Last Friday at Huntley Meadows Park a host of turtles emerged from their winter sleep to bask in the unseasonably warm sun, including this beautiful Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata). Unlike most of the turtles where I live that prefer larger, more open bodies of water, Spotted Turtles are found most often in the shallow water of marshy areas and are considered to be semi-aquatic.
As I recall, turtles do not hibernate, but instead enter a period of brumation in which they bury themselves in the mud and slow down their metabolisms. According to the Pee Dee Wildlife Control website, “Brumation is different than hibernation as the animals who brumate can wake up on the random warm days to sun themselves and drink water to avoid dehydration, whereas a hibernating animal will not.”
The temperature last Friday soared to 80 degrees (27 degrees C) at Ronald Reagan National Airport here in the Washington D.C. area, a record high temperature for the month of January. The change in temperature was particularly jolting, because it came just one week after a snowstorm had dropped five inches (13 cm) of snow on us and a protracted period of sub-freezing temperatures that followed that storm.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 