Speaking of testudines, on my beach walk yesterday morning I came across the turtle patrol. Noticing they were parked, and ever curious, I walked toward a nearby marked sea turtle nest.

Peering carefully over the markers, I noted a caved in area and tiny scratch marks in the sand around it. After roughly 100 days of incubation, sea turtle hatchlings leave their eggs, emerge from the sand*, and, typically, make their way to the water.

Unfortunately, some of these littles had been found in the backyard of a nearby house. So, the turtle patrol staff were searching the yard to make sure they’d all been found and relocated in the correct direction.

Sadly, I didn’t get to see the hatchlings clambering out of the soil. But it made me happy to know that at least one of our sea turtle nests was successful this year (since we’d lost all our nests last summer to storms).

*This mass emergence is the reason it is referred to as a “turtle boil”.