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Saturday, June 19, 2010

Bona Dea, turtle, mushrooms, Update







Bona Dea was sunny and hot and humid in the late afternoon. It had rained about .05 in. earlier in the day. Just a short shower. First off while entering Swinging Bridge Trail I saw this turtle just walking along in the grass by the trail. I noticed that it was heading for the water after having been doing something with her nest. You can see by the photos that the lower back of her shell was very muddy. She had been doing some serious digging. Speaking of digging. See the photo showing the powerful hind leg she uses to do this. Another photo shows the smaller front feet.This is a Eastern River Cooter, Aquatic turtle. In a previous post, I showed some photos of a turtle nest on Swinging Bridge Trail. I have again shown them here to show it could have been this same type of turtle. You will notice the hole and the empty egg shells laying close by. At the Spillway, I fed the fish and the Musk turtles. I noticed some new brownish mushrooms that had just popped up. These are a variety of Russula. Blue Jay birds were flying around and on Old Shorty Trail earlier on I heard Northern Cardinals and Tufted Titmouse singing away.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice post John. I love amphibians and it was great to see you caught this. At least we have people like you caring for these animals since the Gulf is losing so many. Keep up the good work!

John said...

Thanks Chad Torres. You just never know what you will find each time you go out to the sanctuary. It can be interesting. The Gulf is having a very hard time and will be a long time before things get corrected with jobs and the wildlife.