Snapping turtles tend to stay in the water until the female turtles come to land to lay their eggs. Sure enough, a glance of the turtle's hindquarters revealed that the turtle was depositing her eggs into a hole she had scraped into the ground, note the long 'dinosaurian' tail:
I was able to watch her deposit a couple of white, spherical eggs into the hole, but there was no opportunity to catch this on the camera, and I wasn't about to disturb the turtle in this most crucial of endeavors. I did take a photo of her beatific visage, though:
Isn't she beautiful? As with the killdeer nest I marked the location of the nest with a stake so I can inform the day shift of the location of the nest so nobody steps on it or runs a lawnmower over it. The place is starting to look like a maternity ward.
What a fantastic photo opportunity. That would be awesome to see them laying their eggs.
ReplyDeleteIt was a wonderful encounter, Tony. I have a soft spot for these monsters, even to the extent of picking up twenty-five/thirty pounders who are perilously close to roadways and relocating them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by.
Great pictures. Down here in Houston, we have alligator snapping turtles, which look like regular snapping turtles after a night of hard drinking and sleeping on the street. They get enormous and have very poor tempers.
ReplyDeleteWe used to catch baby ones in a creek when I was young. Never saw the regular old snapping turtle variety around here, although there were lots of red ears and soft shells.
I'm jealous, Nasreen. The Bronx Zoo has an alligator snapper, probably about a 200-pounder, in the Reptile House. We have to make do with the 30-pounders. Oddly enough, the common snapping turtle doesn't seem to make its way into Texas... I guess everything is bigger down there.
ReplyDeleteBig Bad Bald Wild Kingdom....
ReplyDeleteNice find and shots, B^4.
ReplyDelete~