Redbellies in June. 6-1-2025

A sunny Sunday. Warm. Let's leave early to go look for Hogs in Plymouth County. What could possibly go wrong?

We got to our State Forest at about 10 AM and decided to hit a new trail. No more gasline path for us. We parked in a familiar spot, then turned to take a different path. Our first encounter was a Ringer under some bark. Blue-eyed and asleep.


At a crossroads, we had to decide on which way to go. Which way would be the least likely to get us lost, more like it. We chose the one with the large turtle in the path. We got up to it and saw that it was a huge Red-ear. I don't think we'd ever seen one at this place before.

We continued on for a while, got to a pond (the water levels are still low here but much better than last month!), flipped a Fowler's Toad, then headed back.

On the way back, the Red-ear was digging a nest (or test nest... one never knows) right at the crossroads.

This got us thinking... obviously a released pet. What are the chances that a male Red-ear was released in the same area and the two mated. Perhaps the chances are better than I care to admit but still, it seems pretty slim. Would a Painter or Redbelly try a Red-ear on for size? Would she lay infertile eggs? I need to look into such things.

The rest of that first stop was searching more familiar paths. We found a couple more Fowler's but no Hognoses.

We moved on to the bogs, hoping to add some frogs to our day. First thing we saw there? A "soooon" Fowler's. I feel better about toads this year. They weren't very abundant here in 2024.

On the second bog, we finally flipped our First of Year Redbellied Snake. A new spot here for this species.

The obligatory belly shot.

Since we were (again) striking out on Hogs, this was a happy find; our other target.

A nice Green Frog. Sadly, the only frog we saw in the bog, which still seems to be recovering from a cleaning. Color me worried.

We'd already hiked almost six miles so we headed to the station in hopes of seeing a few turtles and ending the day on an easy note. As hoped, we did just that. Four Redbellied Cooters were up warming in the sun.

^^^ Muffin Plastron.

What, no Painters? It didn't take long before two crawled up in between the two most distant Redbells.

Here is the map... two Redbells in the foreground and the two plus Painters in the back.

It came out to seven species on the day (our usual count, it seems) but it was a very hard fought seven. 6 1/2 miles of hiking over 4 1/2 hours. But its all good. One more FOY and plenty of beautiful nature to nourish my usually aggravated soul. I'll take it.

Damn Hogs. It's either feast or famine with those bastards.