It was a heavy muggy day to walk with some nice views. The rain last night washed away any new hatchlings tracks, though it looked like a few nests did continue to have emergences.
Another day of no new nests and no false crawls. That makes 5 straight days without a new nest - we are holding at 122 nests. Not fretting it though. We went 12 days last year with no new nests before the season nesting finale.
Nest #1 was inventoried today after the patrol was over. The nest was laid down and left in-situ in Zone 2 near the campground on May 13th. So today was 70 days since that event and it was inventoried by the same team that found the nest. No boils were noticed on that nest the last few weeks, though about 5 hatchlings were observed coming from it over that period. On inventory we found no live or dead hatchlings, though the nest smelled pretty bad. The grass on the dunes had grown into the nest and the roots surrounded many eggs - tough to dig out. We did find 50+ eggs hatched, so more hatchlings emerged than the 5 observed. There were over 90 unhatched eggs, largely due, we believe, to the roots invading the nest.
(All volunteers are trained and permitted, for the activities being undertaken, by the SCDNR under permit number 2024-MTP537)
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