Inventory of Nest #18, 6th Ave N, OD

NMB Sanitation Employee, Willie called in early on July 17...

Turtle Crawl, 6th Ave North.

Linda was on the beach before sunrise.  Nice crawl up and down the beach.

Good size body pit, lots of thrown sand, huge pile of sand at the base of the incoming crawl.

Easy probe, Linda quickly found the egg cavity.   Joe and Rob then uncovered the eggs in the huge pile of sand.     NMB Nest #18, 6th Ave North!

Funny egg cavity, very shallow, eggs appeared spread out

52 days later,  September 7.

Sand drops and huge hole forms. Less than 1 hour later, hatchlings boil out and stream toward the ocean.  All on a mission, all disappear into the water in less than 10 minutes.  Low tide, moon is behind the clouds, but all made it.

  

By the next day, most evidence of the emergence is covered by the wind and beach activity.

The hole made by the hatchlings is quickly filling up with sand, no tracks are visible.

Sunday night, Sept. 11, Rob and Jack, with the help of Girl Scouts, Rebecca and Andrea dig up the nest.

Nest is very shallow and the eggs are quickly found.

Poor guy, didn't even make it out of the shell!

Hole dug by mother....not very deep....but contained 120 eggs!!

Thank you very much Willie for calling in the nest.  Thank you Joe for helping us find the eggs and marking the nest.  Thank you Jack, Rebecca and Andrea for helping Rob dig up the nest.  Some of the material was not pretty, but thats nature.  Thanks to all the NMB volunteer who helped with this nest!

Thank you Julie and Jim for your great pictures!!  

Inventory Results:

Nest was found on July 17th, 6th Ave N, OD Section of NMB

Nest was in a good location so not moved

Nest emerged on Sept. 7th,  Day 52

Nest was inventoried on Sept. 11th

121 eggs in nest

1 egg taken for DNA

120 eggs found at inventory

89 Hatched eggs

28 unhatched of which 26 died in early development, 3 died late development

3 hatchlings died while hatching from egg (Pipping)

74.17%  Hatchling Success Rate