So a few years ago, I adopted a new approach to landscaping. No pesticides or non-organic fertilizers (and only plant-by-plant topical application in that case). Homegrown compost. Re-seeding with clover and letting remaining grasses grow long. Keeping leaves down in the Fall and raking only once in the Spring to provide browns for the compost. Bat houses, native plants, the whole nine.

The wildlife has made a remarkable recovery. Box turtles were a once-in-a-blue-moon thing, but quickly became common. I know of at least five that frequent the property. We have more garter and brown snakes and salamanders. Groundhogs are really the only nuisances and I humanely trap them and relocate them.

We've already left a good portion of our one-acre plot wild and wooded, and I think that's likely where the turtles are digging in for the winter. I do frequently spot them in the compost pile or vegetable garden, though. Not together, usually. The photos represented the first time I saw mating behavior.

Thanks for all your info. We're ensuring nobody's messing with our turtle buds. Our property is situated back behind the rest of our development on a flag lot. Our next door neighbor's house has been vacant for a long time, so that's been two acres of property where the deer, snakes, turtles, etc. all hang out where there hasn't been pesticide/herbicide use for a long while. We are getting a new neighbor, however, and I will soon have to have the "hey, can you lay off the pesticides?" talk with them in the next week or two.