/Windsor

This weekend I spent at Point Pelee and various other locations in Essex County. The main goal of the weekend was the Saturday night party in Windsor hosted by Steve Marks, a good friend of mine who I worked with in Windsor for two summers doing radio telemetry with Butler's Gartersnakes and Eastern Foxsnakes. Several other good friends from the Windsor area were there too (Steve Pike, Sarah and Tom Preney, Russ + Lisa Jones, Chris Law, Pauline Catling, Jeremy Bensette, Kory Renaud, etc) and it was definitely a good time. The rest of the weekend was spent looking for herps and insects, mostly.

It was a fantastic weekend, with many highlights. I looked at a lot of butterflies and finally added a few "nemesis" species to my life list. They were:

Broad-winged Skipper
Duke's Skipper
American Copper
Edward's Hairstreak
Coral Hairstreak
Acadian Hairstreak

I also saw one of the few remaining Essex County Eastern Massasaugas. Due to concerns related to poaching (the population is extremely threatened with perhaps only a few dozen animals remaining), I can't give any details other than "Essex County", so please don't ask. But I might post a photo...

I'll post lots of photos in the upcoming days (took about 1000 on the trip). In the meantime, here is a photo of a teenager Common Snapping Turtle that I found at the Couture Dyke near Point Pelee on the Saturday.
This is a photo that I have envisioned for quite some time (though I've often thought of capturing an aquatic snake in this way). Fortunately, the Snapping Turtle was content sitting in the pool of warm water while I crawled on my belly to get the shot. I used my 300 f/4 lens with a 1.4x teleconverter, essentially giving me 420 mm of focal length with a minimum focusing distance of about 5 feet. It was pretty much the perfect combo for this particular photo.