"Gordy! Will you look at this! This turtle has a red belly!"



The place was somewhere south of Ringwood, New Jersey. The time was back in the 1950s. The occasion was me seeing my first red-bellied turtle of any species. My companion was my friend and mentor, E. Gordon (Gordy) Johnston (now deceased).

I was 14 or 15 years old on my first herping jaunt away from home. It was memorable because we had already seen more Eastern box turtles than I had ever guessed existed, we saw an Eastern king snake, and visited Asa Pittman and seen his collection of Northern pine snakes and "Coastal Plains" milk snakes. Now I had just hand-caught what I thought to be a hatchling painted turtle only to find it was a Northern red-bellied turtle, Pseudemys rubriventris.

And to top it off, that night we camped in a little deserted Pine Barrens cabin and were serenaded all night long by whip-poor-wills and screech owls. What an occasion for a herp loving kid!

Since then, I have seen many Northern red-bellied turtles, and although I marveled at each and every one of them, none have stuck in memory like that first one. I can still see myself darting from the damp shoreline into the shallows to grab that little "painted turtle" I had just startled only to find it was something so very different that I hadn't then known it even existed.

That's herping at its very, very, best.

More photos below...