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6/6/17 by Stephen Badger, Office of Communications
Ecologists and staff brave deep mud and dense vegetation to locate, measure, weigh and document the federally threatened bog turtle.
A common snapping turtle.
The first Spring in New Hampshire was greeted with the deafening sound of frogs coming out and singing. Thousands and thousands of frogs. The cacophony is so great, you can hear them inside your car with the windows closed and the radio on.
Asked a neighbor if that was normal and he replied, "Yeah, it lasts for a couple weeks... until the turtles hatch."
Didn't think much of it until I actually saw one of these turtles. A giant, scary dinosaur-looking snapper turtle. Those thousands of frogs? In this monster's belly!
There's nothing to give this scale, but its head is as big around as my arm and the shell is the size of a good-size car tire.
This is a juvenile.
I got this idea from a flickr friend, Lenny, although he did a much better job with his red ear slider (we call them streaker heads down here) than I did with mine. Thanks Lenny!
Snapping Turtle's bottom shell, or plastron, is small and they are unable to retreat into their shells for protection. This accounts for their somewhat defensive nature (usually evident only if provoked). I was very careful not to provoke her.
This huge turtle (about 10-12 inches long) was crossing the road, so I stopped and put on my blinkers and tried to assist him. He wasn't liking my help, but I didn't want to leave him in the middle of the road. Along came another driver, who stopped to help and ended up picking up the turtle (quickly) and moving to the other side of the road. The turtle plodding down a small embankment and into the lake.
The present day landscape of Eastside of Lake Winnipeg started evolving some 10,000 years ago after the retreat of the Wisconsin glaciers. This region of Manitoba's boreal forest is covered by a blanket of coniferous and deciduous trees, ponds, bogs, tumbling rivers, laced
together by a multitude of lakes, eventually draining into Lake Winnipeg - the sixth largest freshwater body in North America and the last remaining remnants of 11,000 year old glacial Lake Agassiz. The vast, relatively undisturbed expanse of boreal forest provides one of the
last remaining large intact habitats for the Atikaki-Berens and Owl-Flinstone herds of threatened woodland caribou in Manitoba. They share the forests with other wildlife typical of the boreal forest: beaver, river otters, marten, lynx, moose, wolves, black bears, and wolveri
Photo of 8 x 10 watercolor of a green sea turtle. Photo used with permission from Mathieu. www.flickr.com/photos/18558650@N05/