Andrea ColtonViews:
Spotted Turtles – South Carolina
My season in South Carolina started as cold as a week in the field could be. Daytime temperatures at our long-term site were in the 50s and drizzly, while the nights were freezing. When Alan and I went to collect traps on Friday, we actually had to break a few traps in shady areas out of a thin layer of ice. Luckily, Spotted Turtles are very cold-tolerant, and we found multiple individuals that week. In fact, we found a couple of mating pairs! I’m grateful our long-term site was good for turtles even when the rest of South Carolina wasn’t cooperating this season. An unusually dry spring made it very difficult to get traps out at a lot of sites. Alan and I spent a day driving around one site desperately trying to find water, only to be met with dry land every time. Eventually, we had to settle for a thin creek, which is not prime Spotted Turtle habitat, but there is always the occasional individual who decides to get adventurous! All our technicians had radio transmitters on hand for this exact reason. A stroke of luck in finding a random individual on the move befell Alan while he was scouting out habitat at a wildlife management area. He found a female crossing the road, but unfortunately, the road was sandwiched between private properties, so he couldn’t put a tracker on her to find out where she spends most of her time. But at least now we know a spot we’ll be hitting next spring!
Spotted Turtles – Georgia
Georgia was the most exciting state for Spotted Turtles this spring. Our long-term sites produced nearly 100 individuals, and Emma was able to find two new populations! I helped track turtles from both sites, though I ended up being a hindrance at one. We were tracking the last individual for the day and found our way back to the road that intersects the turtles’ wetland (where we park), so we figured she had crossed to the section on the other side of the road. We made our way across, and the signal started coming from behind us. We crossed back over, and the signal came from behind us again. We crossed the road a dozen times trying to figure out which side she was on before we realized the signal was coming from my truck. I had transmitters for the Box Turtle work I had been doing earlier that week, and it turns out one just happened to have the exact same frequency as the turtle we were attempting to track. We had been tracking my truck the entire time.
Spotted Turtles – Florida
Spotted Turtles are notoriously hard to find in Florida, and this spring was no exception. We started off strong at our long-term site, literally kicking up turtles as we were setting traps. Spotted Turtles can be tricky to find visually because they love hiding in vegetation at the bottom of a wetland and have the tendency to stay put, especially when there are people wandering around. We just happened to find this lady because she made a break for it after the leader of our group walked by, and she swam right into my waders. Normally, the things that knock against waders are small branches or sweetgum seeds, so I was very excited to feel the smooth shell of a turtle when I investigated! Our week continued strong (for this site) over the next couple of days when we found five turtles in one trap, which is always exciting to find when pulling a trap out of the water. Our long-term site is a great example of how important water levels are for Spotted Turtles. Here, they seem to choose anything that is shallow and can be found in what most people would consider puddles. The location that gave us five turtles was an old, flooded pine stand, which I would never have thought to look for turtles in!
Tracking Eastern Box Turtles
The site where we’ve been tracking Eastern Box Turtles is beautiful, but devoid of turtles — or they’re masters of evasion. After searching for Box Turtles for months, we’ve been able to find two. Even these individuals tend to evade me at times when I’m tracking them. One always tricks me into thinking her transmitter is dead because I never get a signal in the last place I saw her. In reality, she just moves quite far each month! I need to walk around a bit until I hear the faintest signal and can follow it to her. As with all Box Turtles, she seems to have an affinity for places with thick, often thorny, vegetation. While we frequently get skunked on turtles, we have had other interesting encounters over the season. On one of our first outings, we got distracted by a picturesque Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake curled up in a stump for about 30 minutes. We also had a great photo op with a Rough Greensnake lounging on a pinecone. I also had the opportunity to see a few Red-cockaded Woodpeckers, an endangered species in Georgia, as the longleaf pines it relies on for nesting are declining.
eDNA Sampling
Every eDNA sampling trip sticks out in my mind for how strenuous it is. My first solo venture was by far the most difficult. When our collaborators from the Smithsonian Institution came down to teach me how to use the eDNA sampling backpack at one of our long-term sites, the sampling was such a breeze that I allotted about four hours to sample our second long-term site in Georgia on my own. I underestimated how much quicker things go with four people. I was so confident in my time estimate, I started later than I normally would to work on some office things first. I wanted to make sure I did everything exactly right, so I read and re-read the protocol multiple times for the first sample, which took me about 1½ hours. For reference, it typically takes me 30 minutes or less now that I have a rhythm. It’s still time-consuming, but that’s the nature of eDNA sampling as I wait for six gallons of water to filter through the backpack, label everything, pack it all back up, and take water quality measurements. I was feeling ambitious, so once I had tested the first area we typically find turtles in, I was determined to make what is usually a 20-minute walk to the second area to sample that as well. That walk ended up taking about an hour. Part of that was me walking the wrong way for a bit, part of it was me needing to take frequent breaks from hauling the backpack, tripod, bag of filters, and water testing kit. My ambitions and miscalculations turned my four-hour trip into eight, and had me eating dinner in a McDonald’s parking lot at 8 p.m.
