turtles
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VLS
Very Large Snapper: Green-Wood has a few of them. In general, they stay in the murk of three of the four ponds. The forth has lately been drained to just a few inches of water. This one must be a female, ashore to lay eggs. Where the devil is she doing that? Once I passed…
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Bent Snapper
Medium-sized snapping turtle. By medium-sized, I mean the shell here is bigger than your average dinner plate. About a month ago, I ran into this same turtle in the water. This carapace (top shell) is unique, and rather unusual. I’ve never seen the spines on the far edge pointing upwards on other specimens.
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Diamondbacks
It’s hard to see through the intervening plants, but this terrapin is just starting to dig a hole for her eggs. We were on the path. This is an excellent example of why people need to stay on the path out at Jamaica Bay, as well as Salt Marsh Nature Center where Killdeer and Oystercatchers…
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How About Some Turtles
Recently seen: Some Spotted Turtles. The last pictured was tiny, perhaps 1.5″ down the shell (head to tail).Painted Turtles.At a whole other scale, a veteran Snapping Turtle krakening the shallows. *** The new abolitionism: a fascinating profile of Ruth Wilson Gilmore.
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The Leeches Are Winning
Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) in combat.Ugh, the leeches! On face and feet and even shell. This stagnant puddle of “fresh” water is simply crawling, or fluttering, with leeches. Here’s some footage of this colossal wrestling match that was too large to email back to myself from my phone… Here’s Solnit on the absolute necessity of…
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Be the Turtle You Want To Be
Snapping Turtle Chelydra serpentina. The females are making their way ashore now to lay eggs. Some will walk a long way, unfortunately attempting to cross roads, so keep an eye out if you’re driving.The clouds were turning on and off the sun. I’d say this was a medium-large sized specimen. I’ve seen larger ones, true,…
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Nesting
Two Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) were cutting across the parking lot repeatedly. They were gathering nest material: Seems awfully late, doesn’t it? Many species have already fledged this year. Others are well into incubation. But Cedar Waxwings are very late nesters: they want their young to be hungry around the same time as summer’s fruits…
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The Snappers Are Restless
One of the gigantic Chelydra serpentina of Brooklyn.Another? There were at least two big ones in this pond. But note the difference in leech positions. By the way, just look at all the parasitic life-forms latched onto this one’s head and neck! Crowd-sourcing these pictures to Twitter, I found some suggestions that these were Placobdella…
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Yellowbelly
On a 40F day, a single turtle is observed on the edge of the Sylvan Water. What’s this, though? Not a Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elegans), by far the most common turtle across the city. I once counted 70 basking along the Lullwater in Prospect Park. This is a Yellow-bellied Slider (Trachemys scripta scripta). As…
Backyard and Beyond 