Learning In Nature: Sunkhaze National Wildlife Refuge 2

As the not-so-exciting and very cold night came to an end, our second morning at Sunkhaze was spent canoeing on Pickerel Pond to find eastern painted turtles. They were abundant among logs and on the shore, basking in the sun. My canoe partner and I managed to catch four, but we decided to spend most of the time just observing.

The males could be discerned from females based on their large claws and space between the end of the shell and the cloaca, which is lacking on females. Male turtles often have a more concave plastron, too, in order to sit easier on the female when engaging in fertilization, but it's not always obvious on aquatic turtles. The young ones were too small to discern a sex.

In the afternoon, before heading back to campus, we tried again to look for snakes. We went to some large open areas with thick grass and fallen trees. I saw one garter snake but wasn't able to catch it. We did find a small snapping turtle at the water area we had gone to the previous night to find frogs. A mink frog was also found, pictured below. It is often confused with the green frog but emits a musky, mink smell when handled.

As we left Sunkhaze and headed back to COA, we stopped at Hamilton Pond to check out some traps we had set for snapping turtles. We had managed to capture two, one male and one female. They were obviously angry and pretty large but not at their full size. The defense for the snapping turtle on land is to live up to its name. They can extend their neck quite far and have very powerful jaws. When they're disturbed in water, they usually make the attempt to run away first, but they're more vicious on land because of the vulnerability.