As I looked intently through my long telephoto lens at the stagnant, debris-filled water in a ditch, I became acutely aware of bright red eyes staring back at me. What was this unusual red-eyed marsh creature?
Pulling my eyes away from the magnified view in the camera’s viewfinder, I could see the contours of a turtle’s shell in the water, partially obscured by all of the debris. The bright color and distinctive shape of the shell and the striking red eyes made it easy to determine when I got home that this is a male Eastern Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina).
Although these turtles spend most of their time on land, they seek damp mud or pools when temperatures get too high, according to information on the website of the Virginia Herpetological Society. On the day when I took this photo, temperatures soared above 80 degrees F (27 degrees C), and it’s probably pretty safe to assume that this turtle was simply trying to stay cool on an unseasonably warm spring day.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Must be a frog or snake
Those are logical guesses, but it’s actually a turtle, half-buried in the watery debris in a drainage ditch.
Amazing how many animals have red eyes. I wonder what the advantage is.