Yellow-bellied Sliders: Basking In The Sun

I took this photograph this morning. It looked like the whole tribe was sunning itself on a log in Segment 11. When I rowed through there and hour or so earlier, there were no turtles in sight. Obviously between the time I rowed through and when I took this photograph, the sun was giving enough warmth to make climbing out on a log to bask in it worthwhile.

And the photograph – with the turtle in the center just climbing out onto the log – reminded me of a similar incident a couple of weeks ago in the same place. When I rowed past this same log, two turtles were basking in the sun. These were big turtles – their shells were probably at least 15 inches in diameter – and I decided to take some photographs. I didn’t realize as I was photographing that a third turtle climbed out of the water to join the other two.

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Identification resource:
- Turtles of Georgia and South Carolina: Yellowed-bellied Slider (Trachemys scripta)