Another unique turtle encounter

Last year I saw box turtles all the time in my garden, or at least the same turtle multiple times. The most unique was when I saw a female laying eggs in one of my planting beds! Yesterday I had another unique encounter with turtles -- well two actually.

The first happened in the morning when I saw a turtle at the edge of my pond. I suppose it was trying to get a drink, but it was up on a rock so I'm unsure how that went. The second and more interesting encounter was in the evening, as I was walking to my neighbor's to dig a couple of her ferns out (pictured above) which she graciously said I could have.

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Her yard consists of lawn, ivy, vinca, and in the spring these ferns. She also has the largest, most wonderful rock in the neighborhood in her front yard, but that's outside the scope of this story. The ivy is key though, as it apparently provides a pretty nice habitat.

This toad was a couple of feet from the ferns that I wanted to dig:

But the toad is not central to the story -- he's just mentioned to add supporting evidence to the fact that the ivy provides habitat.

The turtles in the ivy are central to the story though:

Yes, I happened upon turtles mating!

I snapped a couple of photos then moved on to dig my ferns, and 10 minutes later when I walked back over here, the male was gone...

...nowhere to be found. Those box turtles are quite fast when they want to be!

I'm not sure if she was receptive to his mating attempt -- it's pretty difficult to tell with turtles unless you've got a really good view of the right parts of these reptiles -- but I think it's quite lucky that I got a chance to see two turtles together at all!


(By the way my computer was having troubles yesterday, hence the reason for no post. I'm using a backup machine now, so all should be fine from now on...)

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