Monday, July 15th - No new nests, but more False Crawls from our SNT

The day started out beautiful, but hot, not much breeze on the beach.  We discovered camping equipment by Nest #6R, below Marker #6.  No worries, Olivia is back for her summer visit.

Here comes the sun

Sea Oats are having a good growing season

Olivia is back - her camp site

Nest #1, which is 57 days old today showed no signs of hatching or emergence, but there was a Ghost Crab hole right by the DNR sign.  Do they know?

 A large Ghost Crab hole was found at Nest #20.  The Ghost Crab went right down the reed and found the egg chamber.  You can see some of the eggs when looking in the hole.  There were also flies around the nest.  We covered the hole and gently packed the sand.  A Ghost Crab trap may need to be placed at this nest.

Nest #1 - Do those pesky
 Ghost Crabs know something?

Nest #20 a new nest is being attacked!

The GC found the eggs, but we did not
 see any evidence that any were taken

Our Special Needs Turtle (SNT) is back and she is a determined lady.  There were three False Crawls today.  The first crawl tracks had been wind blown and faint.  She crawled up to a small tree that had washed in and attempted to dig, but ran into a buried tree limb, and left - this is located close to Marker 6 - FC #34

False Crawl #1 for the day

She started digging, ran into
trouble and returned to the ocean

Her second attempt for the day - quick in and out, tracks were faint.  This crawl was located below Marker7, close to Nest #9 - FC #35.




Between finding these crawls, we saw something flipping around on the wet sand, and rescued this small ray.  It was placed back into the surf so he could swim back where he belongs.

Third False Crawl of the day - her best attempt, she dug in three separate areas this time.  Looking at the tracks, we believe that we probably just missed her. She came in and left and  crawled over her incoming track.  We probed all areas, and spent the most time in the larger area.  Along with probing we did dig when we found soft sand.  He were so hoping to find an egg chamber.  This crawl located above Marker 8, FC #36.

Incoming and Outgoing Crawl

Her incoming is the faint track on the left,
lower corner of the picture,
 goes to first area she dug, along the base of the dune

Her first digging attempt

She turns and heads west back along the base of the dune

Her second attempt to dig - this is between the
 first and the third place she dug.
There looked like several places,
 and the best body pit, and thrown sand.

Another view of the second area she dug.

The third place she dug before
 heading back to the ocean.  This was the least disturbed area,
 but reeds were broken and there was thrown sand.
She may of  been resting before making the crawl back to the ocean.

I added Maddy's pictures to give a better/different angle on this crawl.