On the middle day of the three, 27 September, I braced myself against
alders, standing mid-thigh deep in the mud, sunken leaves, and water
(the latter generally 8″ to a foot deep), with a spray of reed canary
grass in front of me. I could see into ten feet or so of channels to
my left and right and, straight ahead. Not many sites in this terrain
of the spotted turtles allow such an extended vista. A turtle-watch
in autumn is quite different from a hawk-watch. I had determined this
to be my final stake-out of the visit; but that decision is frequently
re-visited before actual departure. For twenty one minutes, nothing
but the slow, mesmerizing drift of clear water, and occasional, very
occasional, flickers of movement on the surface caused by water
striders or backswimmers – there is little visible invertebrate life
in this habitat element. I see little evidence of a food chain that
would support the spotted turtles during their active season – they
come here for the winter, and as soon as things warm up enough at
thaw, move outward to far richer feeding grounds, such as the Swale.
Such habitats also serve as their mating grounds. Then, on that twenty
first minute, a sudden brief trembling of the surface of the channel
directly ahead of me. Very brief indeed, but it was certainly a
movement caused by a turtle, at the farthest extent visible to me.
And in this sector of the Far End I have only seen spotted turtles.
One can only be patient, motionless, and hope for a clearer sighting,
a better bearing on the turtle’s precise location and movement, and
hopefully a closer approach by the turtle. And in this sector of the
Far End I have only seen spotted turtles.

Then came a flash of yellow spots, black shell, in a thin shaft of
sunlight penetrating the channel – the water is clear, but is seen as
black almost everywhere but where the sun strikes into it. I knew any
sighting would be stunning – it has always been for me – and under
these seasonal ambient and habitat conditions the rush is especially
intense. And it is nothing less than a rush, even after six decades of
experiencing it. To heighten the already heightened, my fleeting
vision of the turtle indicated that it was a juvenile, or subadult.
With spotted turtles, this has been the rarest of the rare. I am
certain that some hatchlings orient here from nearby sparse shoulders
of a hayfield, where several spotted turtles nest each year, that some
niches within this niche serves a nursery role for the species. I have
made dedicated searches for hatchlings and juveniles where the
microhabitat would appear to favor them, or they favor it; my one find
being a three year old, in August several years ago.

The debate at this point is whether to make a rush to where the turtle
appears to be, and risk his disappearance, which can occur all but
instantaneously in this habitat – selected largely for that reason, or
wait for that closer approach, better bearing. Then came more
movements on the surface, more rapid – the turtle could have seen me
and was perhaps taking flight. I tracked the surface disturbance with
my eyes, trying to compute where the turtle was heading, and made my
move. Not easily done in this compressed but difficult and spotted-
turtle-favoring world: my feet become almost rooted in the mud when I
am in one place so long, the criss-crossing of alder branches and
soft, sinking substrate constrain forward, or backward or sideward
advances. Three awkward strides brought me to within reach of where I
thought the turtle was. A glimpse of the little spotted shell proved
my determination wrong – the turtle had shifted to the right side of
the channel, not the left… the channel is only a foot wide, but that
narrow margin, little distance, is enough to cause me to come up empty
handed. But with that one more vision I thrust blindly to the re-
adjusted site and felt my hand come in contact with and close over the
shell of a splendid five year old spotted turtle.

I documented the turtle in my notebook, made tiny identifying notches,
and set him on the edge of an alder mound at the capture site. He was
in the water and out if sight in what seemed a nannosecond. It is not
likely I will see this one again in this dense, ultra-concealing
habitat. But perhaps in five years or so, if I am yet able to be at my
swampwalking, and the young turtle begins the migratory ways of his
kind, I will find him in the Swale.
Or (remotely) possibly here again. In any case, I marked the location
with a strip of surveyor’s tape with “5 y.o. Cg. 27 Sept 2011″. The
blaze tape is not easily discernible among lingering leaves of red
maple saplings and the scarlet winterberries; but when I return in
spring for those beginning of the season searches and vigils, it will
be evident in the gray maze of the branches and let me recognize this
precise place. I returned the day after this signal finding to repeat
my search regimen – no turtle seen. Unless there is a several-day
truly mild spell (temperatures in upper 60s and 70s) it is not likely
I will come back here until thaw, when I will likely have to make my
way on snowshoes and wear neoprene, not gore-tex, waders.
* * * * *

In early October the Team of Four from Tufts U., Molly, Laura, Jeff,
and Jay returned to complete video-recording me for a documentary
they will enter in an Environmental Film Festival at Tufts (by
coincidence, one of my alma maters, along with the School of the
Boston Museum of Fine Arts). They were responsive, stimulating,
thoughtful, insightful, terrific to work with. They want to do a
piece on wetland preservation vs. development issues, and want to have
me serve as the main voice. This was an honor for me and another
opportunity for me to put forth the turtle Party Line, the main, if
not sole, mantra of which is the call to go beyond stewardship and
even conservation to preservation, preservation as in true ecological
sanctuary, “exempt from publik haunt” (my oft-repeated quote from
Shakespeare), independent of human service. This call is leitmotif of
FOLLLOWING THE WATER, my last book, which has brought me responses
from people who find it too sad to read, and others who feel I am
declaring their conservation work to be in vain. As I state in the
book, I do value such efforts, and recognize the sacrifice and hard
work involved in conservation initiatives, but have to say I see a
grievous lack of places that are established for ecosystems and
biodiversity first and foremost, as opposed to becoming human theme
parks, playgrounds. This is a theme I may address in winter writings
here. I begin to turn to my “indoor season” of drawing and painting,
writing, and language study. I will likely make a few more streambank
searches for late-season wood turtle sightings, but I am now almost
exclusively in my east and west Arbeitzimmer, workrooms of the above
mentioned winter pursuits.

By mid-September the little salamander had developed enough to reveal
itself as all but certainly a Jefferson salamander. It was overall a
grayish color, not very dark, and had a dusting of minute, barely
discernible spots lining the very edge of its ventral surface. It
still had gill fringes, and only very tiny legs had appeared. Although
I now had no doubt as to the species that had committed those egg
masses at thaw, I wanted to return to the pool to see if larvae were
still present and if we could find one even farther along towards
metamorphosis. The pool is surrounded by rocky outcrop and dense
hemlocks and is deeply shaded. It was virtually impossible to see into
the dark water except where slender shafts of sunlight penetrated it.
We waded in and stood watch at these narrow, slowly shifting beacons.
Finally Michael saw a larval salamander surface for a bit of air and
descend, an action so swift in passing that he did not have a chance
to attempt to net it. At least we knew that they were still in the
pool; I had expected as much as the shaded water was still quite chill
and and deep, and metamorphosis would likely be a comparatively
lengthy process. We waited some time, without any further sightings. I
decided to make random sweeps through the thick sunken leaf litter,
and on my second trial I netted a larval salamander that was
indisputably a Jefferson. It still bore gill fringes, though they had
diminished, and the larvae were transitioning to air-breathing. I hope
to return to this pool at breeding time next year to see of I can get
a feeling for how numerous the adults are here. I have found pools
with Jefferson salamander breeding in this region, but numbers of
adults ranged from half a dozen to eight – quite a contrast to the
numbers of spotted salamanders in the same and neighboring pools. (In
SWAMPWALKER’S JOURNAL I describe a quite small pool that supports
breeding by both salamander species, as well as wood frogs, and how
they select different parts of this very restricted breeding habitat
for their egg deposition.) It is also of interest that there appears
to be little or no breeding by spotted salamander in this vernal pool,
something I’d like to get a more certain documentation of.

In recent weeks, as I have continued my daily juggling of drawing,
writing, language pursuits, life in general, and time in turtle
places, I have concentrated on sojourns in my long-familiar wood
turtle habitats. I have not come upon any more hatchlings – the time
of their nest-to-water journeys is long past now, unless there is an
extraordinary case (and one never knows). I have found no further
evidence of hatching and believe that the exit hole I found was the
only successful nest of the season. This leads me to the conclusion
that the second hatchling I found, on the journey, came from that same
nest, in which I found the first hatchling still lodged in the nest
chamber. I will devote myself to one final thorough search of all
known nesting niches one more time before snow falls, to see if I
might find another exit hole – they keep their form into winter and
even beyond, and can provide hard evidence of successful nests.
Eggshells of pipped or failed eggs, and any hatchlings who died in the
nest, provide clutch sizes and the survival figures for the nest.

In the main I am making searches along the ecotones between tree lines
and mown hayfield, and interior alder swamp, etc., habitats for
terrestrial wood turtles. Some may well have begun to relocate closer
to the banks of the two brooks in which they will overwinter, and even
entered the brooks themselves; but there are wood turtles yet keeping
to terrestrial niches.I returned from a search along one of the highly-
favored swaths of dense grass, sedge, forb, and shrub between the tree
line and the far end of the hayfield just before sitting down to this
writing. Two days of rain and drizzle, and warm, humid – steamy – air
preceded today, which became all the more rain-forest-like with a
thinning of the cloud cover and occasional brief appearances of
sunlight. Such a high-summer spell in early, or even later, autumn,
seems to be something I can count on in this region… maybe a Latin
American summer before an Indian summer. Such a weather pattern can
delude me; I need to glance at the calendar and remind myself of the
season’s overall, inevitable progress. I wanted to have a wood turtle
encounter, and was favored with one. Another feature of the tropical
bearing of the day was a steady, numerous accompaniment of mosquitoes.
There has been a resurgence of them in the northeast following the
deluges of hurricane/tropical storm Irene and subsequent remnants of
tropical storms. Mosquitoes are more of an affliction now than they
have been at any previous time in the year. My reward was finding a
long-familiar female who was an adult when I first came upon her and
is no doubt an older turtle, at least in her mid-forties. She has a
distinct configuration of her carapace at the right shoulder area,
with marginals sweeping up and outward, and what appears to be a long-
healed narrow gash penetrating to the edge of the seam of her first
and second pleurals. It is likely that this is the result of an injury
caused by haymowing equipment, something I have noted with a fair
number of wood turtles here. And for reasons that escape me, such
mechanical wounds seem all but invariably to occur at that right
shoulder area and slanting across the carapace and down toward the
posterior end.
She has intact limbs, only a modest tail-nip, and is one of those
nesting matriarchs of the colony.

On the 10th of September, following a chill night with temperatures in
the low forties, I went out as the sun appeared and reached favored
terrestrial niches of the wood turtles to see who I might find. This
is generally a rewarding strategy as the turtles move to where they
can warm up after such a night, so I time the sun and search the
places where it first strikes the earth. One such niche is a small
corner of dense Bromus grass that is left uncut in the haying. In
times past I have found turtles here regularly at certain times in the
active season, including high summer. There is a narrow border of
sweetfern, the second-growth forest with a dense canopy and no
understory, an open floor that wood turtles eschew, that descends a
long steep slope to the brook. I found a familiar 12-14 year old
female at the very edge of the dense grass, well-hidden, but receiving
the sun fully on her shell. At first I was not sure why there was but
one identifying notch on the carapace of a turtle this young, but then
I noticed that she had five left pleural scutes instead of the normal
four. That anomaly and the one notch would be enough to identify her.
Eleven days and half an hour later, on a morning following a narrow
escape from frost as the temperature fell to 34 degrees, I found her
in the exact same spot, again. The sun’s rays had recently reached it.
Once the current “Green Mansions” weather pattern (as I sometimes
think of such a spell, recalling my readings of William Henry Hudson’s
book of that title in my adolescence) exits, my wood-turtle search
strategy will rely heavily on looking into such niches shortly after
the sun has reached them, following a frosty night, or chill, dark
rainy spell. I will continue with some recent-past wood turtle
observations soon-ish.

I have been contacted by a group of four students from Tufts
University (my alma mater, along with the Boston Museum School of Fine
Arts) who want to produce a documentary on wetland preservation –
development issues and want me to be the main voice. Their intent is
to enter their production in an environmental film festival to be held
at Tufts, I think in the spring. I agreed to do this. They came a week
ago today to do a preliminary filming of me walking and talking
(mostly talking) in a couple of my historic wetland habitats. They
will return in a week for additional filming. I will write more about
this project next time. bis dann, David

I also wanted to add that as I left the swale after finding that
spotted turtle of 14 July, driving out the logging road, I saw a wood
turtle crossing that dirt road. I have found wood turtles in this area
from time to time over the years, but sightings in this area are very
infrequent. The reach of the permanent stream that flows through this
part of the Digs is for some distance more suited to painted and
snapping, and occasional spotted and Blandings turtles, than wood
turtles. Due to the rather level lay of the land and beaver activity,
it is more a marshy stream, with sediments predominant; rather than
the scoured, sandy, gravelly bottom of a moderate gradient favored by
wood turtles. (I often refer to the overlap in stream and river
habitat of wood turtles with that of wild brook trout.) This was a new-
to-me 14 year old female who had recently been attacked. Her front
legs had wounds at the joints (fortunately the predator was not able
to work her legs out of her shell and eat them); and her tail was
badly chewed right to the cloacal opening. These will heal. It is
possible that a dog had discovered her, as there is a house nearby,
one built on what was formerly a turtle-nesting site (”Snapping Turtle
Knoll” in Year OF THE TURTLE). Or it may have been a natural predator.

On 2 August I found a far less fortunate wood turtle in the main area
in which I have observed them. A long-familiar female, one of the
oldest of her colony I suspect, had been hit by mowing equipment
during the last haying. I could piece the four sections of her
carapace together for identification; the fragments of her plastron
were “exceedingly smooth-worn”, as I have described her in past
notebooks. She was one of a dozen or so females who seem to do all the
egg-laying, one of those wood, spotted, or Blanding’s turtles turtles
l think of as a matriarch of the population. She has been nesting over
the 24 seasons I have been making observations here; doubtless she had
nested for some years before i first recorded her, and doubtless she
would have continued for some decades more were it not for this
casualty. She was right at the border of the mown field and the narrow
strip, ranging from 1 – 3 meters in width generally, between the field
and the tree line of the wooded ridge above the brook. The wood
turtles here are in the main well-distanced from a paved road, but
different kinds of road kill can happen, and every such fatality,
particularly of a breeding-status female, is a great loss to the colony.

I continued wood turtle searches along these edge habitats, or
ecotones in following weeks, finding a number of them. On the 23rd of
August I took up my annual walking of the dusty trails of the
hatchling wood turtles. Perhaps “sandy trails” would be accurate, but
it is typically a dry and rather dusty time of year (I describe this
in detail in “A Drink Along the Way” in FOLLOWING THE WATER). This is
one of the most compelling times of my seasonal rounds with the
turtles. I set out a bit later than usual – wood turtles generally
hatch earlier than the other species in this region, beginning around
mid-August (earlier, on occasion) and often ending before the first of
September. One factor in my irresolution this season was that nest
predation was extremely heavy at nesting time. During that period I
sadly documented 13 nests that had been taken by predators, and it
seemed quite possible, if not likely, that one had been spared. This
made the odds quite prohibitive that I would have even one of those
encounters along the trail with a nest-to-water journeying hatchling.
But again, this is for me a most compelling moment in the season of
the turtles, one that draws me back in spite of all odds, reluctances
and discouragements of various kinds, etc. And extremely slender odds
of finding are a constant of so many turtle searchings – searchings in
general. I saw what looked like the possible exit hole of a nest from
which hatchlings had successfully emerged. But it wasn’t as clear as
is usually the case, and I saw fine extracted sand around the vague
rim of the depression in the sand. If turtles dig out, all sand or
earth falls back in behind them – they dig out, all others, from
exploring predators to wasps burying the prey with which they deposit
their eggs, dig in, scattering very small to sizable mounds of sand
beyond the excavation. I walked on.

The next day I looked at the small depression again. I looked more
closely. The fine sand around the rim had actually been removed by
ants who had had infinitesimally small holes right beside it. I knelt
down, reading the sand far more carefully, clearly – suddenly I felt
all but positive that this was a somewhat obscured exit hole. I dug
in, quickly encountering five wood turtle eggs that had failed to
develop, and then felt a hatchling who was still in the chamber. The
hatchling was alive. Beneath him I found the shells of five eggs that
had been pipped. One belonged to one not yet ready, for whatever
reason, to leave the nest. Four siblings had broken free of their
eggshells, dug out, and taken up their nest-to-water journeys.

I brushed sand away from the little turtle I had been so lucky to
find… odds, luck… and of course the reality that one never knows,
one must simply go and look. And look again… and again. Once again,
this comes to me so often, I spoke that quote of Louis Pasteur’s, “In
the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.” My
mind should have been far better prepared the day before; luck gave me
another chance. I had reason to believe that this might be my
hatchling wood turtle for the year. But two day later as I stopped my
car along the hayfield road, where there is some sparse grass in the
shallow ruts, and parts of the sand road are in the shadow of a tall
stand of white pines, as I have over the years found hatchlings
wandering right along that road at mid-day, and they would be very
hard to see here. So I get out and look ahead before proceeding, and
then backing in to where I leave my swamp car in the great shadow.
Just a few steps ahead I met one. This has happened often enough over
my history here that I am led to believe that hatchling wood turtles
on nest-to-water journeys at mid-day, when it can be as hot as any
desert out on the sunlit sand, orient toward the shade cast by the
white pines that stand on a ridge above the brook they are seeking.

I will have to leave my account of Jefferson salamanders until my next
posting. Hasta entonces.

Following that my turtle time centered on wood turtles, until the wild
recharge of the Swale and other seasonal wetland haunts of the spotted
turtles by the tropical storm that hurricane Irene had become upon
reaching this area. Such rain events have on occasion in the past
spurred a return of at least some spotted turtles to the Swale, and
initiated a period of activity in the shrub swamps to which they
return at summer’s ending for their overwintering. The Swale was
filled to the brim and over the brim – always wonderful to see – but I
found no sign of spotted turtles there. I went on to the Great Swale,
wondering if I might see one there. This is a central setting for YEAR
OF THE TURTLE, and another former epicenter for the spotted turtles.
But, to put it briefly, turtle sightings there have declined as plant
succession has advanced over the past two decades, to the point that I
rarely make searches here, even at the time of emergence from
hibernation. Another significant factor in my not coming here but a
couple of times a year is that the near-impenetrable tangles
vegetation have become flat-out impenetrable. As described in TURTLE
and other writings, moving through this wetland is an all-body
experience. This was arduous even ten years ago, before the
encroaching sedges, alders, red maple saplings, et. al. had taken over
all but completely – and I was that much younger. The channels and
pockets and pools in which I found so many spotted turtles in those
earlier years are essentially untraceable now; I believe they are
overwhelmingly unnavigable even for the turtles. There is virtually
nowhere that I can look into the water (this is still a seasonal flood
compartment, one of those natural flood control acreages that have
been lost to human alteration of the wetlandscape); nowhere I might
possibly see the head of a turtle above the surface. Nor could I
detect turtle movements here, were there turtles present. I struggled
mightily, making little but exhausting progress, remembering former
times here. I had to turn back, thinking it might still be possible to
search and find here at thaw, when at least the new growth had not yet
begun. But so much is now woody tangles and persistent masses of
herbaceous sedges and ferns, that I have great doubts about any future
expeditions here.

On to the Far End of the Great Alder Carr, the downflow end of this
large Great Swale-Great Alder Carr wetland depression in the
landscape. It is here that I have come to find spotted turtles at
emergence from overwintering in recent years. It is difficult enough,
though not as challenging to make my way through as the Great Swale
was even when I first discovered it. There are wadeable/navigable
channels and pools; it is possible to sight and capture spotted
turtles here. And, of great import, there are turtles here. but the
water was deep, by spotted turtle habitat parameters, that is to say
close to waist deep; and the season’s rampant growth, primarily of
royal fern on shrub mounds, made even places I could wade through
close to unsearchable. I doubted that with the water depth, and
stronger sweep of floodwater through the compartment, which usually
has a very low, steady drift until even that falls away at the time of
low water, would favor activity by the turtles i sought. as is my
custom, my postings on this journal site are too far apart and get
into rather long accounts. I will stop here for now and try to cover
what is sketched out in my heading before long. To be continued…

Not wishing to cause any further disturbance this nesting season, I
did not make searches for turtles during the latter part of the
activity. I was not able to locate the nest site of the east brook
turtle; what I had felt all but certain was a completed nest proved to
be a decoy. I have on occasions found nests dug and covered but
containing no eggs. I made a day search of all known nesting areas
when I felt nesting had just been completed and found that seven of
the eight known nests had been dug up by predators – so early in the
going. Not unusual, the percentage of nests taken, or the immediacy of
the predation. Last season I did not search the nesting areas – as is
the apparent norm for wood turtles, the same sites are used year after
year – until it was time for the emergence of hatchlings. A few days
into this quest I began to find nests dug up by predators, until in
all seven out of eight nests I was able to locate had been taken.
Unfortunately these contained hatchlings on the verge of pipping and
leaving the nest, or even out of their eggshells and ready to dig out.
The one successful nest launched seven hatchlings out of seven eggs.
The scenario of that season, and what is portended for this, is of low
to zero hatchling survival. This made, and will make again this year,
my mid-August into September wanderings during which I look to
encounter hatchlings on their nest-to water journeys (one of the key
times in my year of the turtle, as described in “Nest to Water
Journey” in SWAMPWALKER’S JOURNAL and “A Drink Along the way” in
FOLLOWING THE WATER…), an all but certain futile exercise-cum-
ritual. There was one exceptional year in which I had not documented
nesting at all, but dedicated days to repeated roamings of the nesting
areas and surrounding terrain that I know hatchlings to traverse, day
after day, and in the end had found 11 exit holes of successful nests
and encountered 49 free-range hatchlings. I even came upon five nests
that were in the process of hatching out. I did not find a single nest
that had been dug up. The many hours of crisscrossing this habitat
were surely richly rewarded. There have been years of extremely
limited predation, and years like the past two. I can only hope that
whatever dynamic is at work (I cannot presume to offer a theory)
continues to be cyclical. An annual trend of the degree of nest loss
indicated by this season and last would certainly downgrade the
remarkable recruitment of young into the colony that has been the
standard over my observations here since 1986. I am as puzzled by the
predators as by the coevolutionary forces that may be at play in this
of turtle nesting. Although the wood turtles nest in bare soft sand, I
rarely see footprints I can positively identify. What I do make out
suggests skunks.

I made only two dawn searches for spotted turtles who might have
nested through the night (I describe this, in some past years of data-
gathering a much more dedicated proposition, in “Ariadne Nesting”, in
SELF PORTRAIT WTH TURTLES). I found none in the process. What I did
find my first time out was a freshly depredated Blanding’s turtle
nest, in an area favored by spotted turtles, but used at times by
painted turtles and one or two snapping turtles as well. And this was
in a place far removed from any in which I had ever found any sign of
nesting by Blanding’s turtles. Fourteen eggs were eaten; the clutch
size and the shape and color of the eggshells positively identified
the species of the nester. It was not easy to look at this sunrise
scene. This species is evidently present in very low numbers in the
greater ecology, broader landscape, included in what I call “the Digs”
and well beyond. I thought again of the coevolutionary forces and time
involved in this matter of Blanding’s turtles being here. The turtle
who made this ill-fated nest had likely taken twenty years to reach
breeding age. Then she began to make her long nesting sojourns, dug
her nest and committed her eggs. I thought of the one year of this
nest, that is the time from last nesting season through the activity
of summer and autumn, the long hibernation and finally the emergence
for another round of the seasons, courtship and mating, and then the
process of nesting and the journey back to her resident wetland. All
of this undone in a matter of minutes, quite likely the night of her
nesting. As I counted the eggshells I thought of the entire year that
must pass, and all that is incumbent on this matriarch of her kind,
before she has another chance to entrust a clutch of eggs to a nest.
Her nesting history here may cover six decades or more, and out of
those how many hatchlings might be generated… and out of those, how
many might live the twenty years to begin to take a place among the
breeding adults of the population? These thoughts deepened as on my
second daybreak search I found what looked like another Blanding’s
turtle nest that had been dug up. The site was a likely one, the
eggshells looked right for the species, but the clutch size of five
eggs caused some doubt, and I wondered if it could have been a painted
turtle’s nest. However, clutch size ranges from 3 to 22 in this
species, and this could have been the work of a first-time nester.
Several days later I went to a site in which a Blanding’s turtle has
nested over the years. I had been hoping to find a completed nest,
checking every day to see if there any signs to indicate nesting. I
had thoughts of relocating a nest if I found one, to hatch out in my
back field. I rarely and reluctantly do this – no doubt all the dug-up
nests I was seeing was influencing me. On my mid-day look-in, I found
a nest that had been taken: 16 eggs.

There is a Blanding’s turtle presence here. All indications are that
it is limited, but there is a presence. My belief that this will
persist as long as the habitat remains intact and extensive was shaken
by these observations. But I am seeing only who knows what fraction of
the presence and signs of its persistence. And my time, for all the
artist-naturalist’s wandering and specific field documentation I have
spent, dedicated, here, is of course a snapshot in the time of this
species in this ecosystem, whose persistence itself – as with
ecosystems globally – is by no means assured.

I found several dug-up nests in sites in which spotted turtles have
nested historically; the clutch sizes of three and four, size and
shape of the eggshells, suggested they were of this species. Among
eggshells at one site I found an intact egg. This happens sometimes,
though rarely. That one egg I have transferred to my back field and
screened against predators.

* * * * * *

Two weeks or so ago I had a most interesting interview, by swamp and
in our gallery, with Mary Helen Miller, a writer for the Christian
Science Monitor, who is writing a piece on me for the newspaper’s
weekly magazine. This for a column entitled “People Who Make
Difference”. As I told her, I wish I could make the difference I would
like to make, that of getting people to move beyond stewardship and
even conservation to preservation.
This is something I address in all of my talks, and in my books. Be
that as it may, I am greatly pleased, and honored, to be a subject of
this theme. Our extended talk was a pleasure for me – I am fortunate
to have such an insightful and skilled interviewer/writer take me on
as a subject. This week I had another fine session, this with
photojournalist Ann Hermes, who came to take an “environmental
portrait” of me for the article, this by the key spotted turtle vernal
pool habitat that has been a center of my years of the turtle in the
Digs. Ann asked if I might have a turtle for the portrait, and as
spotted turtles are infinitely more photogenic than I, I was happy to
try to have one in hand for the occasion. The afternoon before our
appointment I went into this wetland, which, owing to the abundant
rains around a couple of hot and dry spells this spring into summer,
is nearly at the full flood level of thaw. Last year, spring and
summer were marked by drought, and this seasonal wetland was dried up
by the end of May. The spotted turtles were of course long gone. But I
knew there would be at least some here yet, and so made a wading
search. The degree-of-difficulty of seeing one, much less getting one
in hand – as often described in my writings – was very high. Water
depths of eighteen inches generally, and rampant emergent and
submersed vegetation made it very much “advantage turtle”. I had one
sighting of a male with his head up, and then another of turtle
movements briefly in emergent reed canarygrass; but these were turtles
quick to vanish before I could get near them. But then, once again,
the turtle gods were very good to me. I saw unmistakable jostlings in
a dense emergent patch of meadowsweet: the movements (slight, brief)
of a turtle, and very likely a spotted turtle. I approached, waited,
saw another slight movement, could not really get a bearing on a
precise location, but knew I had to make a stab at catching the turtle
who was in there somewhere. I lunged with both hands. They sank over a
foot in the shrubby submarine tangles and in the near-undecipherable
melange I felt my left hand come down on a turtle shell. I pinned the
turtle, struggled myself into a position in which I could manage to
get myself upright, still gripping the unlucky turtle. But I was very
lucky indeed, for I held not only a spotted turtle, but one I had
never seen before, a 9 or 10 year old who appeared to be a male just
beginning to take on the secondary sexual characteristics of his kind:
darkening (somewhat) face, slightly indented plastron, and cloacal
opening just beyond the outer edge of his carapace. He was a brilliant
specimen, head and shell richly adorned with large and very bright
yellow spots, and more spots on his legs and tail than I have ever
seen on a spotted turtle of any age… legs and tail sharply reminded
me of a spotted salamander.

I went on to make two more captures, one of a five or so year old
snapping turtle and then an adult female spotted turtle. She was
marked number 10; goes back a long way in my notebooks, perhaps 25
years. When did I last see her?

This has turned into quite an epistle. Of Star Island, I will say for
now that my appearance there as visiting faculty for Southern
University of NH, at a writer’s conference, was absolutely terrific in
every way. I am indebted to Diane Les Becquets, Head of the Master’s
Writing Program, Rick Carey, Merle Drown, other faculty and some 43
grad students for a deeply rewarding and inspiring occasion, about
which I will write next time.

On the 29th of April, two days after the encounter with “Bright
Yellow” that I detailed in my last post, I observed a pair of spotted
turtles engaged in the courtship chase I describe in YEAR OF THE
TURTLE. (A print of the watercolor I produced to illustrate this
elaborate ceremony – and other turtle art prints – is available via www.carrollstudiogallery.com
; see also my artist’s page at www.Lake-Sunapee-Living.com; and coming
soon: www.davidcarrollturtleart.com) But of course the season moves
along too quickly to truly follow – there is joy and anguish in trying
to keep up with it all, even if there were nothing else in life to do
- and now it is nesting time.
On the 28th of May, after several heated days following the extended
rainy season of some three weeks of cool, even chill, dark and rainy
days (vital to maintaining the water level in the Swale, overcoming
for a time the effects of a culvert’s draining) I observed an adult
female out in the late afternoon, along the margins of the greatly
reduced nesting terrain associated with the east Brook. She could have
begun her searching for a nesting site. This can take days, or on some
occasions be the work of a single evening or morning. Soon after, I
found one definitely engaged in a search for a place to nest. She had
already dug a trial nest and abandoned it (common practice with this
species) and her carapace was well-covered with sand along the
margins. As I am making a concerted effort this year to take a census
of the wood turtles in the confluent two-stream central habitat for
the colony I have followed for some twenty four years I picked her up
in order to make an identification. I hated to do this, but a major
quest for me is to see who the nesters are at this time, with a view
to the great otter depredation of adults of four or five years ago.
And the turtles will in time go about their necessary business. In
fact this one, a long-familiar older female, did go on to complete her
nest that same evening despite my intrusion – I found it the next
morning. And that same morning, as I drove in on a dirt road at the
East brook area, I saw a wood turtle nesting in a sandy, scraped-out
niche used at times by farm equipment. This was precisely where I saw
my first wood turtle nesting, 24 years ago. Generally the passing of a
car does not disturb a nesting turtle enough for her to abandon her
project. As she was well-dug-in I did not want to go near her, and was
going to continue with my survey. But as I looked back, I saw her
crossing the narrow dirt road, heading back to cover along the brook.
So, I was able to capture her for identification. She was one of
twelve wood turtles we outfitted with radio transmitters for a study
Sheila Tuttle conducted a her Master’s Thesis for Antioch New England
in 1993. She was one of two subadults I chose to include, along with
the ten adults, in this radio-tracking study. As I recall, she was 11
years old then, which would put her in her 30th year.

On the first of June, following a very hot and humid spell of several
days in the upper 80s and even reaching 90 degrees, a day when tornado
warnings were posted for NH and adjacent areas, a thunderstorm passed
by to the immediate south of the wood turtle center, and a brief
period of rain fell. This lasted less than ten minutes – maybe five,
as I think of it – not at all the rain I had hoped for, and gardens
and swamps have been affected by another dry spell. At least we were
spared the severe storms that struck elsewhere; such as the tornado
that struck Monson, MA, site (along with Wales) of the Norcross
Wildlife Foundation’s sanctuary, Tupper Hill, where I served as artist-
Naturalist form 1994-1997 (as described in my SELF-PORTRAIT WITH
TURTLES). But this pattern of well-heated days following a cool, dark,
dry spell, followed by late afternoon rain and imminent or actual
thunderstorms is a classic signal for wood-turtle nesting. It occurs
with other species as well, but seems to me to be a hallmark of the
wood turtles. Between 4:30 and 6:30 I found four out to nest. As with
the previous two observed, these were older (30 years and up,
impossible to determine as they were already beyond accurately aging
when I first found them, twenty and more years ago) long-familiar
turtles. After this day of storms and near-storms, the weather went
from Guatemalan to Nova Scotian, from blazing sun, high heat and
humidity to heavily clouded days with strong winds (15-25 mph, gusts
to 35), cool to chill, and very low humidity; a pattern not typically
conducive to nesting. I intend to continue my quest to identify
nesting females. So far, the general (prevailing?) tendency appears to
be of the nesting in the colony to be carried out by the older
females; individuals I think of as the matriarchs. But I want to see
if any in the 15-20 year class nest as well, and hope I can be in all
the places at all the right times to get a handle on the age
distribution of those who nest.

My census continues, and will through the season, something of a
roundup to see who is still here, who is not, and new recruits into
the colony. Initial findings strongly bear out that recruitment here,
demonstrated by finding turtles in the 1-15 year age class, is
unusually high, based on what I have read in the literature about
other study areas, and my conversations with others who are engaged in
long-term studies of wood turtles (I am a bit out of touch with these
sources in recent years, but believe the scenario holds, with findings
of subadult turtles uncommon to rare). Already this year I have found
a number of previously undocumented 3, 6, and 9 years olds. It
continues to amaze me that I find turtles who have lived 2-10 years in
an area of no particular great extent that I have covered so closely
for so many years. I found a 13 year old who is missing both front
legs but still surviving, no doubt one of the many victims of the
winter of heavy predation by otters; but I am not seeing a number of
double-amputees I found the first-third years after their injuries. My
impression is that the wood turtles can survive the loss of feet or
half or entire limbs, but those more severely handicapped may not
survive long-term. Again, I hope more searches and more finds bring me
a clearer picture of these and other dynamics.

A week ago I had a most interesting interview with Mary Helen Miller,
who is writing for the Christian Science Monitor… a three-hour
dialog in our studio gallery and out by the swamps. She is writing
piece for the paper’s weekly magazine, for a column entitled “People
Who Make a Difference”. I am honored by this of course, but surely
wish I could make much more of a difference in that difficult area of
inspiring our culture and economics move beyond conservation to
preservation, as often addressed in my books and always in my talks.
More on this difference another time. I am not sure when Mary Helen’s
article will appear.

By the time I got the sedge mound on which the pair had been basking I
felt that one or the other might be ready to put his or her head above
water; maybe within my grasp (that means very close, as described
above). So I adopted my wait-and-watch mode, keeping still while
scanning the water round me, and looking into the few openings in the
underwater vegetation. Before long a male did surface, presumably he
who I had interrupted with my awkward movements in wrestling my way
through the shrubs. He was only a stride and a lunge from my right
hand, but I knew it would be all but impossible to make even such a
small move in time to grab him. He went into that “stare” – the only
way I can describe it – that I have found to be characteristic of
spotted and Blanding’s turtles. I have gotten great back pains from
keeping absolutely still and trying to wait out one of these turtles
in such a… vigilant trance? Only rarely have I succeeded in “out-
staring” one, having the turtle put his head down into the water and
grant me a second or so (or less) additional time in which to make my
capture-move. This has often been a hazardous lunge among twigs and
branches that at times has gotten me badly poked in the eye, or in the
early going, up to my shoulders and chin in ice water and muck.

I knew I could not endure the waiting-out on this occasion, so made my
futile move. The turtle vanished. My hand in the reedgrass came up
empty. I took a second step forward, and groped among the grasses, but
this, too,
has historically failed to produce a turtle in nearly all cases.
However, my left foot came down upon a turtle, and I felt I had him. I
reached down and pulled forth a spotted turtle, but it was a female,
so not the one I had attempted to capture. Three, perhaps four times
before over all of these years, I have found a spotted turtle with my
foot. As a boy in connecticut, in smaller pools and marshes with
abundant spotted turtles, I actually searched for them with my bare
feet – that strategy does not apply to these more northern wetlands of
my later years, not even in the exceptionally spotted-turtle-rich
Swale. I immediately recognized the turtle as “Bright Yellow”, one of
a handful of turtles to whom I have given a name; one I first found in
this remarkable vernal pool when she was five years old. I thought of
her as a precocious turtle, being large for her age, and of an age
some five years younger than most subadults I have found to migrate
here. And these have been few; it is very rare for me to find a
subadult in the Swale (”Reedgrass Pool” in SWAMPWALKER’S JOURNAL). She
is a particularly brilliantly marked turtle, with abundant bright
yellow spots and glowing orange head, neck, and leg markings. And she
is just as “Bright Yellow” as when I first saw her. At the time of
that first encounter I had read about a marvel of a very young Chinese
ballet dancer, whose name meant “Bright Yellow”; and I decided this
was too good a fit not to bestow a name. I have seen her in a number
seasons since that first finding, but not in the past three or four
years. As I recall, she was twenty one years old when I last saw her.

As I took great pleasure in being able to see her again and recorded
her in my notebook, I caught sight of a bit of a spotted turtle
carapace moving through sunken reedgrass, made a second lunge and
grasp, and this time came up with a male, in all probability he who
had escaped me. Another long-familiar turtle, first seen as an adult,
and so considerably older than the one I held in my hand. (There is
no way of ascertaining the age of a spotted turtle after eighteen
years or so.) Here was the “luck of Guido”, as I call it, manifest.
Two turtles sighted, that I did not think I would be able to take in
hand and identify, captured not by any great prowess, but by great
good fortune (for the capturer anyway, not those captured). But they
were immediately back in their realm. I think so often of the luck I
have had in my following the turtles through so many decades. Again on
this occasion I had to think I simply did not deserve to have such
pure luck one more time. But another time I was deeply grateful for it.

On the 28th of April I found four spotted turtles in the migrating
stream. And later in the afternoon, around five o’clock, a large
snapping turtle was near the end of his migration to the great beaver-
supported wetland distant from the Swale. This was a classic sighting
(I write of five making “the crossing” – luckily in this case not of a
road – in an hour and a half’s time in “Migrations”, SWAMPWALKER’S
JOURNAL). Here was a majestic snapping turtle of who knows how many
years, making again this critical overland journey, a necessary
seasonal movement that is fatal to so many turtles of so many species
in a world that has become so fragmented by roadways, cut into small
unsustainable pieces by them. There is something especially impressive
about these large turtles on these migrations following their
hibernations. Their carapaces are sometimes a clear slate blue,
sometimes covered with a patina of algae. This one, I can say
“gorgeous”, had massive carapace tinged with green algae along both
sides, and algal coating etched with lines from his or her brushy
passage; and a clear crest of the shallow dome that looked like
burnished plate… more moving than gorgeous actually, so shield-and-
warrior-like. Such a turtle is truly a warrior of the seasons, of time
and place.

SNAPPING TURTLES: I will give a slide-illustrated talk at
MainstreetBookends (Main Street, Warner, NH) on Friday, 27 May, at
7PM. No admission charge.

April has progressed with customary gradualism; I was quite sure that
at last on the 11th conditions were right for the first amphibian
migrations and this proved to be true. Colin and I decided to do some
early exploring, as by the official project date the vernal pool
breeding would have long been concluded – the mating and egg-
deposition, that is to say. We met at 8PM (my kind of commute: half a
mile or so from my fireplace wood stove) to find wood frogs already
chorusing in some number in a vernal pool in the small pasture sector
of his parents’ land. Colin then found a spotted salamander en route
to a pool, crossing the dirt road he lives on. No frog or salamander
had yet entered a pool in woodland habitat across the dirt road. We re-
visited this one the following night and saw spotted salamanders that
had evidently moved in over the course of the rainy night. Males had
already deposited sperm packets in several places. For some reason
this small pool brought thoughts of fairy shrimp to mind – something
of a premonition. I have never found them in upland pools in this
area, only in vernal pool habitats in the floodplain of the nearby
Warner River, and quite commonly in floodplain pools along the Lamprey
River in southeastern NH during my field work with turtles there from
1993-2003, in league with the “wild and scenic river” designation
studies of that river. But soon after wading into this small pool I
sighted some fairy shrimp, an early highlight of the season for me and
auspicious beginning to Colin’s project.

A survey by a logger friend the previous autumn, with an eye to some
possible selective timber cutting (the Nevins are dedicated to not
doing anything that might negatively impact the ecology of their land)
revealed, if I recall correctly – something in the neighborhood of 30
vernal pool basins. The terrain is markedly uneven, with very step
ascents and descents, a veritable boulder yard generously studded with
glacial erratics, quite different from the customary turtle habitats I
keep to and evidently well-suited to salamanders. Colin told me that
this pool never dried out, and that intrigued me. This all the more so
when I noticed a small circular pool, lined with stones, perhaps three
feet in diameter, just a few feet off to one side of the vernal pool.
The precision of the circle and the arrangement of the stones would
certainly seem to be the work not of glaciers, but of human hands. It
is not a flowing spring – neither it nor the adjacent pool has any
inlet or outlet – but some hydrologic feature may keep it filled with
water throughout the year, and it seems it may have provided a source
of water for some purpose.

Over the next week I surveyed another much larger and deeper vernal
pool on the eastern end of the property that my grandsons Michael and
Ricky Couture had told me about (their property abuts the Nevins’
woods on that side). I had intended for several years to visit this
pool but never had found the time (or made the effort) to do so during
the vernal season, when my focus is overwhelmingly with the turtles. I
placed four minnow traps in this pool, in which several spotted
salamander egg masses were already in place, and some wood frogs were
calling. Traps yielded two spotted salamanders the first night. The
second night brought only one salamander, but it was a Jefferson
salamander. I had felt certain that this species was also present,
although I have rarely found it in the area. And I saw two egg masses
that I am 90% certain were those of blue-spotted salamanders. This
pool bears watching, but breeding activity seemed quite limited, and
appeared to have been concluded for the season. I then went to two
pools downslope, and here I found what I am certain are Jefferson
salamander egg masses. One area of deposition was remarkable: a sunken
branch tangle that had been a center for communal egg-laying, every
facet of the branches lined with linear egg deposits, long clear jelly
accretions (some on the order of a foot and a half long) with eggs
plainly visible within. The aggregation looked something like a coral
reef formation. Minnow traps deployed over the next two nights
captured no salamanders – I was too late here. Colin’s project will be
essentially an independent study, but as I check in from time to time
one thing I will have in mind is attempting to net larval salamanders
in this pool once they have reached an identifiable stage of
development.

On the 14th of April I returned to the beaver-flooded wood turtle
area, and immediately upon descending the yet snow-covered shoulder of
the hayfield slope above the inundated alder zone I sighted one
basking in a sheltered spot that featured some fallen branch and
bramble cover. She was a long-familiar adult, one I have seen only at
intervals spaced widely over the years. She is one of the most
secretive members of this colony, and seems to be one of the oldest:
her plastron is worn ultra-smooth; it was that way the first time I
found her some eighteen (twenty?) years ago. As I suspected, the wood
turtles who formerly made use of the alder thickets during their
terrestrial times are restricted to this slope, a rather narrow band
situated between the the extended hayfield and the beaver impoundment,
running parallel to the stream. My laser temperature recorder read
92.5 degrees on the dry leaf-pack next to the turtle and her carapace
gave a reading of 97.4 – this on an afternoon with an air temperature
of 58 f and brisk, chill winds. A water temperature of 45.5 was
indicated in the main current of the brook. Further upstream I found a
familiar sixteen year old male, one of few, following the winter of
great otter predation five or six years ago (more? – its in my notes),
who is perfect to the tip of his tail. A very slight notch on his
twelfth right marginal suggests that he may be one I marked as a
hatchling. He has attained a size that would seem to make him a
breeding member of his colony. He was sequestered in limited cover in
a manner very much like the female previously discovered. These
turtles are clearly stuck “between the devil and the deep blue sea” in
terms of terrestrial habitat availability. I carried my search on
upstream to the end of their resident reach of this brook, with no
further sightings. As a result of the canopy of second-growth trees,
mostly red maple and then ascending to beech as the streambank rises
to upland woods, the dense low cover that wood turtles require is
almost entirely absent. The area is now primarily open forest floor
with some zones of cinnamon fern that do not provide the complex
layering and thick mattings of fallen vegetation that wood turtles
need. This is strikingly evident at a deep-bend meander in the brook
at the upper terminus of their home range here, a site much favored
for overwintering in past years (during my observations from 1986 to
approximately 1996). With a complete absence of cover for some extent
beyond this part of the stream now – none of that bankside cover
essential for first basking after emergence from hibernation and
beyond – it appears that the turtles no longer come here for their
overwintering. There is no other suitable riparian wood turtle habitat
for perhaps a mile upstream, and that is a limited compartment. There
are better options for them downstream, toward a river floodplain a
mile or so distant. Over the course of the season I will attempt to
see if I can gain insights into any movements they may make in
response to these habitat factors. There is much to think about here.
(So often I feel something akin to a headache as I walk and wade this
wood turtle terrain and try to fathom the ongoing ecological processes
and the turtles’ responses to them.) A suite of factors, human-based
and natural, conspires to alter the habitat over time, and in a
landscape increasingly marginalized and disrupted by an array of human
activities options for migration, re-location, which had been in place
for millennia, species like the wood turtle are driven to local and
broader disappearances. I will discuss this further in later postings
(it is lready a feature of my published writings and unpublished
reports). Regrettably the places of wood, spotted, and Blanding’s
turtles that I have known over the past three decades have become a
paradigm for this well-known, oft-discussed and lamented, but all but
entirely unaddressed phenomenon.

After this second sojourn here (my last of the year, most likely: they
do not stay here), I returned to the Far End of the Great Alder Carr,
where I had a recapture of that first turtle of the year. Late in the
afternoon I saw one go down from a sunning mound, too distant for me
to attempt a capture. This left me at one turtle for the year. *** the
next day, 9 April, I was back in this favored overwintering place of
the spotted turtles. Two went down from mounds before I could even see
them (their rustling descents and rippling disappearances are
unmistakable). After more than an hour (not a great span of time in
terms of turtle searches) of wading with no further sign of a turtle I
adopted my wait-and-watch mode, getting up on a mound of royal fern
and alder that was firm enough to support me, and beginning a vigil. I
went into something of my hydromancer’s trance, only turning my head
very slowly now and then, to survey the narrow channels around me. My
stillness was attested to by a chickadee’s approaching so closely I
felt the wind from his wings on my ear… and the wonderful sound of
flight. I was hoping he would land on me and attempt to pull out a
hair or two for nest-building; this has happened to me twice, under
similar situations. I remember well those tiny feet alighting first on
my shoulder and then on the top of my head, and the tugging of my
hair. I like to think that a strand or two came loose and became part
of a nest. After perhaps twenty minutes, at three-thirty, a turtle
appeared, a brilliantly marked male, proceeding along a channel
directly toward me. At such times I recall a day in Vermont with good
friend Steve Parren, Director of VT.,s nongame program. He had invited
me to help him search for spotted turtles in the only know site (at
the time) to support the species in the state. We separated out in an
area of shrub swamps and vernal pools and at one point I took up my
surveillance, sequestered among emergent buttonbush. At length Steve
came wading along, saw me, and asked, “Are you waiting for them to
come to you?”. He spoke in jest, but that is exactly what I was doing;
this has worked for me, even on occasions when I was in wetlands brand-
new to me, that suggested a spotted turtle presence. I waited until
the turtle was directly below me to make my lunge, and found myself
coming close to drinking the swamp as all around me gave way and both
arms went full length down into water and mud, becoming braced only
when my nose was at the surface. I unintentionally drove the poor
turtle about a foot into the muck, and it was only with great effort
that I extricated the two of us. The turtle was familiar male #108,
one of those in this colony who features abundant, very large spots.
My turtle for the day, #2 for the year. I am working hard for me
turtles this season, and feel my years in these difficult habitats.

10 April: I made my first excursion to wood turtle territory, going to
a fairly extensive alder thicket that is a key terrestrial riparian
compartment for these turtles, especially at first emergence from the
stream that borders it after hibernating there. Bank overflow does
occur here, but unlike the Great Alder Carr the floodwaters do not
inundate the entire shrub carr, and only inundate its brookside margin
briefly with water barely ankle deep. I looked forward to the easier
going of this habitat element, and seeing my first wood turtles of the
new season. But as I descended the snow-covered slope from a high
hayfield edge I saw that a great transformation had occurred.
The alder zone was flooded right to the base of the upland rise;
beavers had restored an old dam, a large one, and built a lodge among
the alders, in a bit from the stream corridor. Luckily I had not gone
with my idea of giving myself a bit of a break and not wearing waders,
just some boots. (After the first three days, when the water
temperature got to 40 degrees or a little above, I was able to switch
from my neoprene to my gore-tex waders, making the going much less
arduous.) I waded into the alder thicket, about knee-deep where I had
expected to traverse a sun-flooded, leaf-strewn riparian zone in quest
of basking wood turtles, who are generally within three meters of the
water’s edge, and often directly at it. Turtles would have to swim for
shore through extensive water considerably shallower than the brook
itself, and then return to the deeper streambed for the night, vs,
their habit of simply moving a short distance – or none – and dropping
back into the stream. I took up a search of “islands in the stream”,
recalling only two previous occasions when I had found a turtle on
one. And this was in situations where spring spates would be short-
lived; now this entire area would be flooded and entirely lost as
highly favorable riparian terrestrial wood turtle habitat for as long
as the beaver dam was maintained. And that could be for years. It is
possible that humans might take out the dam, as they are wont to do,
even in situations like this where the impoundment has no impact on
dwellings, roads, agricultural, etc. interests. The great habitat
constriction the wood turtles face now is exacerbated by the fact that
the hayfield has been extended to essentially the very edge of the
rise from the lowland wetlands, eliminating an ecotone that, again,
much-favored these turtles during their long terrestrial phase. Such
habitat has now been reduced to the lope itself, which is largely
open, devoid of the vegetative tangles and layers (grasses, sedges,
brambles, goldenrod, sweetfern, clematis, and the like) that are
absolute requisites for these turtles. I wondered how any hatchlings
who might have had their first overwintering in this stream-reach
would fare; and the wood turtles in general. They all awakened to a
vastly altered environment. “Brook trout’s world expands as wood
turtle’s world constricts”, I thought.

The only lodgings for basking that were above water were the bases of
some alder mounds, and these featured very limited purchases and
virtually none of the cover required for the classic cryptic basking
of the wood turtle. In my Lamprey River work of some years ago
(1993-2003 or so) I did find wood turtles to emerge on something of
“islands in the stream”, but these were more like barrier islands,
linear holdfasts of silky dogwood of some extent in reach along the
stream corridor, out from the riverbank. But I did find one wood
turtle, a new-to-me three year old, who had taken a place in the sun
on a crisscrossing of fallen pine trunk and branches (a few small
struggling white pines do manage grow among the alders in the wet
footing that is now submersed footing – they are likely to die out.)
After my wading, I searched the slope, finding no turtles. I will
return here, to attempt to come to some idea of how the wood turtles
respond to this suite of significant human and natural (=beaver)
transformations of a habitat element that has served them so well for
at least a couple of decades.