Anita's Blog -- Turtles Are Odd
- jjvanm
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Not for the first time did I happen upon a red ear slider, Trachemys scripta elegans, laying eggs next to a driveway. Only this time, it was next to my parked car, at the driver’s side.
I was on my way to work at the chapter booth at the Rio Grande Valley Home and Garden Show in McAllen, so I apologized, stepped around her, got in the car, started it up and drove off. About nine hours later, when I returned, the hole she had dug was not covered over.
That disturbed me because I suspect I interrupted the process. I asked Google if red ear sliders cover eggs and the general AI consensus is, yes. Asking next about predators of turtle eggs, several sites mention they are preyed upon by raccoons, skunks, opossums, large birds, like herons, snakes and other reptiles. We have a resident opossum and visiting great blue herons and great egrets.
Red ear slider females lay three clutches of 1 to 30 eggs from April to August. Hatching generally requires between 60 to 90 days. Hopefully she went on to choose a quieter site. As of this writing, the hole remains uncovered but less obvious.
Turtles are aquatic or semi-aquatic. They have webbed feet. (Tortoise, on the other hand, is a terrestrial animal with clubbed feet and domed shells.)
The Rio Grande Valley has several species of freshwater turtles. They are mostly observed around or in water or basking on rocks or logs in or close to water.
Turtles are easy to spot in the water. If you see a stick sticking out of the water about two inches and then you don’t, wait a few moments and it will re-appear. Snakes swim with their head above the water but they will be moving at a quick pace; if the “stick” isn’t swimming, it’s a turtle.
In the above photo of the turtle laying eggs, the red stripe behind the eye is not visible and the carapace is mottled with what looks like algae; iNaturalist.org identified it as a pond slider, Trachemys scripta, without the “elegans.”
Another photo, taken on a lazy afternoon, below, is also identified as a pond slider. All are most likely red ear sliders, as that is the most often encountered slider in the Rio Grande Valley.
Sliders are native to Texas. They have poor hearing but are very sensitive to vibrations. When basking, if there are not enough rocks or logs, they will stack themselves on top of each other.
When a colony gets too crowded, turtles will cross land in search of food and another aquatic habitat. The word colony might not be correct. I hesitated to use the word herd, which seems more terrestrial than aquatic. I looked up collective nouns for turtles. They offered the word bale, but that’s mostly about sea turtles swimming en mass.
I noted that a gathering of crocodiles is called a bask. I like that for a congregation of turtles – a bask, which means recline, relax, laze, soak up.
The moniker, slider, comes from the turtles sliding quickly into the water at the first hint of danger; recall, poor hearing and hyper sensitive to vibrations.
Texas spiny softshell turtle, Apalone spinifera emoryi is a fun find to photograph. Their head, sticking above the water has protruding eyes like a miniature alligator; the snout like that of a pig. One of my favorite photos shows part of the neck and head above water and amazingly long claws in a webbed foot and thick, powerful-looking arms just below the surface.
If the Texas spiny softshell turtle looks a bit prehistoric, it's a tag well-earned. Turtles are some of the oldest reptilian species on the earth. They have been around for some 230 million years, making them older than dinosaurs, according to an online Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine article entitled “Turtle Hurdles.” “They are slow-moving, toothless, egg-laying creatures.”
Although they spend most of their lives in water, they are air-breathing and must come to the surface to breathe. And although aquatic, they spend a lot of time on logs, rocks and the shoreline because they are ectothermic: cold-blooded, meaning they rely on the temperature around them to regulate their body temperature.
Softshell turtles are well-camouflaged, their very flat shell matches the bottom of the pond or stream. The shell is very flexible.
A couple of years ago, I photographed a panoramic riverscape one afternoon along the Rio Grande River near the Salineño Wildlife Preserve in Starr County. For one reason or another, I never posted the photo to iNaturalist.org for identification. I assumed the turtles were spiny softshell turtles like the ones that inhabit our resaca. I was surprised to find it tentatively identified as river cooters.
There are possibly three species of cooters in the Rio Grande Valley:
River cooter, Pseudemys concinna; Texas river cooters, Pseudemys texana; and Rio Grande cooter, Pseudemys gorzugi.
Pseudemys is a genus of large, herbivorous, freshwater turtles of the eastern United States and adjacent northeast Mexico, according to Wikipedia. They are strong swimmers with webbed hind feet. Texas river cooters are also known as Texas sliders. They are green with yellow markings that fade with age.
River cooters have a large olive, dark brown or black carapace with yellow to cream colored markings. The head, neck, limbs and tail have yellow or cream stripes. River cooters are mainly herbivores.
Cooters eat aquatic plants like eelgrass, pondweed, algae, water lettuce, duckweed, anacharis and water hyacinth, depending on their geographic location and what is available. They also eat terrestrial plants that grow near the edge of water and insects, snails, tadpoles, crayfish and small invertebrates.
River cooters spend most of their time in the water, rarely entering land except when basking or nesting. They prefer clear rivers with moderate current, are often found in company of other aquatic basking turtles, like sliders, piled up on top of each other. They sleep in the water, hidden under vegetation, according to Wikipedia.
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