With nesting season fully in swing, there are lots of nesting turtles to watch for at the pond area. My favorite group of turtles is my spotted turtle - C. guttata - group. Some of the nests of my other turtles - I will often just leave in place to incubate naturally. However, I watch and try to catch all the spotted nests to incubate in a more controlled environment in my incubators. The problem is that the spotted turtles can be very cryptic in their nesting. It's easy to spot any other turtle (except the musk) nesting with a simple scan of all the pond areas. But spotted are often very hard to see when you first look unless you REALLY look.
See if you can spot a nesting turtle here in my upper pond area where they like to nest...
This is a full size image so you can zoom in to see.
With a bit of the creeping jenny moved aside - here's a closer look in case you couldn't find her...
I believe since they dig such shallow nests, they use the vegetation to help stabilize temperatures in the nest and shade it from direct sun. It obviously hides the nest well too and possibly gives more protection from predation.
No matter how hard we try to catch all the nests, we still end up with baby spotted emerging late fall/next spring in the pond from nests we miss!!
See if you can spot a nesting turtle here in my upper pond area where they like to nest...
This is a full size image so you can zoom in to see.
With a bit of the creeping jenny moved aside - here's a closer look in case you couldn't find her...
I believe since they dig such shallow nests, they use the vegetation to help stabilize temperatures in the nest and shade it from direct sun. It obviously hides the nest well too and possibly gives more protection from predation.
No matter how hard we try to catch all the nests, we still end up with baby spotted emerging late fall/next spring in the pond from nests we miss!!