Saturday, September 3rd, Inventory of Nest #14

The early morning started with 15 bright eyed CCU Students ready to experience a
Loggerhead nest inventory, along with the students we had another CCU guest, Richard Green, a digital journalist.

A promising sign was spotting Wood Storks in the marsh and beautiful clouds reflecting the sunrise.

 

The students along with Richard, Leslie, Jackie, Jean and her guest headed up to Marker 5 where nest #14 was located.  We did hear thunder in the distance but we proceeded up the beach.  There was nothing on the radar, but many of us know that is not always correct due to our fast popup storms.

 

 Nest #14 was laid on July 7th, and was recorded as a shallow nest. This nest was a prime target by ghost crabs soon after it was laid.  Several eggs were lost and a number of Ghost Crabs were caught in our traps.  This nest emerged on August 31st, on day 55.  Unfortunately, this nest stayed shallow.  As everyone had gloves on and roles were assigned, it did not take but a couple of scoops of sand before the first eggs were located.  There were several handfuls of unhatched eggs found before the diggers hit any hatched eggs.  Another interesting thing about this nest was we did not find any pieces of shells.  The unhatched eggs were heavy, but not seriously discolored as we saw in an earlier shallow nest that was inventoried earlier this year.

 

Not a lot of room by the nest.  Everyone took turns handling the eggs

 

All experienced the nest chamber, touching and feeling the walls of the nest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The results of this inventory are 68 hatched eggs, 30 unhatched which included one pipped egg, 0 dead hatchlings, 0 live hatchlings - Hatched and Emergence Success is 67.3% for both stats.

We had inquiring minds this morning, so I had one of the students open one of the unhatched eggs.  The egg had cooked, the egg contents resembled very loose scrambled eggs.  It seems the deeper nests do much better than shallow nests.

Steve and Barb Demusz along with Valerie Way caged nests 18, 19, and 20 while we did the inventory.  Nest #20 is on top of the dune by Marker 8 - they have applied shingles to the cage hoping this will deter hatchlings falling over the back side of the dune.  They also checked the rest of our nests for us.

Many thanks to all who helped this morning and transportation worked well with 3 trucks. Most of the students rode in the back of the trucks.  Hardly no one wants to sit inside.

Pictures by Ayana M and Barb D