Female painted turtles venture ashore to nest

Step outside if you can, or find a window that faces water. The ponds and wetlands across this landscape hold painted turtles that have spent months underwater, but right now, in late spring's warmth, something draws the females away from safety. They are leaving the water to nest.

A female painted turtle emerges from her pond on legs built for swimming, not walking. Her webbed feet catch on roots and stones as she climbs the bank. She carries herself deliberately across the ground, stopping to test the soil with her hind feet. She seeks earth that is soft enough to dig but firm enough to hold its shape. Sandy soil mixed with clay. Ground that receives morning sun but stays moist beneath the surface. When she finds the right spot, she begins to excavate with her rear claws, carving a flask-shaped chamber four to six inches deep. The work takes hours. She rotates her body as she digs, keeping the hole perfectly round, removing each scoop of dirt with careful precision. Once the chamber is complete, she deposits six to ten white, leathery eggs and covers them with the excavated soil, tamping it down with her plastron.

This brief journey onto land represents the painted turtle's greatest vulnerability and most essential act. In water, she is graceful and protected. Her dark carapace blends with pond shadows. Her ability to hold her breath for hours keeps her hidden from predators. But egg-laying demands terrestrial risks. Raccoons, skunks, and foxes hunt nesting females. Crows and ravens watch from the canopy above, ready to raid fresh nests. The eggs she buries face months of uncertainty. Ground temperature will determine whether her offspring develop as males or females. Cool soil produces males; warmer earth yields females. Drought can desiccate the eggs. Flooding can drown them. Yet without this annual pilgrimage to dry ground, painted turtles cannot reproduce. Their aquatic lifestyle requires this one terrestrial chapter.

The timing connects to everything awakening around these wetlands. Northern red oaks release their pollen into late spring air. Spicebush leaves unfurl in the understory. The same warming that triggers oak flowering and spicebush growth tells female painted turtles that soil conditions are right for nesting. Her eggs will incubate through summer's heat, and if conditions hold, tiny turtles will emerge in early autumn, instinctively crawling toward water they have never seen. Some hatchlings overwinter in the nest, emerging the following spring. The female, having completed her nesting, returns immediately to the pond. She will not tend the eggs or meet her offspring. Her work is done when she covers the nest and smooths the soil with her shell. Listen for the soft scraping of claws on earth, the gentle rustle of disturbed leaves where a painted turtle has passed.