Monday, April 22, 2019

Turtles at Kit Carson Park

I don't know that much about turtles (except for an Ogden Nash limerick).

Here is a great website on California herps. From this website I found out what I suspected. These turtles are all non-native escaped pets--or at least, their recent ancestors were. The big turtle showing some red stripes on the underside ("plastron"--new vocabulary word!) is the Western Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta bellii). Most of the others here have yellow stripes on the plastron and a red mark behind the eye--the Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elgans).

Sunning Turtles
Sunning turtles. March 29, 2019. Escondido, California.

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