How to Find Box Turtle Nests

Even on July 1, these hen box turtles are looking to enlarge the local population, and I applaud them. Black raspberry stains on the beak of the top female. The lower photo shows a female turtle backed into a possible nest site. I took both these from my mower on the evening of June 30.

Mowing the paths about every ten days has the primary purpose of keeping the forest from encroaching on my open meadow. Second and just as important is giving us access to the meadow for our daily walks.  Third, the mown grass provides good foraging for birds. And fourth, this is where the box turtles come to dig their nests in June. They look for little open patches of soil and go from there, digging with their incredibly strong hind legs almost 3" down, making a narrow-necked, ovoid chamber to receive their snow-white, leathery eggs.  

In the pano, you can see the central path, and the left and right paths that mark the field's perimeter. It takes me more than three hours to get the yard, paths, driveway and oil well road mowed, but it makes a big difference to us and the wildlife. Box turtles need sun on their nests if the eggs are to develop properly. And they can't dig through dense meadow grass roots. So they gravitate to these paths. 

The first nest I found was in the middle path.  Just a little digging revealed what I was looking for: white gold.

I love the end of this, my excitement as I run to grab the cage, post and block I set aside just for this moment. So magnificently nerdy.

I'm not about to let any mammal but me dig down to find those eggs!

Thinking about what I look for when hunting box turtle nests, it's muddy vegetation. Things seem to be generally undisturbed, but you can see that there's been excavation here, because the grass around the nest site is sandy and muddy. It's had dirt on top of it recently. The hen turtle has carefully replaced and tamped back all the tailings (amazing to think about the thought and intent that goes into this process). But she can't clean the grass, so I look for dirty grass. 

I dig down...and hit gold again.

It was quite a morning. I found a nest in each of the two paths I walked. Finally I made it to the third, lower path, and there was a slam-dunk fresh nest there. No reveal video this time, but I hit eggs!

I'd never found three turtle nests in a single morning. Well, I'd found three that had been dug out by skunks or raccoons, but never fresh, intact nests. HalleluJAH!! It's been a week now, and I haven't found a digout yet! Box turtles 3, skunks 0!

I had to walk back to the house to grab a mallet and a screwdriver and another cage. By the back door, I found a Protean Shieldback, a new (huge) katydid for me and the place. A very, very cool bug. That would be quite a find for a hungry bird. It looked somehow unfinished, but it assured me it was done.

 Then I found a Brown Rove Beetle scurrying down the sidewalk. Another large, cool, uncommon bug for the iNaturalist list. 

With my finding streak so hot, I trotted over to peek in the patio crack. Yep, the Faks are back!

A pair of adult copperheads cuddle in the morning sun. 

They are very placid, peaceful snakes who don't seem to mind our peeking in at them a few times a day.

We don't bother them, and they don't bother us, but we do use a flashlight if we need to go down to the patio at night. The Fak Crack is to the right of Curtis, between the poured cement and the sandstone block. 

Back out to the meadow I went. By noon, I had all three nests protected with wire caging and secure stakes holding the cages down. 

I looped the little tabs on the stake over the cage wire so nothing could force its way under the cage.

Here's the nest on the lower path. I put two stakes in to make sure that one was secure.

In case you're wondering, the mesh of the cages is plenty large to let the baby turtles out once they hatch. I don't want to impede them in any way. I just want these precious eggs to become box turtles, not skunk chow. 

It was a fine morning, June 21, the solstice morning! for finding gold in the dirt.

When you find digging attempts, where she's dug down and hit a root or a rock, you can assume she'll try again in the same general area. I am taking careful note of where I find these, and it seems that sun exposure is key. They do not dig nests under shady boughs, but try to get out in the open. I think about a female turtle plodding around, finding a likely spot, then sitting quietly, watching a prospective nest site all day to see what kind of sun exposure it gets. Isn't that an image?

As I look, I like to think about the thoughts turtles might have. As I find nests, I think about what each site has in common with the next. Good sun exposure has a lot to do with nest site selection, so I concentrate my search in mown paths that get all-day sun.

I was heartbroken to find on the morning of June 30 that a cursed chipmunk had dug out one of my protected nests. It went right through the wire, dug the eggs up, and carried them off cleanly. Only a chipmunk will do that; coons and possums and skunks eat them on the spot and leave the curled up eggshells as evidence.  It's that squirrel thing, the storing and cacheing.

Double-caged, with a stick wedged in to keep animals from getting under the fine-mesh cage. You do what you have to. Have I mentioned how much I hate chipmunks? A chipmunk, a member of an abundant species, is not worth a clutch of box turtle eggs, in my opinion. But my opinion has nothing to do with what actually rolls out on nature's stage, unless I make the effort to act on that bias.

And now you know a little more about how to find, confirm and protect box turtle nests.