Snapping Turtle Nests and the Joy of Wondering

  

Over the weekend of September August 31-September 1,  a small group of four of us joined Alexis for another weekend of tracking as part of the 2024-2025 Tracking Apprenticeship program. This particular weekend we were based out of the Algonquin Wildlife Research Station.

The weather was perfect for tracking; sunny, but cool and breezy for most of the weekend.

On both days we spent most of our time on the far side of Lake Sasajewun.  Even though we were in Algonquin on a long weekend, we did not see another soul while on the land together, but we did see lots of tracks and sign.  Of note were  prints, scat or other sign of the following species: 

southern flying squirrel, moose, otter, white-tailed deer, mink, muskrat, pine marten and black bear.

Of particular interest to me was our discovery of a lone snapping turtle egg.  My part of the province, Georgian Bay/Muskoka, is home to many turtles.  I have seen eggs laid in many different locations, but our discovery of a lone turtle egg, in the “cradle” of a large tree tip up, was most unusual and led me to decide to write this blog about snapping turtles.  The egg (see above) was in
a depression that was at least 1.5 m wide and 1 m deep.

Snapping turtles are the only species of reptile in Ontario whose eggs are spherical.  (The exception to this is the spiny soft-shelled turtle, but they are not found this far North.)

Before I had a chance to begin writing this post, a friend and I made another discovery closer to home that made for the great tracking experience that I now share.  This gave me a chance to apply previous knowledge, make use of print resources,  and exercise the skills of observation and questioning that I have learned from Alexis, Byron and Tamara since 2022. 

 

As I write, the date is September 7.  The temperature dropped last night and now it truly feels like Autumn, with today’s high being only +11 C, and it has been raining most of the day.  I went tracking this morning, and before we had even entered the
forest, we encountered a mystery.

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Two snapping nests (by the size, shape and volume of eggs), had been very recently dug up by a predator.  The first question was who had dug them up.  To answer this question I needed to consider my best guesses of who would eat turtle eggs in my area: red fox, raccoon, skunk, coyote (the hole was too small for bear).   A single canine print led me to think fox or coyote.  The size of the print was too small for a coyote.  Further evidence that the predator was a fox was the scat that I discovered in the exposed nest cavity.  I had not observed this behavior, (the depositing of scat into a food source) before. We had to wonder whether it might have been a sign that could be interpreted as “This is my food, keep out!).  The hole and nearby vegetation did
smell like fox urine.

I wondered, could there be any eggs left in the hole that the foxed missed/planned to get later?  Was that the reason he/she had defecated right into the hole?   After carefully removing the scat, we started to dig and removed many empty shells until finally discovering two that were partially hatched, and one that was still unopened.  One of the hatchlings appeared dead while the other moved slightly.

Once the hatchlings warmed up in the closed car (as we went tracking for an hour in the forest), we were able to safely release them.  It felt good to know that we had helped two make it to the relative safety of the wetland from which their mother had emerged in the spring,

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As we pulled out onto the road (an on-ramp to highway 400 South) I noticed more hatchlings on the road.  We discovered four, one of whom was still alive.  There were also at least four additional fox scats on the road.  I guessed that the fox or perhaps more than one fox, had spent the last evening and early morning eating hatchlings.  With their keen ears and noses, they likely were able to easily find them as they moved through the grass, trying to find their way to water.

 

Due to time constraints, we didn’t examine any of the scats to see their contents.

 

Questions we were left to wonder:

-Did the fox find the hatchlings and then go back to the nests to dig them up or did the fox notice them emerging and then start to eat them?  (We found one hole that looked typical for a nest that had safely finished hatching.)

 

And finally, how did that egg end up below that tipped-up tree in Algonquin?  No visible nest in site, no tooth marks on the egg either.  This one will have to remain a mystery.