Spotted Turtle Mid-March 2013, Somewhere on the Southeastern Coastal Plain.

It was only a flooded roadside ditch and, as roadside ditches go, although lengthy, not even a very big one at that. At its widest it was perhaps 6 feet, and maybe 3 feet at its deepest. The water, clear and very slowly flowing, had been well-chilled by the just ending winter, and was still very cold. The firm bottom was covered with up to a foot of decomposing leaves and the ditch, itself, was spanned in many places by sizable fallen limbs and trunks.

Although the records were 25 or more years old, the ditch—all 10 miles of it—was a verified locale for the Many-lined Salamander, a species that a friend and I wished to photograph. And it was the hope of finding these that had drawn us to the locale. We accomplished this at our first stop but decided to spend another hour slowly driving the entire length. Within minutes we were glad for that decision. And within those same minutes the emphasis had changed from caudatans to chelonians.

The first turtles that caught our attention were several adult red-eared sliders that were assuming basking positions on a large diameter sun-drenched pine log. As we drove by Kenny exclaimed “There’s an eastern painted turtle with them.” But the moment I slowed to scan the group more carefully the entire lot cascaded into the water and submerged. There were more sliders on the next log. On the third log were a slider or two and a couple of huge, very dark cooters. With no carapacial markings visible on any of the cooters seen on the drive, coupled with extreme wariness, their identification remains a mystery. They could have been either or both of the two species that occur in the region, river cooters, unlikely in these quiet waters, or, more likely, Florida cooters, a turtle of quiet ponds, ditches, and canals.

The next couple of logs were vacant. Then Kenny said, "Spotted!" Let’s see now—did that mean he had spotted another turtle or that he had seen a Spotted Turtle, Clemmys guttata? He clarified: Spotted Turtle. About that time we approached another log and this time I needed no clarification—there were four Spotteds aboard. Fantastic. We had known the species to be in the area but hadn’t even thought about them in this locale.

And so it went for the entire length of the ditch. Wherever there was water (the ditch had dried in some areas near the distal end) both on the spanning logs and on the banks, we saw Spotted Turtles. The total for the day was about 40. Most were adults, but a few 2-inchers were also seen. Add to the turtles already mentioned a very large adult common snapping turtle seen in a deeper section of the ditch, and you will see that it had definitely become a chelonian kind of day.