Pile ‘o Turtles

pileoturtles2_lowresWe’ve seen lots of turtles this summer, but we’d just been remarking that we hadn’t seen many sunning themselves. Then last week we came upon about a zillion Painted Turtles sunning themselves at the point in the narrows where someone’s floating dock is sinking. The turtles must find it really considerate that we’ve added a turtle sunning platform to the narrows. In addition to these three, four more were nearby.

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And there were also three Painted Turtles who’d hauled themselves out onto the dock and were sunning. They scrambled off as we approached in our pontoon boat.

The Painted Turtle is Michigan’s most common turtle. But those bold red stripes on its yellow bottom shell, its plastron, make it stand out in quite an uncommon way.  There are also red stripes on its neck and front legs.

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