Turtles
Nantucket’s Turtles
Nantucket is home to 3 native freshwater turtle species: the painted turtle, common snapping turtle, and spotted turtle. While snapping turtles and painted turtles are habitat generalists that occupy a variety of habitat conditions, spotted turtles require more specific habitat types such as bogs, shallow swamps, vernal pools, and other shallow water bodies with an abundance of sphagnum moss.
Turtle Heaven
The Linda Loring Nature Foundation’s has a mosaic of wetland habitats including a variety of bogs, ponds, vernal pools and ditches. This diversity of wetland habitat makes it a great location for all 3 of Nantucket’s freshwater turtle species. In fact, turtles frequently use the ditch below as a movement corridor between the Linda Loring Nature Foundation’s various wetland habitats.
Hunkering Down
Turtles are cold-blooded, meaning they rely on their external environment to maintain their body temperature. When temperatures get too warm, some turtles such as the spotted turtle undergo aestivation: a process where they burrow into cool pockets of soil and remain inactive until temperatures cool down. When temperatures get too cold, many turtles undergo brumation: the turtle drastically slows its physiological processes to survive winter temperatures.