TURTLES
As we walked into our first hikes at Organ Pipe, I noticed several things immediately. First and foremost, the large saguaro's dominated the landscape. They dominated not necessarily in an ecological sense, as they competed and shared space with many more plants higher in number than themselves, but in a artistic sense; as they drew the eye of any onlooker with ease. Second, the heat. It was easy to forget, as we were constantly surrounded by new and distracting landscapes, however it was unrelenting whether you took heed of it or not. With these things bearing down on me, it caught me off guard when I walked up to our destination, a spring with fresh cool water.
I was poked and told to look into the spring and identify a turtle, one which I had not at all been expecting to see. I found myself looking at a Sonoran mud turtle. Several were living in the spring and cruising around under the water, foraging for a meal. It reminded me of back in Florida, where springs are home to another turtle of the same family, the loggerhead musk turtles, and ponds are filled with a closer relative, the eastern mud turtle. Though I had seen similar turtles before, this one was a Sonoran desert endemic, and one that many people never have the privilege of seeing. Seeing them in high numbers within such a new landscape was an incredibly rewarding observation.
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