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Posted by jnrosenthal on 20:25:50 07/15/07
Thanks to everyone who weighed in on my nest/egg question a few days ago.
The suggestion that the nest is a cardinal's seems apt, since our property always had numerous pairs of cardinals in the bushes, trees and feeders.As for whether the eggs are gecko's, anole's or someone else's I am afraid I cannot advance the inquiry much further beyond reporting that I "candled" all the intact eggs, and could detect no shapes or mass inside any of them, and am under strict orders from the nest finder, and present owner, my wife Emily, not to destroy any of the remaining intact eggs-even under the rubric of scientific inquiry...so gecko or anole eggs it will have to be.DNA anyone on the broken eggs?
This(non) report was delayed by my overnight fishing trip to Sanibel, which produced what was for me a unique natural history observation.
While fishing in the surf on Friday evening with my friend Jay in the company of various herons, ibis,terns, gulls and osprey, I spied a small commotion a few hundred yards up the beach, where about 6 (human)beach walkers were congregated about a large object, that after a minute or two, I realized was a female loggerhead turtle returning to the water. I raced to my gear bag(100 yards downshore the wrong way of course) and retrieved my little digital point and shoot(which had been brought along to photograph the hoped for over 30 lb snook, one of which did connect to my lure before regrettably breaking free after a short fight), raced up the beach in my not built for speed wading sandals, and got one shot of her as she entered the surf.It was still a good 20 minutes before sunset.I inspected her nest the next morning with the turtle conservation beach patrol, and her nest, which was dug but empty of eggs, was declared a "false crawl'. Probably she had been frightened by the people who saw her struggle up on the beach and followed her as she prepared to lay her eggs in the grassy dune. The good news, however, was that we discovered another fresh nest not present the previous evening, perhaps 15 feet away, that was full of eggs, and likely was from the same turtle who, we theorized, returned to finish her business in the dark-or so we hoped.
It was the first time I have seen a loggerhead on the beach in daylight(or nighttime for that matter, when you expect them to be on the beach ).
There's no scale evident in the photo, but her carapace was a good 4 1/2 feet long -front to back.
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