Highlights

I mean, not terribly high, but these were from yesterday’s outing, which was far quieter than it should have been.

Going along the edge of New Hope Creek in Duke Forest yesterday, we heard a plop! not far away, which I took to be a turtle abandoning its basking spot on a log at our approach. Moments later, there was a PLOP! from the same direction, telling us that another had dropped into the water from a greater height. We found the branch, and a third basking turtle was still in view:

This is either a variety of mud or musk turtle, I’m not bothering to try and determine which; suffice to say they’re the size and shape of a hand grenade, 10-12 cm in length. This is important.

I’ve seen these guys climb a decent distance from the water, unlike the sliders and painted turtles that are so prevalent around here, which prefer either half-submerged trunks or shallow riverbanks. Mud and musk turtles like to get a bit higher, for reasons unknown.

A lot higher – that’s about 2 meters or so from the water’s surface. I suspected this one was asleep, since it never reacted to our presence, but looking at the images afterward, it appeared quite aware of our presence – just reluctant to give up its hard-earned perch, perhaps.

The banks of the creek showed plenty of evidence that the water level and flow had been considerably higher recently, and may have scoured the creek of most of the prime basking spots. There were numerous logjams on the banks well out of the water, and even a lot of the rocks on the banks were uneven and loose – it might have been one hell of a flow at one point. This may have been responsible, too, for the scarcity of water snakes in an area that typically featured lots of them. In fact, during the entire outing, we only saw one:

This northern water snake (Nerodia sipedon sipedon) had been out on the rocks as we approached, but quickly sought shelter – I only got a couple frames as it slipped out of sight, enough to positively identify it, but then found it by crouching down and peering into the dark crevices on the opposite side of the rock that it had disappeared beneath, with the help of my omnipresent pocket flashlight. It took a few frames to get the camera flash in there enough, and focus is slightly off, but I got the face at least. This was a big specimen, and had no reason to be shy at all.

Or, maybe it did. You can see how the scales on the closet coil to us seem stretched out, and this might be evidence of a recent large meal which the snake was trying to peacefully digest. The nights have started getting cooler now, so snakes will be out at least in the morning to absorb the warmth of the sunlight for energy to digest their meals, which is why people start seeing them out on the roads and rocks and sidewalks in the spring and fall – during high summer, the nights never get cold enough to warrant needing the extra energy. As always, just leave them be – they have no interest in doing anything to anybody over 15cm tall.