Warm and humid morning on the beach, thankfully we had a nice breeze. Lots of blown sand from the high winds of yesterday. The evening tide was high in some places, by the looks of the wet sand. We checked all of the nests and all were high and dry. Due to the wind, did not see any patrolling critters.
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| Sunrise over the marsh | | | |
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After checking Nest #4, which is our "nest with a view" at Marker 4,
noticed a track further up the beach - good! The closer I got, I realized
there was only one track, so I followed and there she was sitting up on
this knoll looking at me from a clump of sea oats. This event happened after Marker 4, and close to Marker 5
Seeing me, she hightailed it to the ocean - she moved pretty fast. I circled behind her to get pictures. Sorry I took a number of pictures, first experience for me to actually see the Loggerhead on the beach.
After she left, we hoped we had a nest to work. Her incoming track is the track on the left. She crawled just above the wrack line and left a very messy "body pit" - there was disturbed vegetation, and she had thrown sand from both ends of this area. She may of not liked the feel of the sand. We did run into areas that had roots, you could hear them crunch when we probed. She crawled a little higher, ran into a clump of sea grass, crawled up to this knoll and had turned, by the looks of the placement of the grass. Her head was facing the ocean.. This is where I first saw her. Her outgoing crawl is the one on the right. She had a 33" width. We probed extensively - in both places. Maybe she was contemplating nesting in that knoll area, when I disturbed her.
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| The left is her incoming crawl | | |
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The right is her outgoing
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The messy body pit - she had thrown sand at both ends of this "body pit"
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She crawled out, zagged around this out cropping of grass, and up to this knoll area
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The knoll area, where she was sitting when I first caught site of her
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| I made the decision to make this a PN - Possible Nest |
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