TheSwirl.org

Saturday Kathryn and Eric were on their way to check out a garage sale and they discovered a male wood turtle crossing the road about ½ mile from our house. Kathryn recovered the turtle, we took some pictures, and we relocated the turtle to a woodland stream environment. This turtle may have come with a story, but first some background on Wood Turtles.

Wood Turtles live in a relatively small area of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Within this range, this turtle is generally uncommon to rare and spottily distributed. The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation lists wood turtles as a Species of Special Concern.

Wood Turtles are usually found in association with moving water. Wood turtles are described as a woodland species, but in some places they thrive in a mosaic habitat of riparian woods, shrub or berry thickets, swamps, and open, grassy areas. Wood turtles are active from late April until late October when they burrows in mud or near some underwater structure during hibernation. Their diet includes wild berries, mushrooms, dandelions, and many other plants are eaten; while earthworms, insects, mollusks, and carrion comprises the carnivorous portion of their diet.

Wood turtles live to roughly the same age as humans, that is, 75 to 80 years old with sexual maturation around 10 to 15 years of age. The wood turtle is thought to be one of the most intelligent turtles, being able to complete simple mazes. Lots more information on Wood Turtles can be found at http://www.woodturtle.com/index.html

In an earlier phase of her life my sister Barbara had several turtles and tortoises including 3 wood turtles: two males (Moss and Oak) and a female (Trillium). Upon her divorce in 1981 Barbara dispersed her turtles and brought her Wood Turtles back to NYS. The winter of their return they the three wood turtles stayed with Kathryn and I as Barbara sorted out her living arrangements. Fortunately during the winter the turtles were in a semi-hibernation state and while they were active they did not poop – the perfect pet.

In the spring of 1982 I built an outside pen for the 3 turtles. Unfortunately, Moss was the dominant male and constantly chased Oak, when he wasn’t chasing Trillium. Finally, Oak had enough and climbed the 4’ fence to escape. We never saw him again. My sister thinks she first got her wood turtles around 1975 to 1977, which of course is 30 years ago. At this point Oak would now be in his fifties. If this turtle is Oak, he looks pretty good especially for a “more mature gentleman”.  We relocated Oak (we think) to a woodland stream habitat more suitable than our paved road.

More pictures of Oak and the relocation are at:
http://theswirl.org/Pictures/2007_06_09WoodTurtle/WoodTurtle.html

You’ll first  look up an address , but this trick only works if the address is centered (it’s centered by default). So, moving the map around will not make this work. When the address you want to find latitude and longitude for is dead center, copy and paste this code into your browser bar:

javascript:void(prompt(”,gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

Conversely, if you have a lat, long combination you can plug that into Google Maps to show a location:

43.27069053158456, -75.28080940246582

Sunday we joined Ed, Kelly and Phoenix in celebrating Izzabella’s 2nd birthday at the Burnett Park Zoo.  It was a really hot day, but an enjoyable stroll around the zoo.  Below Kathryn, Bella, Eric and Phoenix pose - they wouldn’t let them in with the real tigers.

June 1-2 Skip, Bob, Steve and I paddled the Tioughnioga River from East Homer to Chenango Forks – roughly 40 miles. The Tioughnioga River is a narrow river with several twist, turns and easy “swifts” to keep paddlers engaged.

The water level gauge at Cortland (http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?01509000 ) was showing 3.1 feet with ~150 cubic feet per second discharge, well below the median 300 CFS for this time of year. The lower water level meant that we were able to easily run a couple of obstacles – a 2’ dam below the East Homer Bridge and a few strainers lower on the East Branch, but conversely we had to drag our loaded Royalex canoes through some shallow areas – probably 15 times over the two days.

Where East and West Branches meet the Tioughnioga River is born. Cortland appears below the confluence, above the right (western) bank of the Tioughnioga. From this point the river bends southward to form the eastern boundary of industrial Cortland and then assumes a southeasterly direction.

Just below Cortland we met up with two teenagers paddling from Cortland to Marathon with no knowledge of the distance/time it would take, no ten essentials, no water, only a cell phone and a Dad expecting to pick them up in Marathon. As the temperatures were in the 80s I gave them a bottle of water. We leapfrogged each other a couple of times and later saw a car driving slow

Through out the trip we passed several hundreds of Canada geese; about half of which flew off upon our approach and the rest just watched us from close range. I also heard and saw an unusual number of Northern Orioles – a very pretty sounding bird.

Below Gridley Creek Junction and above Marathon the valley floor widens to 3/10 mile with steep slopes and islands, and side channels offering sites for overnight camping. We took advantage of an island for camping overnight. A wonderful site except for the truck noise on I-81 and an early morning south bound freight train less than 30 yards away across the river. The early wake up call got Steve making coffee and we had a leisurely breakfast while serenaded by turkeys coming off their hillside roosts.  We packed up and were paddling by 7:40am.

Given the forecast for a hot humid day I commented to Steve that I was glad for the early start and hoped that it would mean that we wouldn’t be paddling at 2 in the afternoon. We were close. We arrived at Chenango Forks at 2:10 with threatening rumbles of thunder. While we didn’t get hit with any serious rain I understand there were some violent thunderstorms in the southern tier during the afternoon. We were just lucky.

Overall the Tioughnioga River offers a nice paddle and certainly offers lots of options for day trips for those so inclined.