{"id":3077,"date":"2009-09-29T09:37:50","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T14:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=3077"},"modified":"2010-01-16T11:48:17","modified_gmt":"2010-01-16T16:48:17","slug":"red-ants-attack-terrapin-nest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=3077","title":{"rendered":"Red Ants Attack Terrapin Nest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"nest-148-pass-000-closeup-840\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0Red Ant Attacks Pipped Terrapin Hatchling<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Turtle Pass lies on the north shore of Lieutenant Island on Outer Cape Cod.\u00c2\u00a0 Diamondback terrapin females ride high tides\u00c2\u00a0in Blackfish Creek to Turtle Pass, struggle up the steep banks and dunes, and deposit nests in June and July each year.\u00c2\u00a0 Nest 148 was laid on July 8th atop Turtle Pass and protected under a predator excluder by Sue Wieber Nourse.\u00c2\u00a0 After 82 days of incubation, yesterday seemed an appropriate time to check the eggs.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Click Here to View Video in High Quality<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Red Ants\u00c2\u00a0Attack Terrapin Hatchlings in Nest<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Excavating the nest, I ran into a colony of red ants burrowing through the egg chamber.\u00c2\u00a0 I found recently pipped eggs with defenseless hatchlings struggling to emerge and nine plump and viable eggs.\u00c2\u00a0 Red ants had entered the pipped shells and were embedded in the egg white and the yolk sacs.\u00c2\u00a0 Some ants appeared to be stinging the forelimbs of the baby hatchlings.<\/p>\n

\"nest-148-pass-001-840\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Red Ant on Terrapin Eggshell<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I immediately harvested the nest and cleaned red ants from the pipped hatchlings.\u00c2\u00a0 Eggs and hatchlings were placed in fresh, moist sand to complete the incubation process.\u00c2\u00a0 They will be released into the wild in a week or so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00c2\u00a0Red Ant Attacks Pipped Terrapin Hatchling Turtle Pass lies on the north shore of Lieutenant Island on Outer Cape Cod.\u00c2\u00a0 Diamondback terrapin females ride high tides\u00c2\u00a0in Blackfish Creek to Turtle Pass, struggle up the steep banks and dunes, and deposit nests in June and July each year.\u00c2\u00a0 Nest 148 was laid on July 8th atop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3077"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3091,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions\/3091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}