Here you see a Painted Turtle enjoying yesterday’s very welcome sun. We’re fairly sure that he’s a He (i.e., a male), but we would have to catch and hold him to be sure; and, he is much too bashful to allow that.
Although male PTs are smaller than females, they have wider and longer tails and longer foreclaws than females, apparently to make it easier to hold the females during mating. (Speaking of which: The male’s bottom shell [his “plastron”] is curved to accommodate a female’s top shell [her “carapace”]; her plastron is flat; also, her genital and excretory opening [her “cloaca”] is close to her body and his is not.)
Our Painted Turtles are the Eastern subspecies, Chrysemys picta picta. There also are slightly differing Western, Midland, and Southern subspecies of this common native. Around here, PTs usually hibernate starting in October, but that may change with Global Warming. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on September 4, 2021.)