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. 

Box Turtle Nest CSI: Search and Recovery

 I never feel luckier to live here on this 80-acre sanctuary I call Indigo Hill than in mid-June, when everything--everything--is making babies. As I sit at my desk, there are red-bellied woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers feeding young just outside the window. I can hear two of the five indigo buntings on the land singing their heads off. Fledgling eastern bluebirds are churring, being fed. A prairie warbler sings in the birch out the south studio window.  This morning, I watched our male pine warbler feed a couple of fledglings in the row of tall Virginia pines that edge the meadow. The breeze is sweeping through the house, the tall grass is waving around blooming butterfly weed, and it is grand, simply grand. 

I'm learning how to find box turtle nests. I've been looking for years, but the skunks and raccoons almost always get to them before I do. Oh, how I hate to find dug-out nests, but I find them every year. Last year was a warmup--I got out early, found and protected two before the mammals got them. One nest hatched successfully in the first week of November--late late late!  I wrote about it in "Another Box Turtle Morning" a few posts back. By May 29, I had decided to dig up the second nest, figuring the eggs were bad, or the babies had gotten entombed. That was an interesting exercise. I found the remains of four eggs, and the closer I looked, the more I discovered. There were embryos, all right, but they did not seem to be fully developed, because there was a lot of yolk, too, which seemed to have gotten saponified in the process of decomposition. It's the yellowish white stuff here. 

In this shot, you can see a scute, or scale, from the baby's shell at the bottom of the mess. So they were pretty well-developed when they died.

There were embryos in all four, with shell scutes and and wee tiny vertebrae. It made me sad. I don't know why they didn't hatch. The nest was in a pretty shady area and I'm guessing they might not have gotten sufficient sun to warm them enough to develop all the way. The small cement block I put on the cage with which it was protected may have blocked even more sun. Sometimes in trying to help, we harm. I don't know. I just knew they didn't make it, and that I needed to do better by the next nests I found.

We don't want this--babies dead in shell. What we want is this. Here's the only hatchling I found of four from the other nest, in the sun-drenched middle path of the meadow. The others dug out and got away before I found them, in early November 2022. This lil fella hatched but decided to stay in the nest chamber over the winter (not uncommon). I felt him in there, then saw him with my phone flashlight. I covered the hole with loose soil and left him all winter long, and he dug out on April 26!

I carried him down into the woods and let him go near a stream. Long may he crawl. 

Finding a juvenile box turtle on my land is the sweetest reward for my work. I found this little beauty, about the size of a lime, on June 4, 2023, on the first rainy morning in quite awhile.

I didn't pick him up or disturb him unduly, just made a couple shots and walked on. 

Found this old gent in the driveway May 13--doubtless looking for a hen to impregnate.

This spring, I was determined to find the female box turtles while they were laying, which is from the first to third week of June. They need heavy rain to soften the soil enough so it can be dug, and we didn't get that until June 3. On June 4, Phoebe, Liam and I went out looking, and we found three hen turtles making test digs that very evening! 

They are very wary while digging, and we didn't approach them--just took a quick snapshot and walked on as if we hadn't registered them.

None of these test holes resulted in eggs--the females hit roots or rocks. There's a lot of that, and you can always figure out what she hit that made her move on. But this is still informative, because it tells you the vicinity she's chosen, and will likely try to dig again.

June 4, 2023--Phoebe is finally on summer vacation from her high school counseling work, and she joins Liam and me at home for some nature reverie. We find three turtles digging this evening. If there's anything more heart-stirring than walking with my own babies, looking for turtles laying eggs, I haven't found it. 

Gratitude and Goodbyes

You will remember, in the last post, that I turned up a box turtle nest when I was weeding  Bill's grave. I could not have been more dumbfounded to uncover those perfect leathern eggs in the loamy clay, just behind his head (he wanted to face East, to see the sun rise). Or more delighted (although there was a certain shiver to my spine, to think how close I'd come to driving my spade through them).

It felt like a gift from Bill. A little precious thank-you for the gravetending for him and his parents, which takes time and gasoline, shovels and tractors and effort, and not just one-time effort. For good, or as long as I can do it. It's not trivial.

 I am writing this up in the tower room so I can watch the sun rise. It is a doozy of a sunrise. I can hear rubythroats chittering, cardinals chipping, a brown thrasher skidding** and smacking, a catbird whucking, and a distant crow hollering. Now a peewee, now a blue-winged warbler with its dry chickering trill. A yellow-billed cuckoo whoops softly. A hooded warbler gives a melodic chip.  The oranges and salmons just get more and more intense and this morning I feel like the luckiest person alive. I get to sit up in this tower, listen to the birds wake up, watch the sunrise, and write a little. My daughter's asleep in her bed below for one more blessed morning.

 

 Today we start our journeys: she back to the Canary Islands to teach and hike and cook and  love and figure out what the next few years of her life might look like; me to Colorado with my best friend Shila to launch Saving Jemima at the Yampa Valley Crane Festival in Steamboat Springs. I'll give a talk that, if I do it right, no one is gonna dream took me months to put together. First, to mow the lawn, haul a 5-gallon jug of water out to the new tree, take Curtis to the kennel for the first time (I'm trying to be as chill as he probably will be about that). Anyway, lucky.

He was cool enough about the kennel to eat his dunner in the office while we waited for his placement. Do I love leaving him at a kennel, even a fabulous one? Nope.  I'm looking for someone in the Marietta, Ohio area who a. doesn't travel all the time like me
b. doesn't have cats or, preferably, other dogs and c. would love Curtis' companionship while I flak my new book all over the place. Curtis came to me with a zero-tolerance policy on cats, and there's no changing that.

 

Now, back to our story. We've just planted the Memorial Maple and are sending Liam off. 

 

I had to hurry back to the house as soon as we got the tree watered in,
because Liam was taking off in a few minutes for Morgantown, to start another school year at WVU.

Liam's pretty used to saying goodbye to me and Phoebe. I'd be lying if I said he's gotten used to saying goodbye to Curtis. There's something about a dog that lets your love come flowing out, unfettered. It's a simple, uncomplicated, but very deep love. It has to do with the satiny feel and warm popcorn smell of a dog, too, and in that it's quite primitive and all the more piercing.

 

When Liam thought this was the last kiss he'd go in for just one more. Gosh he looks like my brother here.

This is one sweet, sweet cur-dog.

And one sweet, sweet young man.

Funny thing about Curtis. He didn't quite get this kissing thing when he first came to us in February. It was a rare, rare thing to see that pink tongue come out. He always looked a little puzzled when we'd land a smooch on his muzzle. We figure it wasn't part of his upbringing with his first family. Now? It's like Chet Baker has been tiptoeing in and giving him kissing lessons at night. He's shameless. He responds to, "Give me a kiss!" with a sweet smackeroo. Good dog, Curtis! Curs go where they're needed, and we need a lot of kisses around here.

 

One of Phoebe's 700 good-bye kisses to the sweetest curdoggie.  

Phoebe drove Liam into town to meet his cousin Gus. They'd drive to Morgantown together. Grateful, once again, not to make that three-hour trek, grateful that Liam and Gus have each other as they face all the challenges of life and college. I kissed them goodbye and looked around the front gardens.

This is the time of year the Achimenes stands up to be counted. Some little bits of rhizome snuck into the soil I used to pot my bargain gardenia last fall, and oh!! look at them now!

 

I'm getting photos from all kinds of people to whom I've given Achimenes rhizomes. So delightful! You put up with a straggly bunch of plants for what seems like forever, until they do THIS in mid-August. I wish I knew on what mysterious timer these plants run; why they wait and wait and wait to bloom, but they do.  Honestly I think they need shorter days to trigger blooming. I used to think they needed heat, so I tried that, growing them in the tower room well into June, baking them in hope of buds. Nope. They are worth every month of waiting.

I turned to the golden raspberries Connie Toops gave me years ago and did a little shirt picking. What a gift! They had a big first crop in June, and then the coons found them and busted down most of the canes. The raspberries sent up more canes and we are keeping them as closely picked as we can, every day, and I get to put THIS in my yogurt every morning!

I cut some spearmint and lemon verbena for Runner's Tea.

I stopped and marveled at what a couple of handfuls of Osmocote and Ironite can do for a very tired planter of flowers. Why hadn't I fed them earlier??

 

My pomegranate bonsai, which is in no danger of ever being planted on anyone's grave, is full of miniature fruit this summer. Oh how I love this willing little tree.

The tuberoses are just of the charts wonderful this year. They perfume the entire yard at dusk. The big sphinx moths come zooming in to feed. Grateful.

 

Then, before I forgot to do it, I went to the garage and fetched a big wire bike basket and three stakes. I positioned it over the turtle nest. Carefully, I drove them in, and replaced the fencing.  No skunk or coon would make dinner of this turtle nest.

I'll keep watering the turtle nest, when I water the new tree. Box turtle eggs incubate for three months, and these were probably laid in late May or early June. I'll keep my fingers crossed that one day I'll find a neat round hole, dug out from the inside (no tailings mounded beside it) where some newly minted turtlets have made their way out.

A mighty fortress is this grave. 








**The brown thrasher's mild alarm call sounds to me like a bike skidding to a halt on gravel, a muted, low ksssshhhh; while its higher intensity alarm call is like two marbles smacking together.

Planting the Memorial Maple

I've been mowing a great wide boulevard out to Bill's resting place since late April. I want to make it easy and inviting for us to get there. Bill didn't mow much in the last couple of years, and the shining sumac has taken over. If the meadow is going to have to be three years overgrown for awhile, at least the central path will be navigable.

The coneflowers and liatris I planted on his grave burst into joyous bloom in mid-July. It was fantastic. I had simply taken the liatris from my north bed, where it was getting too much shade, thanks to my now-huge liberated bonsai Japanese maple! The liatris never missed a beat, and took off. Prairie plants are like that. They're deep-rooted, willing to wait for their window.  (We should all aspire to be more like prairie plants.)

Aged cow manure mixed into the grave's topsoil didn't hurt. If you're going to bloom, you have to eat!

I visit Bill's grave in all weather, at all times and in all light conditions, but this dewy July 25 morning was the best of them all. Native plantings don't get much better than this. There's an understory of showy (pink) Missouri primrose that's going to be fantastic next spring.

Curtis, of course, always accompanies me. We "go see Daddy." Man, Bill loved this dog. And Curtis understands the import of this spot. He was there for the burial, led the funeral procession out, walking slowly so as not to outpace Elsa, all of his own accord. Someday I may be able to write about that, but probably not anytime soon. It was something to witness.

 

So now fast-forward to August 19, and the flowers have faded, though they're still trying to bloom a bit. It's time to plant the Memorial Maple. The Bonsai-no-more. It's the last day I can do it and have both kids here for the ceremony. Liam leaves at 1 pm.

I'm blown away by the beauty of the meadow on this fine hot morning. And I decide to put off having it mowed until everything's done blooming. Heck with it. So what if it's bare over the winter; I cannot stand to mow these wildflowers down in full bloom. I've never seen Joe-Pye weed in the meadow before. Amazing things happen when you let meadows go. And then not-amazing things happen, like losing the meadow to a steadily growing over-your-head sumac forest. That I don't want. Hence the mowing plans. But not now. Not now. Phoebe pleaded with me, like Snow White and the forester, not to fell the meadow, and I heard her. Its beauty took me away. (It was Snow White, wasn't it? Who was the girl in the fairy tale who begged the forester not to cut the trees?)

I've gotten up super early to dig the bonsai hole, before the blazing sun glares over the pines.  I'm grateful for this sandy loam, that presents nary a rock to my poacher's spade. Too well do I remember trying to plant trees or anything in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Good luck digging a big hole all by yourself. Here in Ohio, it's possible without hiring help or deploying TNT. It isn't all that hard.

 

I finish digging the hole, and I decide to dig out some poison ivy that keeps coming up at the head of Bill's little plot. "No poison ivy on Bill!" I growl. (I now have gigantic crazy itchy blisters between my fingers thanks to that little moment). I send the spade in and turn up the earth.

 And under the clod I turn up there is Something. I freak allll the way out.

 How perfect is it, that a box turtle has laid her eggs right over Bill's head? How amazing is it, that this nest, unlike all the others I've found dug out along my Boulevard of Broken Dreams, has somehow survived the skunks and the coons? 

Here's a hen box turtle starting a nest on the Boulevard in the first week of June. Yep, that's Curtis, bombing in more ways than one. Almost all of the nests I saw being dug along the Boulevard were predated by skunks and coons within a few nights. I tried so hard to find them and cage them before it happened, but I couldn't do it. Every time I thought I had one, it turned out to be a partial attempt. I pray some made it through.

There are four eggs on Bill's grave. I find one in the tailings and return it to its depression, hoping I haven't ruined it.How incredible that my spade has not harmed these precious, mostly-incubated eggs? It is perfection. I was meant to find this nest, to protect it. More on that later. We have a tree to plant.

Curtis leads the processional again, with all due gravitas. Liam has taken time from packing his last items for his return later this day to West Virginia University, to be my mule, hauling the tree, some cow manure, and 15 gallons of water out to the gravesite. Phoebe brings up the rear. We are making our own ritual.

 Some great Curtis Loew side-eye in this shot if you click on it.

 

First, we mix manure and potting soil with the loam I've dug out, and make a nice bed for the tree. Liam waters it until it's swimmy.

 

We lower the tree into the hole, face it the best way, and fill around it with a mix of manure, potting soil and native loam. Then we drown it with 5 gallons of water. 

  

Curtis gives Phoebe a kiss as she sits by the newly-planted tree. It doesn't look nearly so tall now that it's out with its feet in the big meadow. 

My idea was to have a shady place to sit when we visit Bill. It will happen. I will be old by then, but it will happen. It's mostly for the kids.

 

Curtis isn't a mad dog, nor is he an Englishman. 

He ain't sitting in the noonday sun. He won't be called out of the shade, either, not even for a photo. That's a cur for you. They have their own minds, are dripping with common sense. We laugh at how different he is from Chet, at how flagrantly self-centered Curtis can be. Of course, we love him for his  fiercely independent mind. We love everything about this dog.

I am grateful to have had this beautiful summer with both my kids. It has been a gift beyond measure to know they are asleep in their own beds right across the hall, that they're being nourished by the food I have grown and cooked for them, that my girl can cut the flowers I planted for her and prowl the milkweed that's grown for her. That we can go out and squeeze the kiwis and pick the golden raspberries and tuberoses every day. These are the things that matter. It seems so simple, but it's not anymore. It is everything. I know there will come a time, perhaps next summer, when neither of them will come home, and that is as it should be. We will all adjust, because adjusting is our only option, and it will continue to be good.

 The little ceremony we made, of planting this venerable tree nearly twice their age, by their father's grave, to honor him and remember him, is everything, too. Ceremony, ritual, tradition: we don't need to rely on society's customs. As a family, we make our own, doing what feels right and salutary to us, what fits. We're a small family now, but we are all the tighter for it.

Bill was, I think, too big for his pot here on earth.  Certainly one of the most expansive people I've known. Maybe he needed to be set free, to another life we can only guess about. And the little tree, 37 years in a pot, is sending feeder roots out as I write, exploring the good Ohio loam

and waiting for the rain.