Neighborhood Turtles

As I walked across my backyard to the gate I noticed a late blooming daffodil – all the rest of them are spent except for this one!

I was doing my quick walk to look at the phenology of plants in my neighborhood and decided to continue around the storm water retention ponds. There were no geese or ducks on the pond….but the turtles looked bigger and more numerous than ever! There were at least 17 of then sunning themselves on the bank…even the smallest one considerably larger than my hand. No duckling or gosling would survive our pond for very long….and maybe the small fish are not faring well either.

I am wondering how many turtles the pond can reasonably support. At some point it will reach its carrying capacity and the turtle population will stabilize.