Snapping Turtle babies have hatched out!

For several days, we have seen tiny dimples in the soil atop the turtle nest. At first, we thought it might be from rain showers or ants. Then, we thought that maybe the soil underneath was shifting due to turtle hatchlings, as the eggs were laid 85 days ago.

Finally, today, a hole opened up in the soil and the first turtle emerged. Due to this being all sandy fill, the turtles were coated with sediment.

One after another emerged, and sometimes there seemed to be a race to the surface!

They just kept climbing out of the nest hole, now three at a time! All in all, there were 38 hatchlings. 37 emerged from the nest on Sept. 11th, and one emerged on Sept. 12th. I am going to wait a few weeks before excavating the nest hole to count the empty egg shells, as snapping turtles lay between 20-50 eggs.

We find that turtles can climb well at such a young age, and they were trying to find a way out of the cage that was put in place to protect them from escaping and getting run over in the road.

We were happy to see that they were mature enough to have absorbed all their nutritive yolk as the yolk sacs were no longer in evidence.

These were very healthy and active young snappers!

Drew gathered each wave of turtles into a plastic bin for counting and transport purposes.

He walked each bin of turtles over to the pond for their release.

The turtles were released to the south side of the dock where they encountered moist soil for the first time in their lives.

They had to walk over numerous tree roots to reach the water.

Then, it was time to enter the watery world where they will spend the next 11-19 or so years, until reaching sexual maturity, where they (if female) will then exit the pond to find a suitable nesting spot to lay their own eggs.

Swim away, little turtle! Swim away!

Uh oh... this is not the end of the story...Do you see the cormorant swimming in the cove to the north of the dock? He looks might hungry to me;-) These turtles will fall prey to many animals as they try to find food and shelter in the pond. Survival rate to maturity may be around 1/10th of 1%. Most, if not all, of our hatchlings will be eaten (even by mature snapping turtles out looking for a meal.) But, we do have several large females who lay eggs each year, so there is always the chance that one of our hatchlings will make it. Only time will tell...