DeeDee's Nest on June 22

Thanks to the Sunset Beach/Bird Island Turtle Team, we now have more information on our special needs turtle. As reported, she was finally able to nest on their beach (not sure exactly where) on June 22. The last time we saw her on Waties was June 16 when she took that BIG walk around the beach at the Hog Inlet end of the island.

Here she is! Carapace looks really clean, but right rear flipper is missing

Seems healthy otherwise

Another photo of the missing appendage

She laid a total of 126 eggs which their turtle team relocated to a safer spot. There are even a few more photos on the Sunset Beach Turtle Team Facebook page:

www.facebook.com/sunsetbeachturtles/timeline

Scroll down a bit to see pictures from this nest.

What we can't quite figure out is why she has returned to Waties so soon - she made false crawls on both June 27 and June 29 - no real nesting attempts - normallty there is at least a 10-14 day interval between nests. Just goes to show you that more research still needs to be done. Of course, we know this is one exceptional turtle!

Thanks to Maddy's friend for sharing these photos ---

Barb and Steve