Northern red-bellied turtle

"Gordy! Will you look at this! This turtle has a red belly!"

The place was somewhere south of Ringwood, New Jersey. The time was back in the 1950s. The occasion was me seeing my first red-bellied turtle of any species. My companion was my friend and mentor, E. Gordon (Gordy) Johnston (now deceased).

I was 14 or 15 years old on my first herping jaunt away from home. It was memorable because we had already seen more Eastern box turtles than I had ever guessed existed, we saw an Eastern king snake, and visited Asa Pittman and seen his collection of Northern pine snakes and "Coastal Plains" milk snakes. Now I had just hand-caught what I thought to be a hatchling painted turtle only to find it was a Northern red-bellied turtle, Pseudemys rubriventris.

And to top it off, that night we camped in a little deserted Pine Barrens cabin and were serenaded all night long by whip-poor-wills and screech owls. What an occasion for a herp loving kid!

Since then, I have seen many Northern red-bellied turtles, and although I marveled at each and every one of them, none have stuck in memory like that first one. I can still see myself darting from the damp shoreline into the shallows to grab that little "painted turtle" I had just startled only to find it was something so very different that I hadn't then known it even existed.

That's herping at its very, very, best.

More photos below...

As a hatchling the Northern red-bellied turtle is aptly named. It is not uncommon for the plastral color of the Northern Red-bellied Turtle to fade with age.

Author, photographer, and columnist Richard Bartlett is one of the most prolific writers on herpetological subjects in the 20th century. With hundreds of books and articles to their credit, Richard and his wife Pat have spent over four decades documenting reptiles both in the field and in captivity. For a list of their current titles, please visit their page in our bookstore.