Snapping Turtle Lays Eggs (great close-up video;-)

I am so excited! This snappy lady decided to lay her eggs next to the flower garden near the deck. I was able to set up a camera looking down on her and did some hand-holding of another camera to capture my best effort yet of eggs dropping into the nest hole! I did all the videography from the deck so as not to disturb her. The entire process took about 3 hours and has been compressed into a 6 minute video. As you watch the video, remember that this process has been going on for over 200 million years. Allow yourself to drop into an almost Zen like state and just absorb this ancient yearly ritual of egg laying. Enjoy!

Here is a still shot of the purty lady. I think she is a fairly young turtle and I think she might be different from the female who laid her eggs in our yard last year, but it might be the same female. This one seems a bit younger with a smaller shell.

Here is a close-up of her face. Snapping turtles reach sexual maturity at about 6 years old, and they live up to 30-40 years.

I was so excited to be able to zoom in on the eggs in the nest hole. Snapping turtles can lay up to 80 eggs, but 20-50 eggs is more common. I am thinking that she may have laid up to 50 eggs today. She used her hind legs to move the eggs around in the nest hole to make room for the next eggs to drop. She dropped between 1 and 2 eggs at a time.

The location of the nest hole as photographed from the deck.

The turtle cage was put over the nest hole to protect the eggs until hatchlings emerge between 9-18 weeks after being laid. We'll be looking for hatchlings to emerge between Sept. 4th to Oct. 5th.

By the way, this is the 800th post on Maine Nature Diary, on Blogger.