The Common Snapping Turtle tends to begin nesting around June because male snapping turtles will seek out mates upon reentering their territory after hibernation. Pregnant females will exit the body of water where they live and migrate in search of a sunny area with loose dirt or sand that will allow them to dig a deep enough hole to lay her eggs. Once the mother turtle finds a suitable spot she will remain stationary while she uses her back legs to dig a large hole in the ground. After she can no longer reach more dirt with her legs to make the hole bigger, she begins laying eggs.
The Common Snapping Turtle can lay dozens of eggs; we found a nest with a whopping 46 eggs! The mother turtle will return to the body of water that she left at the beginning of her journey and exhibit no further maternal actions toward the eggs. The eggs themselves are white spheres, which makes differentiating them from the oval shaped painted turtle eggs a very easy task. They take around 18 weeks to hatch, but that number fluctuates depending on temperature, as does the gender of the hatchlings. Ever since the building of the school, the common snapping turtle has had to adapt to the new surroundings because the school was built on the snapper's nesting grounds. With the new school in place the snappers have had to search beyond the sunny area where they usually lay their eggs because that is now an access road for the loading dock. The snappers have wondered to areas where there is loose dirt so they can easily dig the nest for their eggs. So far we have seen that turtles have designated the area around the traps we put up, the shot-put area, and the loose dirt by the loading dock as good nesting grounds because the dirt has not been packed down by construction.
The downfall of these new areas is that they lack the cover of vegetation that the land had before the school was built, so it is easier for predators to find the nests and eat the eggs. We have been having a problem with weasels that have been beating us to the nests and leaving behind the shells of disappointment for us to find.
The Common Snapping Turtle tends to begin nesting around June because male snapping turtles will seek out mates upon reentering their territory after hibernation. Pregnant females will exit the body of water where they live and migrate in search of a sunny area with loose dirt or sand that will allow them to dig a deep enough hole to lay her eggs. Once the mother turtle finds a suitable spot she will remain stationary while she uses her back legs to dig a large hole in the ground. After she can no longer reach more dirt with her legs to make the hole bigger, she begins laying eggs.
The Common Snapping Turtle can lay dozens of eggs; we found a nest with a whopping 46 eggs! The mother turtle will return to the body of water that she left at the beginning of her journey and exhibit no further maternal actions toward the eggs. The eggs themselves are white spheres, which makes differentiating them from the oval shaped painted turtle eggs a very easy task. They take around 18 weeks to hatch, but that number fluctuates depending on temperature, as does the gender of the hatchlings. Ever since the building of the school, the common snapping turtle has had to adapt to the new surroundings because the school was built on the snapper's nesting grounds. With the new school in place the snappers have had to search beyond the sunny area where they usually lay their eggs because that is now an access road for the loading dock. The snappers have wondered to areas where there is loose dirt so they can easily dig the nest for their eggs. So far we have seen that turtles have designated the area around the traps we put up, the shot-put area, and the loose dirt by the loading dock as good nesting grounds because the dirt has not been packed down by construction.
The downfall of these new areas is that they lack the cover of vegetation that the land had before the school was built, so it is easier for predators to find the nests and eat the eggs. We have been having a problem with weasels that have been beating us to the nests and leaving behind the shells of disappointment for us to find.
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