Tortoise and the Turtles

I've not been walking much the past couple months - The strain from shovelling snow on the back, the stress from work and financially, along with a case of SADs (Seasonal Affective Disorder) all joined up to give me a really bad case of "I don't feel like it"s for a few months.

But today, the first day of Spring, there was no way to avoid the call of the outdoors. It was bright, sunny and 78F!

So, a little stiff from the lack of walking, I started off slowly, tortoise slowly.


I decided that four miles or so would be a nice distance to strive for - and the soft dirt towpath on the Oaks Reach of the Schuylkill Navigation System was just the place to go. I hoped to see some birds, and the earliest of the spring flowers in bloom.


On the other side of the canal, a willow tree begins to turn green. The Forsythia bushes are just starting to blossom - I always like the yellow bushes in full bloom.


I didn't quite expect to see the canal turtle hanging out on the branches sunning themselves! These guys were really big but not very energetic. I guess they need to warm up a bit before they start working on getting some food and producing little turtles.


I think this was the biggest turtle I saw today, it was the size of a basketball. Just in front of the big one, is a little one probably saying, "Hey! I was here first!" On the bank to his left, you will see the first of the buttercups in bloom.


This turtle enjoyed laying on his branch with his feet sticking out into the air. In the video below, where I toss some sticks at him to get him to move a little, he continues to have an alert expression but stubbornly refused to show much sign of life.


As I plodded tortoise-like down the path, I saw turtle after turtle. This one looks as if he as escaped a huge batch of "turtle soup".


The turtles may seem to be rather drab, olive and dark green, but I caught this one rising to give me a closer look - his breast plate is a very vivid red.


Not everything round was a turtle. Here is a porcelain insulator from a power line. I looked around and was a bit baffled - the only nearby electric line didn't use this sort of insulator.


The white chin-strap ducks are once more migrating to the northern climes. I saw many of them along the banks of the canal, most of them formed up in groups of two and all of them ravenously hungry. The only time these geese seemed perturbed was when a pair of very large hawks flew overhead. Try as I might, I couldn't get a good picture of them - they had a mostly white underside and wings that looked to be about 5-6 feet wide.


In addition to the turtles splashing about in the canal, I saw some fish too. I don't know what kind of fish this is - I'm really only a saltwater fisherman.

I spliced together some videos I took while doing my tortoise walk. I admit to throwing sticks at some turtles to see if they would take a splash for you. I winced when I accidentally hit one - but he seemed none the worse for it. The Canadian Geese definitely have a "pecking order" as you will see when the one male chases off the other one - I enjoyed his nonchalant investigation of soggy leaf afterwards.

Tomorrow I hope to extend my walk to five miles and pick up the pace.

Turtle — Spends most of its life in the water. Turtles tend to have webbed feet for swimming. I think the turtles I have pictured are all "Painted Turtles".

Tortoise — A land-dweller that eats low-growing shrubs, grasses, and even cactus. Tortoises do not have webbed feet. Their feet are round and stumpy for walking on land.

Terrapin — Spends its time both on land and in water, but it always lives near water, along rivers, ponds, and lakes. Terrapins are often found in brackish, swampy areas. The word terrapin comes from an Indian word meaning "a little turtle.”