Well, I kinda lied in my last post. Ron and I had planned to do a little birding in Allerton Park yesterday, but Ron ran into a bit of bad luck that knocked him out of the event. Probably not a bad thing in the end due to the stifling heat that we are currently experiencing out her in Flyover Country. To put it in perspective, I had Linda drive me to the Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve. I noticed a nice trail in the back of that park while getting in a 6 mile run there Friday evening. We had a couple of hours after the dog show, so took some time to see if it was worth us hitting it on our next trip over there. It is actually a pretty nice trail that runs along the Sangamon River – bad thing is after 2 miles I was soaking wet from the heat. The feels like temperature at home when we got back was 112!
Fortunately, the heat isn’t a problem for today’s featured creature.
That there is what they call a Tortoise. Guessing you were thinking Turtle. They are both reptiles and that is the common name associated with the hard shells, but there is actually a definite distinction between the two. For starters, Tortoises are land dwellers, where Turtles spend most of their time in water habitats. Clearly this was the case with these specimens seeing as how we took them outside the headquarters of Red Rock Canyon in Nevada. This dwelling distinction also leads to another difference – Turtles have webbed feet and very sharp claws to navigate the water and pull themselves up on logs etc. to sun.
Hit the jump to see a few more pictures and learn a few more facts picked up from some quick research.
