Zen: Turtle Tracks In The Sand

This post was submitted to House of 'Herps #4 - St Patricks Edition.' Visit 'Kind of Curious' to read a bunch of neat posts about herps.

There they were. Tracks of something that wandered – somewhat aimlessly it seemed – across the sand exposed under the pedestrian bridge by the Section B boat launch (segment 1-17).

A closer look...

A close-up. It was when I looked at this magnification that I could see that something had dragged on the sand between the tracks. And then it suddenly dawned on me that they were turtle tracks. Although I have seen one River Turtle, Yellow-bellied Sliders (Trachemys scripta scripta) are the most numerous turtles in the lake. Based on size, at least two turtles wandered across this section of sand. There were more tracks. They wandered around between here and the water.

I wonder what happened. I wonder if the turtles were confused when the water level was lowered and wandered for a while before they realized that there was no worthwhile body of water upstream and wandered back to the lake. It is clear that they didn’t wander back this way again. When I visited this area last weekend, these tracks had aged and lost definition and there were no new tracks.
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Related posts:
- Marburg Creek Reservoir: Fort Yargo State Park
- Yellow-bellied Slider: Trachemys scripta scripta
- Yellow-bellied Sliders: Basking In The Sun

Yellow-bellied Slider: Trachemys scripta scripta

It's a sure sign of spring. Yellow-bellied Sliders are crawling out of the water onto logs and basking in the sun. They will be a common site now until the water warms up to where they can float just submerged with their snouts sticking just above the water’s surface. Even on Saturday, I spooked a couple of submerged turtles when I passed close by.


It’s going to be a little tough on turtle sunbathing this year. In past years, trees at the water’s edge have been felled to attract fish. Turtles climb onto the trunk and branches that extend above the water to bask in the sun. This year many of these branches have disintegrated. Roosts are going to be a premium.

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