There were about 2-3 minutes today when seeing this was actually possible, so The Girlfriend and I are extremely lucky to have been there when it happened. But as we were walking the property and discussing where some trees would be going, I spotted this microspud booking as fast as it was able across the gravel driveway.
This is easily the smallest turtle I’ve ever found, which we’ll see clearly in a moment. It’s an eastern mud turtle (Kinosternon subrubrum,) and this is about the size of a newly-hatched one, except that this happens in late summer. Plus the mud on its back indicates that it recently emerged from hibernation, assisted by last night’s rain, though why it was practically on the highest point on the property and over a hundred meters from the pond (and not along an easy route either) remains beyond our comprehension.
This is the first of the scale shots – luckily The Girlfriend was right there and could hold the turtle for some detailed frames, rather than me attempting to juggle the camera one-handed.
This is how it was identified, since the very similar striped mud turtle (which is not striped in North Carolina, for some reason, and would not have them at this age, nor would we have been able to see the stripes on the carapace under the mud anyway,) only has a single hinge on the front plastron and not the two faintly seen here. Also, the common musk turtle, also found on the property at times, has a much smaller plastron.
Neither of us was carrying change, not expecting to pay any tolls nor find a gumball machine in the yard, but The Girlfriend ran in and grabbed a quarter for another scale shot – the adult treefrogs are larger than this. I spent a lot of time last year monitoring turtle nests hoping to catch some hatchlings, or better, some actually hatching, all for naught, but at least we snagged this one for a photo session.
I made the attempt to get a few frames in the grass/weeds for a natural setting, but it vanished beneath the leaves almost instantly, so we have this eye-level portrait on the driveway again after that aborted attempt.
There are a bunch of other pics from this morning, and some from last night along with audio clips, as well as all of those images that were taken earlier that I’ve been trying to get to, so there’s post fodder for a while now, but obviously this one was going to jump in front. I mean, not literally of course…