Yesterday, when an Eastern Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentina serpentina) crawled onto a floating log, where a much smaller Red-eared Slider (Trachemys scripta elegans) was already basking in the sun, it looked like there might be a showdown.
The two faced off, staring at each other. Despite the size difference, the small turtle did not appear to be intimidated and refused to back off at all. Eventually they both relaxed and decided that peaceful co-existence was the best option.
It turned out that both the log and the sun were big enough to share.
Click on the photo to see a higher resolution view.
Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved
Mike Powell 
What a great photo! Right now I feel like the guy on the left. Too much eating on a holiday weekend…
Yikes, and the holiday weekend is far from over. Thanks for the positive comment on the photo. It was surprising enough for me to see the snapping turtle out of the water on the log.
Great photo. I live near a river and a few years ago I came home and found a very large snapping turtle near my front door. Her size and aggressive behavior left an impression.
That’s a nice shot. I didn’t know that snapping turtles sunned themselves on logs.
The little guy has moxie!
Quite interesting, wonderful photograph.
Excellent shot, thats one big snappin’ turtle. Looks like a semi next to a mini-cooper..:-))
By comparison, the snapping turtle looks big, but I think that it is far from the biggest one in the marsh. Most of the time the snappers remain in the water, though, and so it’s harder to judge their relative sizes.
Mike, what part of the country do you live in. It’s been years since I’ve seen a snapping turtle. I know that they can grow to enormous sizes and can live well over a 100 years. Make me wonder the age of this guy.
I live in Northern Virginia, outside of Washington DC. For some reason there are lots of snapping turtles this year in the marshland park where I take a lot of my photos. As you note, they can live for quite some time, so they may have been around last year (when I started doing nature photography) and I just never noticed.