Turtles, Frogs, Peepers, & other Various Valley Road-Crossers
By Matt Maloney, Tin Mountain
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.
As 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.
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 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 presented me with a recently found wood turtle shell on a visit. The shell became my school show-and-tell item shortly thereafter.
These gorgeous wood turtles used to be relatively common along slow-moving rivers and streams and their adjacent fields and forests throughout New England. Myriad factors, including habitat loss and change, have significantly reduced their numbers. In the Upper Saco River Valley of Conway and adjacent towns, wood turtles are “not doing well,” according to Josh Megysey, a wildlife biologist with New Hampshire Fish and Game. In the Upper Saco Valley, Megysey says, “Many of the suitable stream habitats used by wood turtles have been heavily used for recreation for many decades. Areas that were once traditional nesting point bars in streams have become popular canoeing/tubing/camping/swimming areas.”
Wood turtles, like painted and snapping turtles, are tied to rivers and streams. The sandy point bars that form from the carried sediments of slow rivers like the Saco are prime nesting spots. Even in conservation lands, human recreational use is closely followed by raccoons, skunks, and pet dogs that dig up and destroy wood turtle nests. People sometimes take them home as pets or poach them for sale on the black market. Because of this, it is essential never to make specific nest sites or frequent sighting areas of wood turtles public information through social media or other means.
It is shameful that some seek to profit by removing this creature from the wild illegally, never to reproduce, as their numbers decline. Wood turtles are still in our area, though, and are occasionally spotted as far upstream in the Saco watershed as the lower Ellis River. Wood turtles are doing better with less development and recreation pressure north of the White Mountains.
Peeping Peepers
The spring peeper is indeed a tiny frog, light brown with a distinctive brown “x” marking on its back. (Hence the crucifix reference in its Latin name, Hyla crucifer.) I remember my delight as an adolescent upon finally finding my first spring peeper in the glare of my flashlight. The frog was no bigger than my fingernail! As I quickly let it go to rejoin its own kind, I marveled that such a loud sound could come from creatures so small.
Unlike the peeps that come from an individual spring peeper, a chorus of thousands of them creates a jingle often compared to the sounds of sleigh bells. And as the spring nights get warmer, the louder the peepers get. This vigorous chorus emanating from a wetland on a warm April or May night with moonlight shimmering over water will make you feel ever so intensely alive and present.
Clucking Wood Frogs
About the same time as the peepers start their chorus, the duck-like clucking of the larger wood frogs starts to sound from so-called vernal pools that form in the forest here and there in spring. Many a person has heard this sound and never equated it with the sound of a frog. The clucks of the wood frogs are fleeting, though, only lasting for a week or two. Before you know it, the wood frogs have mated, laid eggs, and then hopped back into their forest habitat.
This spring, make a point to listen for the wood frogs clucking whenever you are in or at the edge of low-elevation woods on a warm, sunny April day. Once you hear the sound, slowly make your way toward its source. Wood frogs will stop clucking once you get close. Don’t be dismayed—this means you’re very close. If you remain still, they will eventually restart their clucking pursuit of mates and betray their breeding pool to you. Look for bubbles in the water and their snouts and eyes protruding above the water line.
Snoring Pickerel Frogs
On a still night at the end of April or in early May, while the peepers are still peeping and shortly after the wood frogs have stopped their clucking, head to a wetland with open water and listen carefully. You might hear the soft snores of the pickerel frog. The pickerel frog’s vocalizations sound just like a snore, or a hand being rubbed across a balloon.
Like all frogs, pickerel frogs make their sounds with their heads above the water level. The elastic skin around their throats inflates with air from their lungs, reverberating their vocalizations beyond what one would think could come from their small size. Listen closely, though: the sound of the pickerel frog doesn’t carry far, and must be heard from the water’s edge. Many a curious kid or camper has caught a pickerel frog over the years, but many fewer hear their love song in early spring.
For all amphibians and reptiles, spring is a time when the instinctual need to perpetuate the species comes to light. Chorusing frogs and egg-laying turtles are all part of the ritual of spring. An attentive observer can find much to discover and enjoy while looking and listening for the change of the season.
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Tin Mountain Conservation Center offers year-round opportunities to experience nature as the ultimate classroom. With over 2,000 acres of land and over 80 year-round nature programs, and summer and winter camps, you can visit Tin Mountain’s Nature Learning Center in Albany, NH or hike the trails at the Rockwell property in Jackson, NH or Bear Paw Trail in Fryeburg, ME. The Albany location also features many trails and a 1.2-mile accessible nature trail, which welcomes everyone, and is highly recommended.
Additional information and events are available at www.tinmountain.org.
