Turtle on Ice

While hiking Springbrook's main trail yesterday to see signs of spring, this was the strangest and most surprising one.  A painted turtle slowly walking across the ice of the large pond area. Never seen this before.  The temperature was around 50 at 5 PM, but there was no way this turtle was going to find shelter before  the temp dropped below freezing.

How do supposedly "cold blooded" animals do this? Animals that are not able to raise their body temperature except by sitting in the sun.

 Somehow this turtle was creating warm enough muscle tissue to keep moving across the ice.

Here is the turtle and the pond with six inches of ice left, and the only open water a few inches at the edge of the cat tails.

This turtle looked like fox or mink food to me.  A mink crossed the trail in front of me and entered this wetland just a few minutes after I saw this turtle. 

Hope the turtle knew what it was doing and we see it this summer swimming in the wetland.