Turtle Nest

Or, how to make a protective cage for a turtle nest

Our backyard borders Town Lake Park: we often see turtles laying eggs at this time of year. They are strong diggers, and produce an impressive amount of mud (seriously do they bring a bucket of water with them?).

I’ll often poke a stick in the ground to make sure I don’t step on or mow over the nest. And to hopefully keep an eye out for baby turtles. (You know - so I can make turtle shell helmet for extended underwater swimming time when I’m exploring ocean ruins). Sadly, the nests are always dug up by some predator.

This time, I contacted Carolina Wildlife Conservation Center. They sent sensible instructions like no pesticides or herbicides near the nest, keep people and pets away, don’t mow the site, remove anything that might attract predators to the vicinity. And, just what I was looking for, how to build a protective cage for the nest.

Pretty simple - a box about 2ft square, 4 to 6 inches high, protective hardware cloth on top. I used scrap wood and extra hardware cloth that I already had on hand. Learning from the experience of building the duck pen, I installed the hardware cloth with facing boards instead of roofing screws, this will be more secure and easier to maintain or disassemble. When covering the eggs, it’s important to stake it to the ground, so that predators can’t just push it aside. Lastly, you have to cut a few notches, short and wide, so the babies can escape when they hatch.

I understand our turtle momma is an Eastern Painted Turtle, as differentiated from the Midland Painted Turtle by the neatly aligned seams on the shell, whereas the Midland has alternating seams. The nest contained at least 2 eggs that I could see, and they take 70 to 80 days to hatch. When they arrive, the babies will be about the size of a quarter, and ready to crawl, forage, and swim. Presumably they won’t stick around very long.

The likely hatching dates are August 23 - September 2, I will check then!