Inventory..... Nest #5, 10th Ave S Crescent Beach

July 12th, Carla and Don discover a nice crawl going up the beach and ending in a good size body pit.

Eggs quickly discovered,  nice location, no need to move. 

Egg cavity was opened.  3 eggs were found empty, shells curled.  1 additional egg was broken,  taken for DNA Study,  remainder of eggs are covered back up, nest is marked and protected.

49 days later, all is quiet, nesting area is level, one would never know what might be going on just below the sand.

Day 55, Sept 5, hole forms in the sand and hatchlings quickly emerge around 8:30PM.  Windy, exit hole starts filling with sand within minutes of the major boil.  Winds picks up and by the next evening, with sand blowing, the hole is completely covered,  only a slight depression is visible in the sand.

Four days later, after a windy and stormy night, nesting area has completely change, sand has shifted and built up in different spots.  No evidence of the hatchlings or the hole they came out of.

September 9th--time to dig up the egg cavity and inventory the nest.  Crowd starts to gather...

Rob, Donna, Sherry and Arlene are anxious to get started.  Flies are all around the dunes and the dune grass, biting hard......

Donna and Arlene digging, sand has really piled up over the eggs.

I think I see some......

Sorting and counting the eggs

Not good...39 whole or unhatched eggs.....

Opening the unhatched eggs to see the stage of development

Poor guys, died after opening their shell but before emerging from egg (Pipping).

Inventory finished, empty shells returned to the hole and buried .

Nest #5

Not a very good outcome

Nest laid on July 12

3 eggs were empty and curled.  Ghost Crab?  One additional egg was broken, removed for DNA Study, rest of the eggs left where laid, a natural or in situ nest.

Hatchlings emerged 55 days later, early evening

4 eggs destroyed on day #1

77 Hatched eggs

  39 unhatched eggs

2 hatchlings died during pipping

Total nest count - 122 eggs

Hatchling success rate  63.1% Hatchling Success Rate

Thanks Don and Carla for reporting the crawl on July 12th.

Thanks Rob, Donna, Arlene, Sherry and all of the other volunteers who worked with this nest.

Thanks Julie for your great pictures.