Well, I was pleasantly surprised to see your forum is gaining some traction, Shawn. I follow your YT channel, but confess I signed up for this and then forgot about it. This is my first post here.
I don't know if this thread is intended just for
your turtle pix on a weekly basis or if anyone can post a turtle. Since you haven't put any new turtles since the snapper from Dutchman Lake, I'll put one to fill the gap a bit.
This picture is a Three-toed Box turtle taken 24 June 2021 on the Powerline Trail on Fountain Bluff near Grand Tower, Illinois. This turtle was not supposed to be in Illinois, but apparently didn't know that. Three-toed box turtles aren't supposed to be native to Illinois, but are found just across the Mississippi River in Missouri. I sent a picture to Scott Ballard, the IDNR herpetologist, who said that it was probably one that had been captured in Missouri, brought to Illinois, and kept as a pet before being released. He
may be right on that.
I also did a web search for other sightings of Three-toed box turtles in Illinois. There were almost none to be found. There was a 1993 paper dealing with Three-toed Box turtles in Illinois (
https://ilacadofsci.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/086-19MS9302-print.pdf ) that mentions a handful of sightings in western counties (Calhoun, Monroe, Union, and Jackson which was another instance of someone finding one along IL3 near Fountain Bluff! Was it the same turtle? That one was described as a male. The one I saw looks like a female going be eye color, but that isn't always accurate. The eyes look more brownish than orange and definitely not red. I didn't pick it up and look at the bottom of its shell.
I think another possible theory of why these turtles could be at Fountain Bluff is that they could have been living there all along. The Mississippi River would be a formidable barrier for a poor swimmer like a box turtle. Could they have somehow been carried across by humans, either intentionally or maybe as stowaways in cargo? Could be. Could they have been carried across in a raft of floating debris? Maybe. Perhaps, though, the ones on Fountain Bluff represent a remnant population that have survived from the time that the Mississippi River flowed to the east of Fountain Bluff through the broad valley now occupied by the Big Muddy River and the LaRue Swamp before it was diverted to its narrow channel to the west sometime during the Pleistocene. The glaciers didn't make it to Fountain Bluff, but big chunks of floating ice, torrents of meltwater, and lots of outwash did, plugging up the river and forcing it into the new channel. I like to think that Three-toed Box Turtles were alive and well, patiently watching from their island fortress at the top of Fountain Bluff as all the floods from melting glaciers raged around them, cut off from others of their race living farther west. Maybe they have inhabited their isolated little sanctuary for countless generations and through millenia, living in their slow, measured turtle way.
