Seeing the Swamp

The river was sandy, perfect for Eastern Spiny Softshell Turtles, well that’s what I had read at least; I had yet to see one. This was the herp I wanted to see most this summer and I had little faith that I would in fact get to see it. I assume most people would be shocked to know a turtle like the softshell occurs in Michigan, it is really unlike any other turtle that we have here. When you think of a turtle, you think of a creature with a hard shell and scaly skin; the Softshell group throws that notion out the window. Instead, they have a low profile, rubber like shell, webbed feet that enable them to swim faster than most fish, and a snorkel like nose; quite exotic seeming for Michigan. A quick scan of the river showed few logs or shoreline and no basking turtles whatsoever. We turned our attention to the trees for birds and continued on down the path.

A hatchling Eastern Spiny Softshell Turtle (Apalone spinifer spinifera). Photo from Reptiles and Amphibians of the Great Lakes Region by Harding & Mifsud

Across from a bend in the river we stepped up to the forest edge. The opening of the forest was a wet depression, that no doubt had several inches of water in it a few weeks ago. However, the lack of significant rain recently had left the depression mucky, likely ending the lives of any young amphibians that had started their lives there, hoping for several more weeks of water to get them to their final stages of development. Looking above the muck, the forest began to move. A red-bellied woodpecker came down from a snag it had been hanging out on to scare a small downy woodpecker. Whatever the downy was interested in, the red-bellied wanted it. I watched the red-bellied for some time hopping around the base of a snag that was rotted out at the base, likely holding a buffet of insects. Murphy called my attention to a Hermit Thrush on the ground cautiously flipping leaves and watching us. Then a male Bluebird on a branch just sitting there, seeming to be looking directly at us with curiosity. There was little doubt in my mind that more birds flew around above us in the highest reaches of the trees. It never ceases to amaze me how much can be see in a small area of forest.

A Red-bellied Woodpecker, a common sight (and sound) in the deciduous forest. These can be drawn to backyard suet feeders as well.

Hermit Thrush facing us as it took a break from flipping leaves to make sure we weren’t up to anything.

The forest has several permanent but shallow ponds dotted throughout it. Last year around this time, I had noted several turtles in these ponds basking on logs. This year though, it didn’t seem like there were as many, something I mentioned aloud as we stopped on the trail to scan the logs in a pond that was a hundred feet off the trail. No sooner had I mentioned it, Murphy pointed out two medium sized snapping turtles basking on the same log in the pond. Due to the size of snapping turtles and their defensive nature, they have few predators once they get to a certain size; something they appear to be aware of and display in the way that they lay out to bask on logs. I would characterize their basking habit as “passed out while drunk.” Their chunky legs fall lazily off to the sides of logs; their tails doing the same. It reminds me of laying on a pool float after several hours of day drinking and being out in the sun. A pair of wood ducks cruised past these two and I wondered if the ducks recognized them as future predators to their young.

Can you spot the basking Snapping Turtles and the pair of Wood Ducks?

A Tufted Titmouse rummaging through leaf litter.

Northern Water Snake

After a long detour through the forest that yielded Flickers, Titmice, Chickadees and one beautiful Water Snake, we headed back to the river. Narrow footpaths off of the bike trail took us right down to the river edge and we both went into autopilot: pull binoculars up to eyes, find a log in the river, slowly scan side to side. We both saw turtles, but for me they were too far away for even my assisted eyes to determine what they were. Murphy could see, however, that the back of their shells were somewhat serrated, meaning they were likely Map Turtles. This would’ve meant a new species for me, in theory. I am under the assumption that I have seen Map Turtles in the past, but the default for most people when they see turtles, especially at a distance, is that they are Painted Turtles. When you get a good look at a Map Turtle, however, the differences are obvious. While both species have yellow striping on their heads and neck, the patterns are very different with the Painted having relatively straight lines and the Map turtles having more swirling lines. Their shells are also different: Map turtles have notched shell edges, whereas Painted turtles have no notches.

Murphy was trying to direct my attention to two turtles that had crawled up a branch sticking several feet out of the water, but I was having trouble finding them. However, my eyes did settle on something on a log that was about the size of a trash can lid and very gray. Part of me thought, “Softshell,” but a larger part of me thought it was way too big and it was probably just trash that had gotten hung up on the logs when the river was higher. I pointed it out to Murphy, who also was unsure of what it was. Since it was farther down the river, we decided to move down the path and get a better look at it. We found a spot where we were directly across from what we were beginning to suspect was just some chunk of rubber or plastic. But our new view left nothing to our imagination: what we were seeing was a very large Eastern Spiny Softshell Turtle. I could not believe it. I didn’t anticipate seeing one so early in the season and so BIG. I was beside myself and what made it even better was that not 50 feet down the river was another Softshell almost identical in size. We stood and watched them for awhile, our view of the world limited to this short stretch of river, without a single clue of what was going on immediately around us. We watched as they lifted their peculiar heads into the air and rotated their bodies to get the right angle of sun. The other turtles were more visible as well and I was able to confirm what Murphy had already been trying to convince me, that they were in fact Map Turtles.

My lifer Eastern Spiny Softshell Turtle. From farther upstream, we thought this was a piece of trash hung up on the logs.

Farther down the river was another large Eastern Spiny Softshell turtle, this one with head raised. Females grow the largest and lose the beige and spotty shell color as they age, leading us to believe these were two females.

A Map Turtle that was seen on our side of the river. Difficult to tell in this photo, but the yellow patterning on the head and neck along with the notched shell on the rear gave this one away.

Palm Warbler spotted on our way back to the car. These birds winter in the Southeast U.S. and the Caribbean and nest mostly in Canada

We began our walk back to the car, with me saying, “that was crazy!” no less than 100 times. At a curve in the bike path we paused to take a look at a bird in a shrub. We stepped off the path and watched what we determined was a Palm Warbler hop, jump, and skip around the shrub grabbing insects and shouting in a trill to anyone that was listening. As we were watching the bird, loud music rapidly approached. Coming around the curve were two people on bikes with a speaker attached to the front of one of the bikes. The guys appeared to be somewhere between the ages of 18 and 20. As they passed us, the guy with the speaker turned to his friend and said, “those people were just looking at the swamp.” I turned to Murphy asking if she’d heard what he said and repeated it to her.
This is one of the reasons I decided to start writing, because people just don’t see what is right there in front of them. To that guy the bike path cuts through the forested swamp and next to a river and to him those things are static: they are always there and they are what they are. But by just taking a few minutes you can see that the forest is not static, the forest has spring ephemerals that bring the forest to life every spring, the swamp has lazy Snapping turtles and birds that have migrated thousands of miles to raise their young. The river could have several species of turtles crawling across the bottom of the river, hunting for crayfish, basking on logs, or laying a nest on the sandy shore.
So no, we were not “just looking at the swamp,” we were “seeing the swamp,” and I encourage everyone to try and do the same.


Notes:
While writing this post, I was reminded of a short video called The Wasteland made by someone I follow on Instagram. I find it especially relevant to this post.

Sources:
Much of the information regarding turtle habitat and identification is from Amphibians and Reptiles of the Great Lakes Region by James H. Harding and David A. Mifsud