June 2013: Turtles with a Plan

Of the four turtles we see in the St. Lawrence River near Lake Ontario, the map turtle is the rarest. Over the years I sometimes saw them in July. I say “them” because if I saw one stretched out on a log in South Bay, I was sure to see a few more if not several. Unlike the snapping, painted and Blanding’s turtles, map turtles only basked in the sun on rare days. This year we saw several on logs in the north cove of South Bay on June 9

I saw them in the south cove of South Bay on June 19

Then I saw them again on the same north cove logs on June 30

I would like to launch into a long discussion of why they are called map turtles but that requires closely examining their shells and so far they have been too shy for me to do that. Twice I’ve seen them on land, looking for a nesting site, I assume, and both times I didn’t have my camera. 

As you can see from the photos I have taken, this turtle has a hauteur that commands respect. Of course snapping turtles command respect because they are huge and everything about them is huge. Below is a relatively small snapping turtle digging a nest and laying eggs back on June 3.

A map turtle is much smaller but like the snapper shows what equipment it has underneath its shell, like that big back leg.

Its bulgeing neck looks classy too, along with the stripes.

Generally nothing exciting happens when you take a video of a turtle on a log. When you get too close and it plops back in the water, it gives no credit to the videographer or the turtle. I keep the camcorder running because sometimes stills taken from the video are better than stills shot with the camera.

On the 30th, I kept the camcorder running long enough to show how that big back leg works:

That turtle has a plan.