We Thought She Was Finished

For two days in a row, we haven't seen the turtle with the uneven crawl.  This morning, between Marker 7 and 8, she appeared again - and as she has done on all her other nesting attempts, she comes up to the dunes and crawls to the left.

Right flipper makes a deep groove; left flipper is flattened

Crawling along the dune line

There were a few places where she started to dig a nest cavity but never finished it.

This is where she started to dig - see the footprints in her path?

Not sure if it is dog tracks we are seeing lately, or coyote.  Too big for a fox.  Hope it's not a coyote!

More animal tracks in the middle of the crawl

Looks like a barnacle on her plastron scraping the sand

In and out

This makes 19 false crawls by this turtle.  Three were way below the high tide line, but the the other 16 were nesting attempts.  Still hoping that she will actually be able to lay a nest one of these days.

Many thanks to Bill and Flossie for coming out this morning to help document this turtle activity.