northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a Common Snapping Turtle I met last summer. Though they'll occasionally bask out on a log , they prefer to do semi-basking in shallow water with only their shell above the water line. Your best chance for a "head shot" is when they come up to breathe, which this fella presumably was doing. Though parts of the southern US have an Alligator Snapping Turtle , the closest taxonomic relatives of the Common Snapping Turtle are probably the Central American Snapping Turtle and the South American Snapping Turtle , both of whom used to be considered subspecies of the Common Snapping Turtle. August 23, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 229694534, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)