Coming over the road and up our driveway was a big beautiful lady, she was heading for our pond, and was pouting as our cats were very interested in her. I expect that she has plans to lay in our pond (we have had baby turtles in our pond on other years)
We picked her up and after a few pictures, we carried her with care to the pond, set her down by the water an watched her head in, I will enjoy seeing this beauty sunbathing on the log we have placed for her. I have hope that I might be able to watch carefully enough to see where she lays her eggs and be able to mark the area and create a safe spot around it and then track when her wee ones are hatched.
She was grumpy when we first picked her up.. lol
Starting to relax now, I love how fast they seem to figure out that you don’t mean them harm, so pretty, love the pattern and colors. Let her have a dip to rinse out the grass by her head and to relax even more.
This one big turtle, a full-grown female, I wonder how old she is.. I also wonder if she could be bright eye’s mother?
So you can see the size difference between a Baby (approx. six month old Eastern Painted turtle vs the mature adult in the photo’s above.
I love that my land is healthy enough to support a native turtle population
Just another Day on the Farm 
Aww, I wish we had turtles wandering around over here!
We have a very good local population in the forest around us, but not so much on the farm land, as it’s drained.. but we don’t have tile on our land, I have let the pigs create a number of wallows and we dug the biggest into a pond that keeps being grown a touch bigger each year.
What kind of turtles are local to your area?
We only have two native turtles in Oregon, the western pond turtle and the western painted turtle. I’ve never seen either one in the wild 😦
Love that grumpy face. 😀
I’ve seen painted turtles, snapping turtles, and some unidentified type at our little pond. However, they are so shy that I very rarely can spot them. I wish they would sun themselves where I can admire them.
sounds like your ponds ecosystem is working well.. you can set up a log out far enough that they feel safe but that you can see them..
Glad to see she’s back!: )
me too.. really hoping for wee babies again
Lol, yeah eh?! Strangely enough, they’re probably my favourite “baby” ever… (Just SO cute!: )