Those weeks between the depth of winter’s freeze and the arrival of spring temperatures in April present real risks to Outer Cape diamondback terrapins that have spent the cold, dark days since October buried under the oozy bottom of Cape Cod Bay estuaries, such as Boat Meadow Creek in Eastham. Not often, but with enough frequency to effect at least a handful of these threatened turtles each year, terrapins become dislodged from their hibernacula either through severe natural conditions or human intervention. Once exposed to the air and unprotected from nightly freezes, these critters face certain death unless they are discovered and rescued. (See Frozen Diamondback Terrapin Rescued from Near Certain Death in Wellfleet Harbor from February 21st.)
Low-Tide Drained Tidal Flats off Boat Meadow Creek in Eastham
Around four o’clock on Monday afternoon a call came into Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. A local twosome, Donna Cary and Roger McKenzie, were enjoying a sunny afternoon beachcombing along the tidal flats when they were surprised to find a small, distressed turtle mid-way down the tidal flats.
Roger McKenzie and Donna Cary with Cold-Stunned Terrapin
As Donna noted, “It just didn’t seem to belong right there on the beach.” They scooped up the obviously troubled critter and brought it back to their nearby cottage. Having followed Mass Audubon‘s work with cold-stunned sea turtles, they laid down a towel on the floor and placed the terrapin in “dry dock” while they called for help.
Juvenile Terrapin Shell Shows History of Hard Life in Eastham
This y0ung turtle showed signs of a fairly hard life in Eastham’s Boat Meadow Creek. A substantial break in the shell between the third and fourth left costal scutes resulted from some earlier trauma such as a boat or instrument strike, since the wound had healed. She had scrapes and scratches on carapace and plastron.Â
Cold-Stunned Juvenile Terrapin from Boat Meadow Beach
But her immediate problem is cold-stunning. The most worrisome sign is the bleeding around the eyes, which she has yet to open. Previous experience with terrapins that have endured cold-stunning has taught us that when the blood vessels in their eyes have popped, the chance of full recovery for release into the wild is vastly diminished. It may be an indicator of irreversible brain damage. Still, we never give up until the turtle gives up, and 24 hours is too soon to make a definitive prognosis.
Close-Up Image of Three-Year-Old Cold-Stunned Diamondback Terrapin
The close-up photograph above provides a clear view of her annual growth rings in the first left costal scute with the original hatchling ring in the center and three yearly growth strips leading to the suture.
Recovering Cold-Stunned 3-Year-Old Terrapin in Rehab
This seriously impaired turtle is resting comfortably in rehabilitation “dry dock” in a warm, humid environment. Every few hours she is bathed gently in warm, fresh water to maintain her hydration while she recovers.Â
Cold-Stunned Juvenile Terrapin Resting Comfortably in Rehab
Conjoined terrapin hatchlings emerged from a nest in Eastham on the Outer Cape in August. These Siamese twins were first documented on Turtle Journal in the posting entitled “Two-Headed Diamondback Terrapin Hatchling” in late August and updated in mid-January in an article called “Two-Headed Diamondback Terrapin Update.”Â
Plastron of Two-Headed Diamondback Terrapin
As noted in earlier postings, their shell appears relatively normal with an enlarged, split nuchal on the carapace and an extra, middle gular scute on the plastron. The left head seems to control the left two limbs and the right head appears to control the right two limbs. After five months, the Siamese twins had still not been documented eating, despite presented food, and their activity levels had declined. As you can observed in the image above, the yolk sac has largely been absorbed, leaving these hatchling with little energy reserve.
Measuring Carapace Width of Siamese Twin Terrapin Hatchlings
On February 20th, the Turtle Journal team offered to help out with a more aggressive approach to get these special critters to begin eating, to increase their activity levels and, after their viability has been established through observation and medical examination, to find them a safe, permanent home.
Recording Weight and Measurements of Siamese Twin Hatchlings
We recorded baseline numbers for the Siamese twins on February 20th as 5.6 grams weight, 2.573 centimeters straight-line carapace length, 2.405 centimeters carapace width, and 2.367 centimeters plastron length. We’ll use these figures to judge the success of aggressive efforts to improve their viability.
Siamese Twin Hatchlings Learning to Eat
The first step is to get the twins to eat. Easy? Nope. Unlike snapping turtles that seem to pop out of their shells with mouths agape, necks extended and voraciously hungry, diamondback terrapin hatchlings demand time and lots of patience to get started eating. The most successful formula we’ve employed involves raising the hatchlings’ body temperature to 78-to-80 degrees (F) and offering them plentiful brine shrimp for 30 minutes once a day in a separate eating container filled with about an inch of warm water.
After rejecting offered food for 10 days, the twins began eating last night, March 3rd. The left head snagged the first brine shrimp; the right head got the hint and began munching nearby food. As typical with terrapin hatchlings, they did not immediately gorge themselves, but picked a little and rested a lot. Hopefully, their appetite will improve now that they know what those lips are supposed to be used for. Still, yesterday marked a moment of celebration. Without eating, the survivability of these precious youngsters would have been nil. Now they have a fighting chance.
Historic Pilot Whale Skull Discovered on Lieutenant Island
Winter storms and tides pounding Lieutenant Island’s west shore exposed a partially fossilized bone extruding from the low-tide drained beach. While I claim no credentials as an archeologist, and have only jokingly been analogized as part-Carl Sagan, part-Indiana Jones by a Cape Cod Times columnist, I’ve spent enough time scouring Outer Cape shorelines that I can detect even a fairly small and obscure anomaly … in the words of Big Bird, “something that doesn’t belong” … though I may not immediately understand its full scope and importance. And so it was yesterday, as I walked the shoreline to check for Asian shore crab activity off the Lieutenant Island seawalls.Â
Ancient Salt Marsh Peat Field, Southwest Lieutenant Island
Sue Wieber Nourse and I have been watching this area off the southwest coast of the island carefully for the last year, documenting the exposure of thick, rich peat from an ancient salt marsh that once held sway in this spot. Over the centuries, the inexorable advance of the bay has pushed the shoreline eastward, exposing and then subsuming this historic salt marsh within the inter-tidal zone. While every wash-ashore “knows” that erosion and tidal rise begins on the day the sale closes on their waterfront property, the barrier coastline of the Cape has defensively rope-a-doped with the sea since the last Laurentian glacier receded tens of thousands of years ago. To paraphrase another famous boxer, Joe Louis, “You can run, but you can’t hide.” Eventually, the sea wins. (ASIDE: If you don’t believe me, ask the former residents of Billingsgate Island!)
Partially Fossilized Bone Extruding from Beach
With my head down scrutinizing every stone and pebble just above the water line, I spotted a strangely shaped “rock,” which on closer examination gave me the feeling that a pilot whale skeleton might lay underneath. The edge of what I assumed was bone appeared to be in the process of fossilization, and rather than spongy, the bone seemed to be well preserved and “hard as rock” in the anoxic peat soil of the ancient salt marsh.
The afternoon was cold and frigid winds whipped across the windward side of Lieutenant Island. The last thing I wanted to do was hike back over the dunes to the car, retrieve my too small excavation shovel, trudge back to the beach again and dig through wet, heavy peat to uncover a pile of rocks and sand, or worse yet to actually find an intact pilot whale skeleton. But conscience and curiosity overcame cold and inertia.Â
Excavated Pilot Whale Skull
A little investigation and a lot of perspiration yielded a well preserved pilot whale skull that someone must have buried in the ancient salt marsh, after trying or rendering the whale blubbler for oil perhaps a century or two ago.   (ASIDE: Trying is the process of boiling off the blubber to yield precious and very expensive whale oil.) This exciting discovery hints of the historic past of the Outer Cape as a subsistence coastal whaling community, just as it teaches us a tangible lesson about the constantly changing topography of Cape Cod as barrier dunes and salt marshes shift with the advance of tide and time.
Excavated Pilot Whale Jaw Bones
Only the head had been buried in the former salt marsh by whoever harvested these pilot whales. The rest of the carcass was missing. My intuition tells me that additional skulls have been buried in this peat field and will become exposed in the days ahead.
Pilot whales, called blackfish by native Cape Codders, have stranded in Wellfleet Bay over the centuries. In ancient times, these strandings were more frequent and more massive, likely because pilot whale populations were equally larger. Unlike today, a pilot whale stranding was seen by the community as a bounty from God rather than a natural disaster. Subsistence level coastal whaling, practiced on Cape Cod for centuries before and after the arrival of Europeans, consisted first of passively exploiting pilot whale strandings and then more actively of driving blackfish into the shallows to strand. The animals were harvested and tried (rendering out the oil) on the shoreline. Try island on the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary is named for this historic activity. Carcasses, especially the skulls, were buried or sunken after trying in the abutting, oozy salt marsh.
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1902 Pilot Whale (Blackfish) Stranding on Cape Cod Beach
The photograph above illustrates a “bountious” mass stranding on the shores of Cape Cod in 1902. Life on the Outer Cape is hard, and before the days of summer tourists, cell phones and the internet, life was a lot harder. The serendipitous stranding of 50 or 100 pilot whales offered the entire community a path to instant prosperity or at least winter survivability.Â
2002 Pilot Whale (Blackfish) Stranding off Lieutenant Island
One hundred years later, in 2002, I had the unique and unpleasant opportunity to be the sole eye witness to a mass standing of pilot whales off Lieutenant Island at  six in the morning one late July day. The story of that stranding is posted on the Turtle Journal site under the title Two Unforgettable Days and a video clip of my kayak paddle to the scene of the stranding can be viewed under Eye Witness to Mass Stranding.
1893 Map of Wellfleet Bay
This map of Wellfleet Bay from 1893 shows Lieutenant Island, then sometimes called Horse Island. (ASIDE: Yes, I can see the head of the horse on the top right, now called the Hook. The feet are found at the bottom right, now Turtle Point, and bottom left, the southwest beach.) Above (north and east) of Lieutenant Island is Blackfish Creek that earned its name because of pilot whale strandings. The 2002 blackfish stranding occurred south and east of Lieutenant Island, in a body of water called the Run. I found the buried pilot whale skull on the southwest beach in an area that had once been a protected salt marsh, but is now submerged in the inter-tidal zone. (SECOND ASIDE: In 1893, salt marshes on the north of Wellfleet Bay had not yet been destroyed by construction of the dike blocking the Herring River and the commercial dock and harbor. Terrapins would have LOVED ancient Wellfleet!)
Another Exposed, Partially Fossilized Pilot Whale Bone
About 50 feet south of the spot where I found the first exposed, partially fossilized bone, I encountered another exposed bone. I did not excavate this bone to discover what might lie below. I suspect there will be additional sightings in the next few weeks in this former salt marsh peat field. Once spring arrives and summer beaches return, these exposed bones will likely disappear once again.
 “Snappy” — Juvenile Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpentine)
Snappy, the star reptile in the fresh water tank at Mass Audubon‘s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, offered a practical lesson last Friday on how not to handle a snapping turtle when attempting to relocate it from one place to another. It’s all a question of the turtle’s “business end.” How long is a snapping turtle’s neck and how far down its shell can that neck be stretched? Clearly, it’s best to learn these lessons with a young juvenile as teacher. While an adult snapping turtle would teach the same subject, its lesson might be a tad more permanent.
They don’t call them snappers for nothing. Not only can a snapping turtle reach halfway down its carapace (top shell) to express its displeasure with human interaction, but a snapper can “quick draw” its neck faster than the Lone Ranger can unholster his six-shooter and fire a silver bullet. Lucky for Don, Snappy has yet to master this aggressive technique in the safety of his life in paradise. We suspect, though, that the next time he’s handled so casually, someone will pay the price of admission … so to speak.
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Snappy with Neck Fully Extended
Where does Snappy put all that neck when not in the snapping mode? A snapping turtle retracts its neck into a vertically bent S-curve within the protection of its shell when not capturing prey or warding off too curious humans and other similarly foolish critters.
That $30M earmark in the Stimulus Package wouldn’t have saved this unfortunate marsh mouse. The mouse lived 2700 miles east of San Francisco and the red-shouldered hawk wouldn’t have cared whether it was protected by the feds or not; which it wasn’t. The hawk was simply hungry and the mouse bolted from its marsh hideaway at the precise wrong time. End of story … for the mouse.
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Hawk Strips Mouse Like Beef Jerky
We visited Onset Beach on Saturday to investigate reports we received at last week’s Turtles Gone Wild presentation at the Wareham Free Library. (See “Turtles Gone Wild†S.R.O. Hit at Wareham Free Library). We checked out the beach area where diamondback terrapin nesting was spotted last summer and continued our walk through scenic Onset village to enjoy the sunny afternoon. As we walked along the high bank overlooking the harbor, we spotted a red-shouldered hawk swoop down into the marsh edge and return with talons firmly gripping a mouse.
The hawk settled on a pine tree branch about 8 feet off the ground. Clearly, this raptor’s hunger out-voted its fear because it allowed us to approach within 10 feet to document its feast. Cleanly, efficiently, yet unhurriedly, the hawk devoured its prey with no regard for our presence.
Hawk Finishes Lunch Break
Swallowing the last morsel, the hawk leisurely lifted its wings, caught the breeze and sailed into the bright blue sky to survey the marsh menu for dessert.
