Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Herps

We were walking along the Sanford Farm trail on Nantucket Island when we came across this painted turtle.
Itty-bitty, probably recently hatched, but still plenty disgruntled at being man-handled. That wasn't a come-hither wink. We moved it just off the main path so the galumping runners and dogs wouldn't crush it.

Several days later, we saw a larger (hand-length) version at the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. The painted turtle is our most common regionally, but these were the first I'd ever seen. Until recently, I was not looking.

Ipswich River has a vernal pond that was delightfully fecund. Besides the bugs, a leap of frogs. This big boy is probably a bull.

This one, for obvious reasons, is called a leopard frog.

2 comments:

amarilla said...

Did you know, last Saturday was World Turtle Day? This I learned from the Staten Island Children's Museum program.

By the way, how did you get to tomorrow already? Tricky!

Word verification, kerfulsh.

Matthew said...

Some kind of time travel widget. Only the beta version is currently available. Unless, that is, you use it to travel forward...