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. 

BoxTurtle Morning

I've found two so far this year: box turtle nests, freshly made, and immediately dug out, usually by skunks, opossums, or raccoons. Even crows will dig them out. The pliant shells, like bits of white plastic, scattered. You would walk right over it, and wouldn't think a thing of it, unless you live in a place where there's never any litter, and you stopped to investigate. With every year that goes by, finding these licked-clean eggshells breaks my heart more. Between predators and deaths on our dratted roads criscrossing their home ranges, box turtles cannot catch a break. 

So from mid-June through early July, which is egg-laying season for box turtles, I pace the mown paths that hold the perimeter of my meadow and bisect its center, looking for fresh nests, trying to find them before the predators do. Aided by their sense of smell, mammalian predators are much better at this than I am. Fishy-smelling protein awaits just an inch below the surface.

So on the morning of June 28, 2022, when I found THIS in the path, I was beside myself. I'd never seen such an obvious nest, the loose, crumbly excavation tailings to the left, and the mud freshly globbed on 

complete with adorable clawprints from the egg producer herself, as she carefully tamped down her excavation. Can't you picture her doing it??

And on the upper path, on the same morning, another nest!! 

Little footprint, like a tiny elephant foot with claws...

Here are the tailings she dug out.

On finding two turtle nests in the same morning, the direction of my day took a wild-mouse turn.

Off I did tread, to the garage. There, my predator-baffling accoutrements awaited on their designated shelving. Raccoon baffles, house sparrow traps, turtle nest cages, all gathered together in the Great Garage Cleanout of 2020. There are things you must have on hand for just such emergencies.

I grabbled what I needed

called mah best fren Curtis, and headed back out to the meadow as the sun rose higher in the sky.

I pounded stakes into the ground to secure the cages over the nests

then trudged back to the house for heavy insurance.

I knew the stakes wouldn't be enough to stop raccoons, so I went back up the meadow to fetch cinder blocks with which to weigh the cages down.

Here, I'm caught on my trail cam with a 63-pound pack full of concrete. From this experience, I know without question that I am not built for hiking the Appalachian Trail. Because I would certainly have at least 60 pounds of gear, food and water, and though I am strong, I know I'm not strong enough to haul all that I need.

Just to live in the country is more than enough.

When I got to the first nest with the 63-pound pack on, I had to drop to a sit and roll on my back like an upended turtle to get it off! Lord have mercy. Glad the trailcam didn't witness that!

I weighted each cage, careful to keep the nests exposed to the sun.

Curtis snoopervised. I think he worries about me more as we both get older. :)

Box turtles choose their nest sites carefully, assessing the soil and sun exposure and who knows what all else in their choice. They need sun to heat the eggs, and they prefer my wide mown trails to thick meadow. On the trails, they have a prayer of getting through the vegetation to be able to dig an egg chamber. But there, they're also much more exposed to predation. So I help where I can. I was over the moon to protect two nests this year. Predators 2, turtles...?  I won't know if the eggs made it until probably October, or maybe even next spring, for the eggs incubate for three months, and the babies sometimes hatch and overwinter in the nest. It's a long, long waiting game to find out. 

In case you're wondering, the cage grate is large enough (1 1/4" square) to let the babies out without a problem. That is absolutely vital! You can't cage a nest and then confine the babies when they eventually hatch! Nor can you monitor it closely enough to prevent their expiring inside the cage before you get there.

I took a cooldown walk to the orchard, which is largely too shady for turtle nesting, and found a female Io moth resting on one of my beloved milkweed plants.

She looks like a dead leaf, until you gently tease a wing aside, and she startle-flashes you with giant eyes! (naturalist parlor trick-- you're welcome)

At orchard's end, the butterfly weed I mow around and prop up with sticks was in full bloom.

The indigo buntings I'd been monitoring had finally fledged on Day 10. Hooray!!

As I walked up to check the patio crack for Fak, the copperhead,

I found this.  

I'd scratched our initials and our anniversary (9-11-93) into the concrete.

I forgot I'd ever done it. 

And now here we are

 and aren't,

 and I found two turtle nests in the same morning.

It was a good day in the country.

E. B. White

 

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.