On the morning of May 28 bio tech Zach and I were doing nest checks and shorebird surveys, when a call came in from Nancy Fahey, the Wrightsville Beach sea turtle coordinator. The sea turtle monitors had found a crawl on Wrightsville Beach--the second in as many mornings--and the turtle had chosen the Mason Inlet bird sanctuary as her nesting site! Here is Nancy's description of the turtle's journey up the beach:
A loggerhead turtle emerged from the water, crawling to the base of a large dune. This was apparently not quite interesting/fun enough, so she decided to instead take a tour of the bird sanctuary. She circled around and crawled across the bottom of the dune, then headed up the steep side, toward the top. Passing behind the signs and string, she finally made it to the tip-top where she appeared to have attempted to nest. She then crawled/slid off the back of the steep dune (a roller-coaster ride, turtle style), to the base. Finally making tracks for the ocean, she gingerly made her way amongst the fragile Least Tern nests, careful not to break even just one!! Whew.....what a crazy set of tracks!
Surprisingly, the turtle had entered the posting where a small group of Least Terns are nesting and even more surprising had missed three by just inches. Nancy wanted to make sure it was all right to enter the posted area to check the crawl to determine if it was a nest or not, and since she has also volunteered with Audubon knew how important it is to minimize disturbance to nesting birds. We checked the area and dug where the female turtle had create a "body pit," an area of disturbed sand where she laid her eggs. It was too late in the morning to spend much time, and no eggs were found at first.
But Nancy returned early the next morning and located the egg chamber and 159 eggs--a large clutch for a loggerhead. Because the nest was right on top of a dune, which is not the most stable place in the world to deposit your eggs, Nancy relocated the nest to a safer location, where in about 55 days new sea turtles will hatch.
