Posts Tagged ‘hatchling tracks’

Last Hatchling?

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

October 8th is late … very late in the season for diamondback terrapin hatchlings to emerge in the Great White North.  Yet, this morning as we walked along a dirt road between salt marsh on the south and rolling dunes to the north, we spotted a fresh set of hatchling tracks slaloming across the white sand.  The tracks began atop one dune, slipped down slope and then climbed up the next dune immediately adjacent to the roadway.  We began to follow the track with camera in hand.

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Following the Tracks of a Diamondback Terrapin Hatchling

The previous video retraces the tracks in 45 seconds but the hatchling would have taken more than 45 minutes to create them.  We found this perfect little terrapin resting under a clump of beach grass.  It sported an extremely sharp egg tooth and a slight yolk sac remnant.

Last 2008 Hatchling Sports Sharp Egg Tooth

It seemed a bit lethargic in the cool weather, but warmed a bit as it basked on the sun baked sand.  Still, after we moved it across the roadway to reduce the chance of an unfortunate accident with vehicular traffic, the terrapin held its position for several minutes before taking a deep breath and venturing into hiding within the nursery marsh.

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Release into the Wild Elicits a Deep Yawn

If this hatchling proves the last of the year, as is most likely, it certainly wrote a wonderful punctuation mark on the 2008 field season.

Skill + Luck + Patience Yield Best Dune Emergence Sequence

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

Skill brings you to the precise location where an extraordinary event MAY occur.  But luck ensures that you reach that spot at the once-in-a-lifetime moment when an extraordinary event DOES occur.  Finally, patience permits you to dwell at the right spot at the right time for that exact instant when everything comes together and a miracle happens.  Watch how these factors brought us to the perfect dune emergence sequence on Saturday.

Hatchling Slaloms Down High Dune

Experience keyed us to a certain set of dunes that lay within a dense diamondback terrapin nesting site.  Skill enabled us to recognize a series of fresh hatchling tracks that crisscrossed the dune face like trolley lines (see above).  But then luck kicked in.  It showed us a stream of tracks that appeared to converge on a single concavitiy in the dune slope (see below). 

Tracks Converge at Possible Emerging Terrapin Nest

Patience gave us to time to wait and to watch the concavity without barging into the scene and disturbing the ongoing miracle of birth.  Seconds ticked by, then minutes, and finally a head poked through the shifting sand … and another one.  Hatchlings popped like slow-motion popcorn under the heat of the midday sun.

Hatchlings Emerge and Scramble to Safety

Spying so many tracks when we arrived, we had hoped that perhaps one hatchling might be left to emerge.  As luck would have it, ten babies remained in the nest and they popped out in ones and twos over the next hour.  As a whole, the event proved our very best documented dune emergence sequence as a beautiful miracle unfolded before our eager camera lens.

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Best Terrapin Hatchling Emergence Sequence