I was browsing some old photos on my iPhone and ran into this one, taken last August. This turtle seemed to be happy chowing down on a mushroom.
Hard to make it out, but he’s enjoying the ‘shroom
He was actively eating and took no apparent notice of me.
Turtles are not common on Lavender Mountain, or at least I don’t see them very often. I have wondered how they navigate the steep slopes. I keep picturing a turtle stepping off an old road and rolling all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. Wayne, over at niches, keeps track of turtles he sees. I should be more organized. Soon.
Here’s another one I saw earlier.
Easy to lose this little fellow
It would have been easy to overlook this one, but he’s about as cute as a turtle can be, so I’m glad I didn’t.
Zeke and I (and Zeus before him) have four main paths through the woods, and two down Fouche Gap Road. We have walked a lot of miles over the last seven years and I have seen turtles only about five times, including once in our back yard and once as a bleached, white shell. But they are quiet and slow moving, most of the time, so they are easy to miss.
Good ol’ turtle! I also find them most commonly eating mushrooms when the mushrooms are around. I read that there have been deaths of people who have eaten box turtles who had previously ingested amanitas, which box turtles can apparently consume without difficulty.
That’s a cute baby!. Was it close to a body of water? My understanding is that for the first few years box turtle babies are practically aquatic.
Oh – and btw – if I’d gone by my superficial sorts of observations of 2005-2010, I’d have thought that box turtles around here weren’t very common either. Apparently they have cloaking devices. In 2011 I started really looking – and I mean REALLY looking – I found them much more frequently.
Good ol’ turtles!
Most of the turtles I have seen are up on the side of the mountain, not especially close to water. The baby in particular was a pretty good hike from water, although I imagine there are springs here and there on the side of the mountain, especially in wet weather. There is a boggy area down the old road we were on when we saw the little fellow.
Your first turtle above is easily documentable. I do the photo from top, front, back, left, and right. And then I turn it over to see if it’s male or female and photograph the bottom, the plastron. The plastron isn’t as intricate as the top carapace, but it is categorical and interestingly independent of what you see on top.
The baby has no distingushing marks – those will become established by about 10 years later if it survives.