Dateline 7 April, 2011. Still early in the time of emergence from
hibernation: I made the fairly long walk and wade to a compartment I
call the Cranberry Sedge Meadow, or alternately (or simultaneously)
the Sweetgale/Leatherleaf Meadow. This is a wetland I would like to
describe in more detail in the future; a level expanse that at thaw
and into spring is flooded to a depth ranging from 6″-10″, rather
consistently throughout its extent. The substrate is solid, a peaty
turf perhaps, built up by its plant community that consists of wooly-
fruited and other sedges, large cranberry, and colonies of sweet gale
and leatherleaf. In recent years, stands of alder have begun to
encroach on the still-dominant vegetative structure. There are very
occasional mucky sinkholes where I drop into gripping muck up to a
foot deep. I have never seen adult spotted turtles here, something I
attribute to a lack of escape cover, as the dense vegetation is
prohibitive for navigation and the substrate predominately non-
burrowable (at least not quickly, something critical to turtles
needing to disappear from harm’s reach). I have long thought that this
habitat block was likely to serve as a nursery for hatchling and
juvenile spotted turtles and finally several years ago, en route to
look for adults at emergence at its far south end, did find a two-year-
old basking in leatherleaf stems. The broader area is difficult to
search, and looking for little turtles in it would be a paradigm for
the needle-in-a-haystack saying. But since that discovery, which may
well have been a once in a lifetime event, I have searched may way
along the animal trail I wade to reach the micro-niche in which I have
found adult spotted turtles at emergence. This does not shorten my
time in reaching my ultimate destination. This is an area of perhaps
35 square yards, just in from a broader, deeper channel I call “The
Slough”; which itself is the confluence of a small stream that runs
through an extensive red maple swamp with a larger permanent stream.
(Guess I need to draw another map someday.) Some years ago I
discovered this restricted zone to be the site of emergence from
hibernation by spotted turtles, three to five on any given day; but
only for a day or to at the very beginning of their season. I was
certain that there was no active-season, resident habitat for them in
the vicinity, and eventually found them to migrate perhaps a quarter
of a mile (not a great distance for them to travel) to a backwater fen
of a large glacial pond for their seasonal feeding and mating. On one
day I made some personal history, stealing upon this site, very
difficult to approach without being seen as the vegetation is almost
entirely below waist-high to me, and in one rush managing to take in
hand all five turtles I had seen basking. To this day I am not sure
how I managed that juggling act. Again, this is a quite-compressed
area that they use. In recent years I have found few or none; and on
this day I saw none. I waited an hour or so, on the remote chance that
I would be there to witness one come up to sun himself. This did not
occur. I returned again the next day, another featuring ideal
conditions for basking; again I found no sign of a turtle (it is only
spotted turtles who hibernate here; it is typical of this species, at
least in my experience, to overwinter in situations unique to them). I
go through all of my old thoughts (to be discussed at another time
perhaps). as I try to figure out their seasonal connection here.

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.