A Long and Lovely Day, and it's only 2 PM!

Saturdays mean Pensacola Beach turtle patrols for me -- I help out the SCA (Student Conservation Association) Intern on Fridays and Saturdays so she has two days off each week. There weren't any turtles there, but there was a much more pleasant sky than yesterday.



I'm not well-versed in clouds or meteorology, but the edge of this one seemed really abrupt and strange to me, enough so that I had to take a photo...



As I was leaving the beach, VIP (Volunteer in Park) Carol Melton called to let me know she had a crawl and possible nest on Perdido Key, so I abandoned my plans for Santa Rosa and headed over there instead. Carol indeed had a new nest -- another Kemp's ridley (Lepidochelys kempii) not far from the nest last week. Maybe it's Gracie's way of letting us know things are ok for the ridleys. They are starting to make a comeback, after decades of effort.



Their crawls are much narrower and less distinct than other local species. It makes them much harder to find as they wear away quickly in the wind and/or rain. This one is about 27 inches wide. Loggerheads are usually around 32 to 35 inches, greens about 35 and leatherbacks can be off-the-charts... They're like bulldozers.



Their eggs are like leathery ping pong balls, buried about eight inches under the sand. The egg chamber itself is about 18 inches deep, but the mama turtle fills it up with dozens of eggs.



This particular turtle did a fantastic job. She crawled straight up from the surf, found a high dune, then started to get a little lost. She must be like me -- very intelligent, but a little silly and with absolutely no sense of direction. She hit the dune, crawled 50 feet west and built a body pit in the sea oats (Uniola paniculata), but didn't lay any eggs. There were a lot of sea oat roots there, and it may have prevented her from digging deep enough. This stake marks her first failed nesting attempt (don't ask me how I know, I just do). You can see how narrow Perdido Key is here -- that water is the bay to the north; the turtle had crawled up from the Gulf of Mexico to the south.



She then crawled behind the dune, did a couple of strange loop-de-loops and ended up exactly where she started, and laid a nest. It should confuse her predators a bit as her scent is all over. I also spread fresh sand over the egg chamber after I located them and packed them back in. We do what we can to keep them safe...



I spent the rest of the day GPSing (that biology verb again -- I may need to make a dictionary). We had least tern colonies, snowy plover nests and sea turtle nests that all needed to be mapped. It was a great day to be out and about on the beach, and half of Pensacola seemed to agree!

I startled a bunch of visitors who just laughed at me as I abruptly stopped my ATV, launched myself off it, and ran after a gull, my yellow GPS backpack and antenna bouncing along with me. A laughing gull (Larus atricilla) was chasing a snowy plover chick! The snowy plover mama was going a little nuts, squawking, flapping, flying and pretending to have a broken wing to attract the gull. I took a more direct approach and just chased the gull, though the visitors offered more permanent solutions.



Maybe it wasn't the best thing for a park biologist to do, but I couldn't just stand by and watch a chick get eaten. They're just too cute! In my defense, it is my job to protect all of the wild animals in the park, even the rattle snakes.

In all, it's been a good day, and the weekend has just begun :)