Turtles on Ice

Mother Nature can be a little cruel sometimes. Spent a few hours out at Huntley Meadows today and saw four turtles crawling over the ice- all Red-bellied Sliders (thanks to Kevin Munroe for ID help), three large ones and one smaller one. Normally turtles are down in the mud, hibernating over the winter (they absorb oxygen through their skin, and the heartbeat drops down to a very low rate) and come up through an open area in the ice for a breath of fresh air. One of them found another open area of water and plopped back in, and two of them made it into the same area with a little help. The last one was seen slowly heading out towards the middle of the frozen marsh. As the temperature is supposed to go down to the twenties tonight it probably won't survive. I know it's natures way of weeding the species out, but still not something I like to see. Turtles are sometimes seen crawling around underneath the ice in the winter, but this was a bit unusual.