Note: I convinced my Geokittehs co-author Dana Hunter to fly from Seattle to New Hampshire to visit me for a few days. I handed in the final version of my PhD thesis on Friday May 4th, and Dana arrived the next day to help me celebrate. This is Part IV of my description of the fun georneys we had together during Dana’s visit.
Before continuing with my description of the fun georneys that Dana and I had during Dana’s recent visit, here’s a biological interlude. During a walk along a dirt road in New Hampshire, we found a turtle making his (or her?) way across the road. We stopped to take a few pictures and also to gently move the turtle off the road and out of harm’s way.
I think this is an Eastern Painted Turtle. Can anyone confirm? Does anyone know more about this turtle?
Georneys 
By the way, be careful when you see a turtle in New Hampshire as snapping turtles are quite common throughout the state. Snapping turtles usually flee and leave you alone, but if you pursue them and pick them up they can bite you. They have quite a fierce bite. When I was growing up, a little boy in my New Hampshire neighborhood almost lost a finger to a snapping turtle when he tried to pick it up. His parents ending up bringing both the boy and the turtle to the emergency room… it was quite the event!
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Dana,
It’s definitely a painted turtle, and based on the range maps on that Wikipedia page, it’s either the Eastern or Midland subspecies. To distinguish between them, you’d need to turn the turtle over and look at the plastron (bottom shell). The plastron of the Eastern is a uniform yellow, while that of the Midland shows a “characteristic symmetrical dark shadow in the center, which varies in size and prominence.”
My very first pet was a Midland painted turtle. I captured it at a public beach in Harrisburg PA when I was five. Thanks for the opportunity to wallow in nostalgia 8^).
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A thousand pardons! I just noticed that Eveyln was the author of the post, not Dana.
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No problem! Thanks for the information about the turtle. As a geologist, I don’t know very much about biology thingies.
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