Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:39 pm Why are RES leaving perfectly good habitat?
I have a young male and female RES, only about a month. They live in 3 interconnected ponds in my backyard (each pond about 1500 gal). At first I was surprised how often and quickly they moved between the ponds but today I found the female in my front yard pond about 150 ft uphill. I don’t understand why they would risk venturing that far away from habitat that provides them everything they need ( food, clean water, basking areas). I would expect them to take such a risk only if some existing threat was worst than the risk of never finding water and not making it back to the pond they left? Any thoughts?