17, 19, 20

We went to El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach today with our nature study group. And I forgot to check the battery on my camera before we left the car... I had only a little life left in my battery :/ so I didn't get a picture of the soft shell turtle that we saw but Kiera did with her film camera. I can't wait until they (Kiera and Nathan) are done with their rolls of film in their cameras. My mom had found a blue and a red camera that I had bought for my twin cousins when they were younger. I happen to still have some film so the last couple of weeks the kids have taken their cameras on our nature walks. :) Which was good because I didn't have my camera last week and we found a dead baby rattle snake. Nathan got some pictures of that one. :)


Fortunately I remembered to take a picture of a bridge (there were numerous) before my battery died. This  was the second bridge we crossed, at the beginning of the trail.
17th: Bridge

19th: From a Distance

Obviously of the same bridge. I actually like this picture better.

20th: Soft

Nathan got to hold and touch the caterpillar

We have to work on identifying this.

This is what the cocoon looked like

Here are some other photos that I took during our outing.

Artist's Fungus

Immature Black Crowned Night Heron

I believe it's a Common Darter

Something memorable that happened... A brown widow spider was on my sleeve. Yea, not something I would call "fun". I walked through a spider web while I was with Nathan and Domenic. As we were walking back to where our group was I saw something dangling from my arm, took a double take and my arm was on the ground in .5 seconds. Smashed spider remained where I had lifted my arm. haha I'm just glad I didn't scream. I think me moving so quickly caught Nathan's attention the most when he looked at me with wide eyes and asked, "what was it Mommy?" Me trying to sound calm replied, "Mommy was just smashing a spider Buddy." Eeeee!