We love Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina). We were surprised to see so many in our woods and wondered if we were seeing a few repeatedly or if there really were as many as there appeared to be.
Short answer: There are a lot.
We used an imperfect method of marking them with nail polish last year. Despite not starting until almost June, we saw at least 25 unique turtles, many of them multiple times in surprisingly far-ranging locations. We saw them mating. We saw them laying eggs. We saw them eating mushrooms and carrion. We saw a few youngsters. We met a particularly friendly guy we named Wordsworth who hung around Dove Cottage for a while. And all this was during a brutal drought, during which the turtles disappeared for a few weeks.
Laura uses nail polish to mark an Eastern Box Turtle while faithful Trash Hound waits nearby.
There were so many sightings — and the system for marking them I devised was so convoluted — that we’re moving away from it this year and just taking photos of each turtle we encounter. We might start using nail polish again, but I think it would be mostly just to tell if we’ve seen a turtle before or not.
An Eastern Box Turtle feasts on a dead squirrel. I was a bit surprised by this. Althea had killed the squirrel the previous day, and I saw a turtle heading toward it. When I returned, the turtle was next to the squirrel, where it remained for much of the next day.
Last year, Laura found the first turtle while she was digging out a vernal pool on March 14 along the old logging road. This year, Turtle 1 was discovered much later, on April 29, in a seep that is sort of around the corner from the seep where Laura dug the vernal pool.
A female Eastern Box Turtle laying eggs near Dove Cottage.Turtle eggs. She left two, which we caged to protect them from predators, but they never hatched. We’re thinking the drought may have been a problem …
This year, I’m just going to list them here as I find them. The numbers reflect total sightings, not number of discrete individuals.
Ideally, I’d love to be able to ID them based on their shell pattern, which apparently is unique, but I think I’d need an AI program or something to review the photos to de-duplicate them.
But first, a gratuitious photo of our buddy Wordsworth, a beautiful turtle we’re hoping to see again this year:
Wordsworth spent so much time around the cottage we started warning guests to look out for him since he often sunned himself on the gravel driveway.
2025 Turtle Count
Turtle 1
First turtle of 2025, 4/29/25, female, marked with two slashes from last year, drinking from seep where loop trail crosses ridge and heads to south hollow.First turtle of 2025, 4/29/25, female, marked with two slashes from last year, drinking from seep where loop trail crosses ridge and heads to south hollow.First turtle of 2025, 4/29/25, female, marked with two slashes from last year, drinking from seep where loop trail crosses ridge and heads to south hollow.
Turtle 2
Medium male on trail leading from Bobcat Landing to Dark Hollow. Mark from last year. Two dots. 4/29/25Medium male on trail leading from Bobcat Landing to Dark Hollow. Mark from last year. Two dots. 4/29/25
Turtles 3 and 4
Male and female together. Male, on left, was on back. He was closed tight when found. Female was moving, probably trying to flip him back till I showed up. I moved them out a few feet from the log they were against, righted the male, and left. 45 minutes later when I retunred there was no sign of them. This was where loop trail crosses ridge trail up near the Pipsissewa. Neither of them was marked. 5/1/25
Turtle 5
Male, unmarked, across North Hollow creek on property next door. 5/4/25
Turtle 6
Female, no marks, on trail from Bobcat Landing to Dark Hollow..
Turtle 7
Female, no marks, on Logging Trail between vernal pool and beech amphitheater. 5/14/25
Turtle 8
Male, unmarked, found on logging trail just west of Laura Farrell Memorial Vernal Pool 5/14/25
I’m still stumbling through Ulysses, mired in the mind of Stephan Dedalus’ musings in Proteus. Dense stuff, but fascinating. I’m getting good info from the podcast I follow. It’s going pretty much line by line, with about 45 minutes of discussion on each segment. I’m astounded at the nuance and depth of Joyce’s thinking, and the humor. I made a run through it without explanatory text, and it’s much easier to navigate this time than it was the first few times I read the novel. The whole Aristotle (Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.) vs. Berkeley/Boehme approaches to the physical world. But still. Damn. Wish I’d read more philosophy.
I think my favorite section is where the dog encounters a dead dog on the beach and goes a bit Hamlet/Yorick in the moment.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.
— Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!
Heading to Florida next week, and planning to take Joyce along for the ride. Reading Ulysses by the sea seems somehow necessary at this point …
No, not the Thomas Pynchon novel. Nor the movie. I needed a vise for my workbench and with images of my grandfather’s vise in mind I found one I liked and ordered it. Before attaching it to the bench, I glanced at the directions, which turned out to be a word salad that resulted from a feeble attempt to translate Mandarin into English. Needless to say, I followed them to the letter.
We love Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina). We were surprised to see so many in our woods and wondered if we were seeing a few repeatedly or if there really were as many as there appeared to be.
