Vibe Spring2025 - Flipbook - Page 44
SIGNS OF SPRING
Turtles, Frogs, Peepers,
& other Various Valley Road-Crossers
By Matt Maloney, Tin Mountain Conservation Center
Well before the trees leaf out and the snow leaves the mountains, signs
of spring start to fill the valley air with welcome songs on warm evenings.
These joyful signs of spring bring fulfillment after a long winter.
s the ice thaws back to the edges
of wetlands and ponds in April, the
loud calls of thousands of spring
peepers begin to carry through the air,
permeating it with a sense of urgency. The
riotous vitality of the spring season can be
felt within the chorus of so many tiny frogs
as well as the emergence of various turtles.
A
Road-Crossing Turtles
Along with the resounding choruses of
our early spring breeding frogs, there is
the springtime emergence of turtles on
the first warm days of April. People don’t
really notice turtles until they appear upon
the land or bask on logs and rocks. Our
common painted and snapping turtles
are water creatures, but the females travel
to land once a year to lay their eggs. This
is when residents and visitors to the Mt.
Washington Valley will start noticing turtles crossing the roads.
As you can imagine, crossing a road
is quite a precarious predicament for a
turtle, and unfortunately, most turtles
are unaware that roads have huge metal
objects barreling down them night and
day. Meanwhile, mother turtles love sandy
areas for digging up and incubating their
eggs, as sand warms up quickly, so roadsides make ideal egg-laying spots. Where
there is a road adjacent to a wetland, there
will be crossing turtles come spring.
Both painted (Chrysemys picta) and
snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina) lay
their eggs at similar times, from around
late May to the middle of June. In recent
44
years, turtles have been seen crossing
roads even in the middle of May, likely due
to the warmer and earlier springs caused
by climate change.
Sand-Kicking Snappers
So, be on the lookout for crossing turtles between mid-May and mid-June. If
you’re lucky, you may be able to pull over
alongside a rural road and see a mother
laying her eggs. The Brownfield Bog, a few
miles south of Fryeburg, is a great place to
look for egg-laying snapping and painted
turtles in the spring, well away from busy
roads. One year at the Brownfield Bog,
a bunch of elementary school students
from Fryeburg and I got to see a mother
snapping turtle lay 21 eggs, before she
proceeded to hastily kick sand on them
with her thick hind legs and crawl back to
the water.
Each snapping turtle egg is about the
size of a ping pong ball and will incubate
underground until they hatch out in
late summer. Often, the eggs are dug up
and eaten by wildlife such as raccoons
or skunks. Sometimes, if the eggs don’t
mature in time, the eggs will incubate all
winter and baby turtles will emerge in the
spring. This explains the one-inch-long
snapping turtle I saw wandering alongside
the Saco River one May day. Nature is not
always so predictable.
Spring Signs
With the danger to crossing turtles this
time of year, it is good to be alert and slow
down when driving near bodies of water.
The busy North-South Road in North
Conway is adjacent to Pudding Pond and
its surrounding marsh. Turtles often cross
the road when looking for good egg-laying places in May or June, and if you drive
through this time of year, you may see
some turtle crossing signs. Local resident
Emily Smith-Mossman of North Country
Jewelers has placed the signs to remind
drivers to slow down and look out for turtles. It’s a good reminder that we share this
world with other creatures that are also
going about their lives. West Side Road is
also adjacent to wetlands that bring about
road-crossing turtles in the spring, so drive
carefully wherever there are adjacent wetlands come springtime.
Wood Turtles
Some of the creatures going about their
lives have become so rare that most people are unaware of their existence. Such
is the case with the wood turtle (Clemmys
insculpta). The shell of the wood turtle is
a marvel of exquisite design. Intricately
carved by nature, each scute, or scale, of
the wood turtle’s carapace (the term for
the upper shell), is a cascading series of
ridged rays that spill out from a central
point like sunbeams. The edges of the
carapace are slightly curved upward, especially toward the rear. It’s the most intricate
shell, and I think it is the most beautifully
designed of all turtle shells anywhere.
I saw my first wood turtle shell as
a 1st-grader when my mother’s uncle
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