Red-eared Slider
Trachemys scripta elegans
Red-eared Slider · Prospect Park · 15 November 2025
A Red-eared Slider hauled out on a log to bask in Prospect Park in November, in the last warm sun of the year. Native to the rivers of the central United States, and now the most common turtle in park ponds across much of the country, New York included, because it was so widely sold in the pet trade and so often released once outgrown.
The red stripe behind the eye gives the species its name. The pet trade has also put it on the official list of the hundred worst invasive species in the world, released and thriving on every continent but Antarctica.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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