{"id":4806,"date":"2001-03-10T16:17:25","date_gmt":"2001-03-10T21:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=4806"},"modified":"2010-03-03T16:25:03","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T21:25:03","slug":"invasion-of-turtle-point-%e2%80%94-10-march-2001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/?p=4806","title":{"rendered":"Invasion of Turtle Point \u00e2\u20ac\u201d 10 March 2001"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"03-10-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Turtle Point on Lieutenant Island Occupied by Harp Seals<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, it used to be called Turtle Point: the south hill of Lieutenant Island, which nesting diamondback terrapins scale in waves during June and July, and from which hundreds of tiny hatchlings scramble each fall\u00c2\u00a0through a phalanx of predators to reach safety in the surrounding nursery marsh.\u00c2\u00a0 But this year has witnessed a Canadian invasion of terrapin territory.\u00c2\u00a0 An army of juvenile harp seals has swarmed Wellfleet Harbor and today took possession of Turtle Point itself.<\/p>\n

\"03-10-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Juvenile Harp Seal on Turtle Point<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

An active, aggressive harp seal surprised my daily marsh patrol when he barked me away from Turtle Point in his best King of the Hill imitation.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0This beautiful pup\u00c2\u00a0had begun munching bearberry and showed the healed scar of an earlier unfortunate encounter across his forehead.<\/p>\n

\"03-10-3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Chubby Juvenile Harp Seal<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Along the adjoining Marsh Road, another harp seal had floated in with the midday flood tide.\u00c2\u00a0 The fattest seal I have seen this winter, or perhaps ever, this one looked as though its too small flippers would never be adequate to power\u00c2\u00a0such a well-endowed,\u00c2\u00a0roly-poly body.<\/p>\n

\"03-10-4\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Rags Shares Turtle Hill with Juvenile Harp Seal<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The good news for dear Rags and his beloved terrapins, too,\u00c2\u00a0is that spring arrives in two weeks and soon the weather will force these\u00c2\u00a0blubbery\u00c2\u00a0invaders back once more\u00c2\u00a0into the Great White North.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turtle Point on Lieutenant Island Occupied by Harp Seals Well, it used to be called Turtle Point: the south hill of Lieutenant Island, which nesting diamondback terrapins scale in waves during June and July, and from which hundreds of tiny hatchlings scramble each fall\u00c2\u00a0through a phalanx of predators to reach safety in the surrounding nursery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[823],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4806"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4816,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4806\/revisions\/4816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turtlejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}