I saw this old Horseshoe in the beach grass near the flats on Cape Cod Bay. It is covered with shellfish and barnacles that have attached themselves to its shell. It looks ancient… I wonder how old it is.
Any ideas?
It is always such a treat to look outside and see some sort of wildlife in our yard. Today it was this White-Tailed Deer sauntering through, looking for something to eat.
I think I surprised him as I took this photograph from inside our house through the glass. He stared at me for a bit and then moved on.
I called Bill Allan, our local turtle expert, this morning to tell him that we had 5 Box Turtles that hatched in our yard from Thursday to Saturday. He was very excited. He suggested that we dig down a bit very gently and see what the nest looked like… whether the egg remnants were still there or perhaps another egg that wasn’t going to hatch. Were we surprised!
I dug down very carefully and there was another little baby turtle trying to dig its way out! Wow!! This is Number 6 and I think the last. We did see some of the eggs remnants that had hatched and that was pretty cool.
Two things that I learned from this awesome experience: 1. Sometimes it takes days for them to all hatch. Ours took 5 days. They do not all hatch on the same day. 2. They are the cutest, most precious little things I’ve seen in a long, long while.
Bon Voyage, little ones, I hope we see you around our yard in the future! What an unbelievable experience!
When I posted my blog on Friday about the 2 Box Turtles that had hatched in our yard on Thursday, I thought that was it. Until… there were 2 more that hatched on Friday afternoon. What a wonderful surprise! (Click on blog link to see more photos.)
They are just adorable, as you can see from the photographs. And then yesterday morning, we could see a little one crawling out of his little hole in the ground. How precious is that?! Wow! We’re now up to five little ones!
The photos show the 3 new ones and how cute they are. You can see in the last photo the 5th turtle who is climbing out of the hole where the egg has been for the past 78 days.
What an awesome experience! Anyone living on Cape Cod might have the same experience next year! What a treat!