There Have to be Eggs Somewhere!

Just after nest #5 and before MM 6 our walkers came across another crawl.  A beautiful nest sight.  Disturbed/buried vegetation, thrown sand, scarping, and a big difference in the incoming and outgoing track, but we were not able to find the eggs.  We probed for 50 minutes.  We probed the mound, we probed the area as she entered, thinking she could have gone back over the nest site, we probed thinking she may have turned and then nested.  We checked and probed where we found soft sand.  We could not find those eggs.  We saw a Ghost Crab hole and even though it did not look like she would have nested there, we checked anyway.  Sand was hard in that area.

There are eggs there somewhere!

 Now for what is happening with the other nest sights.  the PN laid on 6/3/17 (52 days ago)  has a Ghost Crab hole that needs to be checked.  If I remember correctly, this was a long crawl along the dune.

 Nest #2:  We found a Ghost Crab hole and an egg on the surface.

 Nest #13:  Had 4 Ghost Crab holes.  We put a trap in the far left side away from the nest and where the tracks came from/led to.  We covered up the holes.

 Nest #4:  This took a lot of studying/analyzing.  It was not your normal looking emergence sight.  But after awhile we determined that we had an emergence.  This was verified when we saw about 12 hatchling tracks that were made when the tide must have been going out last night.

 Nest #8 below:  Another Ghost Crab hole.

A big thank you to Hunter's family who was very patient with all we had to do this morning.

Nest 13 Sunday, July 23

The Sunday walkers found a well defined crawl at Marker 6.
A ghost crab beat us to the nest and emptied 3 eggs. We
found the rest of the eggs after some digging!!  Nest # 13
Post by Paulette
Pictures by Paulette and 
Leslie

A beautiful crawl to dunes.

Notice the drag marks. Possibly that barnacle on
the belly again!!

Well defined body pit

The eggs were deep.

Our Sunday walkers with guest.

Nest #12

We had lots of activity this morning.  We had a false crawl between MM 7&8 in which the turtle went up over the dune and back into the water with no sign of attempting to nest. 

But above MM6 and below Nest #4 we had another crawl which looked similar to the false crawl and turned out to be nest #12.

Both Hunter and John took their turn at probing

 And after a few tries Hunter, Leslie and Margie found the eggs

 It turned out to be a nice deep nest.  Thanks to John, Hunter, Susan, Leslie, Margie and Bob we got the nest completed.

A Few More Pictures from Nest # 11

Here are three more pictures from our exciting Sunday
on Waties!!
Thank you, Leslie
Post by Paulette

Akim and Jiarong holding the DNA egg

Bucket full of eggs!!

Eggs going into newly dug nest

Sunday, July 9   Nest # 11
A beautiful sunrise and a beautiful sight at the rocks
at the jetty - a crawl and a nest. We moved it close
to the dunes away from the tides and hopefully the
ghost crabs too!!   113 eggs are buried at Marker 9!!
Pictures by Karen and
Paulette
Post by Paulette

Track and body pit

Returning track to ocean -we think this is the turtle that has a barnacle on her belly!!

The eggs!!

The new nest site - high and dry

Akim, Sharon, Jiarong, Karen and Leslie

More Nesting Today

Nest #10 was found this morning just before Marker 4. Not too many photos were taken; everyone was busy taking care of the business of data collection and marking the nest. Nest was up on the dunes in a fine place and no problems finding the eggs either. 

Thanks to Harry, Elaine and Jack for all their assistance this morning!

Lots of ATV tracks on the beach lately

The ever changing lower end of the island

A live knobbed whelk

Another beautiful sunrise

Nest #9 & Crab Activity on Nest #6

We lost another egg to the Ghost Crabs.  This morning there were many Ghost Crab holes.  Some very big and some smaller ones.  Seems like the word is out amongst the crabs.  We checked for crabs, found no evidence that they were still in the holes, and covered them up.  We also placed the new trap on the edge of the nest and took away the crab trap that was pulled off by the crab (s). 

A picture perfect nest between MM 1 & 2 and between Nests 3 & 6.  This time it is up in the dunes.

Note the drag marks.

Emily took no time finding the nest site.

 This nest was not quite as shallow as some of the others, but it was shallow.

 Emily and Justin took the egg for the DNA sample.
Everybody chipped in and we got the nest done.