{"id":41345,"date":"2026-03-24T01:19:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T05:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=41345"},"modified":"2026-03-24T01:19:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T05:19:30","slug":"estate-finds-56-57","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2026\/03\/estate-finds-56-57\/","title":{"rendered":"Estate Finds 56 &#038; 57"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A double for today, even though these were both found yesterday &#8211; the time to get the post together just wasn&#8217;t there, but part of this was because I insisted on fleshing it out a bit, which means, another video clip.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, I kept mentioning getting to two videos, and have recently posted two. Only, the second one wasn&#8217;t one of those I was referring to, being a Tip Jar entry instead, and this one isn&#8217;t one of them either &#8211; I still have another coming. Good thing I&#8217;m getting paid handily for this. *<\/p>\n<p>So, Find 56 was in the yard this morning, quite close to the greenhouse.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1stTurtleNest26.jpg\" alt=\"likely eastern mud turtle Kinosternon subrubrum appearing to be laying eggs in shallow burrow\" width=\"750\" height=\"633\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-41346\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>This turtle appeared to be laying eggs in a nest, but I&#8217;m not 100% sure of that<strong>;<\/strong> it might simply have been emerging from its winter burrow, but it remained this way for some time, so I was, at least initially, leaning towards &#8216;nest.&#8217; Curiously, this is almost exactly where the yellow-bellied slider <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2025\/05\/estate-find-xx\/\" target=\"_blank\">made a nest last year<\/a>, one that did not appear to come to fruition.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/LittlePrivacy.jpg\" alt=\"likely eastern mud turtle Kinosternon subrubrum hiding within shell while apparently laying eggs\" width=\"750\" height=\"544\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-41347\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>This one was not going to give us any opportunity to check identifying characteristics, but I&#8217;m going to call it an eastern mud turtle (<em>Kinosternon subrubrum<\/em>) based on seeing that it did have a hinged plastron and no apparent stripes on the face, though neither of these is conclusive<strong>;<\/strong> it might be a striped mud turtle instead. Either way, we&#8217;ll be monitoring this spot for the emergence of micro-tortles, because I have yet to snag images or video of that.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, this seems quite early for nesting, which is typically early summer, so maybe it really was just emerging from a burrow, and it simply froze upon seeing us and took a long time to feel safe to move again.<\/p>\n<p>The other find occurred in late morning, when I didn&#8217;t have the camera handy and was running out the door anyway, but in the early evening, we got a much better chance to see it in excellent light.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:56.25% 0 0 0;position:relative;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1176427347?badge=0&amp;autopause=0&amp;player_id=0&amp;app_id=58479\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" title=\"Yet another guest star on the property\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/api\/player.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Green-winged teals (<em>Anas crecca<\/em>) are not uncommon ducks, like, anywhere in the US, but I simply haven&#8217;t had much access to duck habitats for most of my shooting history, so this was a new find for me, and a nice addition to the list of property visitors. How long will it be here? We&#8217;ll just have to see.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/VisitingTeal.jpg\" alt=\"adult male green-winged teal Ans crecca posing in nice light by distributed corn\" width=\"750\" height=\"680\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-41348\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>When we first saw it, it was more backlit by the sun and so the green on the head wasn&#8217;t showing at all, but some purplish highlights on the crown were &#8211; several duck species have iridescent feathers that change color depending on the light angle. By early evening, the sun was largely behind our viewing location, so the colors showed up a lot better.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/SonYoureAdopted.jpg\" alt=\"adult male green-winged teal Anas crecca with adult male and female wood ducks Aix sponsa, all in good light\" width=\"750\" height=\"827\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-41349\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>The funny thing is, wood ducks are small ducks, and the green-winged teal is even smaller, so they&#8217;re minute little guys<strong>;<\/strong> the only duck in the region that I know is smaller is the <a href=\"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2011\/10\/sylvan-heights-continued\/\" target=\"_blank\">ruddy ducks<\/a> (last image,) which I don&#8217;t think are fond of this kind of habitat, so I&#8217;m not holding my breath over those appearing. But, you know, all are welcome.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, now back to trying to finish that last video&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 0.8em\">* As in, not at all, but you know, I&#8217;m not <em>married<\/em> to that concept&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A double for today, even though these were both found yesterday &#8211; the time to get the post together just wasn&#8217;t there, but part of this was because I insisted on fleshing it out a bit, which means, another video clip. By the way, I kept mentioning getting to two videos, and have recently posted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,3809],"tags":[8620,6780,8619,6784,3441,80],"class_list":["post-41345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","category-video","tag-anas-crecca","tag-eastern-mud-turtle","tag-green-winged-teal","tag-kinosternon-subrubrum","tag-maybe","tag-nesting-behavior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41345"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41351,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41345\/revisions\/41351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}