Turtle Year Begins in Coastal Massachusetts

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Female Painted Turtle Basking on Goldwitz Bog Rock

A mild winter, a southerly breeze and 60 degree temperature enticed fresh water turtles in the Great White North to emerge from brumation to kick off the 2012 Turtle Year in Coastal Massachusetts.  Yesterday, with temps creeping into the high 50s, Turtle Journal inspected “the usual haunts” where fresh water turtles on the South Coast first emerge from winter slumber.  The Goldwitz Bog in Marion is the place that painted turtles are usually first found basking in mid-March; Brainard Marsh in East Marion holds a small, shallow pond where the first spotted turtles are normally seen each year.  Yet, yesterday not a turtle was seen.

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Female Painted Turtle Basking in Goldwitz Bog

This morning, however, persistence paid dividends.  The first painted turtle of 2012, a large beautiful female, had crawled onto a large rock in the retaining pond of the abandoned Goldwitz Cranberry Bog.  March 8th is the earliest date we have recorded for painted turtle emergence on the South Coast.

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Spotted Turtle Snorkeling in Brainard Marsh

With the painted turtle sighting under its belt, Turtle Journal slipped across town to Brainard Marsh to check for spotted turtles.  They are normally first seen basking on the mossy bank of the shallow fresh water pond.  The bank was empty and it looked at first sight that spotteds had not yet emerged from brumation.  Standing quietly on edge of the pond, Turtle Journal’s Sue Wieber Nourse discovered two spotted turtles hiding under water and camouflaged near the bottom.

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Spotted Turtle Surfaces for Air in Brainard Marsh

One curious turtle straddled a subsurface log to get a good view of Sue.  This spotted snatched a quick breath and quickly disappeared under the oozy leaf matter at the bottom of the pond.  As with painted turtles, March 8th is the earliest record of emergence that we have in our database for the South Coast.

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