Painted Turtle

Painted Turtle - IUCN Conservation Status: Least Concern

Painted turtles are the most widespread turtle in North America

This painted turtle was quite the surprise. I was on a bike ride about a mile from home when I saw a round disc moving across the road. It was about six inches from my tire. I didn’t know what I had seen, so I went back to investigate further. That’s when I realized that it was a baby turtle! It must have crawled all the way up from the retention pond that was nearby, and it was making its way across the street to a nearby lawn. I helped to make sure that no cars hit it as it made the final leg of the journey across the street.

Green Turtle

Seeing this particular species of turtle, wasn’t a surprise at all. It is the most widespread turtle native to North America. It can be found from southern Canada to northern Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. Painted turtles live in fresh waters that have soft bottoms, basking sites, and aquatic vegetation. They home in shallow waters that have slow-moving currents. This means you’ll be more likely to find them in a creek, marsh, pond, or lake then in a river.

There are four different subspecies of painted turtles: eastern, midland, southern, and western. Eastern painted turtles grow to be 5-7 inches long and have an olive green to black upper shell. There may be a pale stripe down the middle and red marketing on the periphery of the upper shell. The bottom shell is plain yellow. The midland is typically 4-10 inches long. The bottom shell has a symmetrical dark shadow that helps to distinguish it from the other subspecies. The southern painted turtle is considered by some to be a distinct species. It has a prominent red stripe down the center of the upper shell, and it grows to be 4-6 inches long. The western painted turtle grows to be about 10 inches long. It has a mesh like pattern of light lines on its upper shell. Its bottom shell has yellow and red colored splotches that stretch to the edges of the shell. The face of all painted turtles has only yellow stripes. They also have a large yellow spot behind each eye.

Hawksbill Turtle

Painted turtles are omnivores. As adults their diets consist of leaves, algae, fish, crustaceans, aquatic insects, and carrion. As juveniles, they are more carnivorous. These turtles will catch prey in their mouth and use their front feet to tear apart the prey. When they eat more carotenoid dense diets, the yellow and red pigments in their stripes and spots will increase.

The painted turtle has many predators. When they are young, their survival rate to the next year is only 19%. The nests are preyed on by garter snakes, crows, chipmunks, squirrels, skunks, groundhogs, raccoons, badgers, fox, and humans. As adults their primary predators are alligators, ospreys, crows, red-shouldered hawks, bald eagles, and raccoons. Unlike tortoises, painted turtles are able to right themselves if they are flipped onto their upper shell.