Loggerheads, Plovers and a Stranded Green

This is shaping up to be an excellent sea turtle nesting season for Gulf Islands. As of this morning, we already have six nests -- our first nest last year wasn't until June 25th, so we're all pretty happy. Calle Hermosa got their traditional nest today.



Sally, Monica and I took an embarrassing amount of time finding the eggs, but sometimes that happens. It just means the mama turtle did a good job camouflaging the nest. We found the eggs eventually, and left them right were she built the nest. She chose a good spot.



We spent the rest of the day at Perdido Key, GPSing existing turtle nests and finding four new SNPL nests. Can you see this one sitting on her eggs? She really is there...



Maybe this is a little easier...



It's hard to see these little 5 inch birds when you're driving down the beach on an ATV. That's one reason we try to drive so slowly, but they're still easy to miss!

We also had one stranding today, a tiny green about 16 inches long (well, that's carapace length only).

It's sad to see these animals that have succeeded so well, overcoming unimaginable obstacles to grow to 'dinner plate' size. This turtle was too far gone for us to determine what killed it, but at least we know there are small recruits feeding in our sea grass beds. All the more reason to take the boat out this week and make sure our buoys are in place over the sea grass!

My personal goal for the week (a new addition here): to be more patient with less driven colleagues and practice kindness in all of my interactions, no matter what.