Going wild for a wild Tortoise

Can you see it? We’re out at a LIPU nature reserve at Castel di Guido. We’re the only ones here. It’s a mixture of ancient Cork Oak forest with some Broadleaved Oak and a few areas of conifer plantation. I spotted it right away.

A Tortoise! I’ve found a real, live, wild Tortoise!

It’s quietly munching in the grass when we approach it.

I check the pattern on its back and think it must be a Hermann’s Tortoise, Testudo hermanni.

Soon it’ll be digging a safe depression in the earth and bedding down for winter so it can wake in spring. They can sleep for four to five months at a time.

I wish I was a tortoise.