Go seeAmphibians
Painted turtles basking on logs on bright autumn afternoons
When: October to November
On sunny autumn afternoons painted turtles are still hauling out onto half-sunk logs and rocks, sometimes stacked on each other. When the cold settles in they move to the mud and leaf litter on the bottom, and a painted turtle can go months down there without surfacing for air.
Why this time of year
Basking is what a turtle does with sunshine and the sunshine is running out, so the calm bright afternoons of autumn are the ones that put turtles on logs. As it cools they wind down toward a winter spent on the bottom.
How to notice it
- Pick a sunny, wind-free afternoon and scan the pond from the shore or trail. Look at half-submerged logs, stumps, tussocks and rocks rather than at open water.
- Count how many share one log. Painted turtles crowd onto the same perch and will pile on top of each other.
- Watch the posture: flat, tilted toward the sun, back legs stretched out, neck extended. They slide off fast if you get close.
- Check the same logs again on a cold grey day. The empty log is the other half of the story, because the turtles are still there, underneath it.
Try this with kids: Count the turtles on the fullest log you can find. Where will every one of them be in January?
anaerobic means making energy without oxygen, which leaves acid behind in the body
Safety
- Watch from the shore or the trail. Do not step out onto the pond edge, the mud, or any ice.
- A turtle that slides off its log loses the warmth it was banking, so keep your distance and keep dogs leashed.
- Most Massachusetts turtle species are protected. Never collect a turtle or move one from where you find it.
Sources
- mass.govMassWildlife: the painted turtle is probably the state's most abundant turtle, found in all 14 counties, and is the common sun turtle of New England, so called for its habit of basking conspicuously on emergent logs and rocks. Reached through a browser; the page returns 403 to plain fetches.
- massaudubon.orgMass Audubon: all Massachusetts turtle species except the box turtle overwinter in mud and leaf litter in water bodies and MAY BECOME ACTIVE DURING WARM SPELLS; a painted turtle can spend as many as six hours a day basking.
- portal.ct.govConnecticut DEEP: painted turtles are commonly observed basking on rocks and logs, even on top of one another, and spend the winter in mud or decayed vegetation on pond bottoms, emerging typically in March. Note this fact sheet is for the EASTERN painted turtle, the subspecies found here.
- massaudubon.orgMass Audubon: overwintering turtles dial down metabolism, which creates lactic acid, and the alkaline calcium in their shells helps neutralise it. Also that you may see turtles moving under the ice on warmer winter days.
- maine.govMaine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife: as air and water cool, painted turtles burrow into the bottom, and their metabolism slows so far that oxygen absorbed through the skin from the water by diffusion can be enough to keep them alive.
- sccp.caJackson 2002, Journal of Physiology 543.3:731-737, verified verbatim from the extracted PDF: coordinated metabolic depression with a further sharp fall of about 90 percent under anoxia, plus release of carbonate buffers from the shell and uptake of lactic acid into it, which together permit survival for 3 to 4 months at 3 degrees C with no oxygen. LABORATORY simulated hibernation, and on the WESTERN painted turtle.
- journals.biologists.comUltsch and Jackson 1982, Journal of Experimental Biology 96:11-28, cross-checked against the Crossref abstract for doi 10.1242/jeb.96.1.11 because the publisher page sits behind a challenge. Six of ten non-catheterised high-oxygen turtles were still alive after 189 days without breathing; the 126-day figure applies specifically UNDER THE MOST ADVERSE CONDITIONS (catheterised, submerged, low oxygen), and the water was severely hypoxic rather than oxygen-free.
Checked against these sources on September 6, 2026.
In the guide for October, November