Turtle Doc to Range Control – 1 PAX 1 VIC all clear of the training area. Well folks, the time has come for me to leave Cape Cod and say goodbye to all my turtle (& human!) friends that I have made this summer. I had an absolute blast out in the field and will [...]
These past few weeks in Cape Cod have been spent turtle tracking, reading scientific papers, and getting started on my manuscript! After some significant writer’s block, I have finally put some words down on paper and am getting way too excited about publishing this research for all of you to read! My summer office [...]
I am in denial that I only have two more weeks in beautiful Cape Cod. This summer has flown by and I don’t want it to end…OK I won’t get too emotional now because we still have a lot of turtles to track! Nicole, my roomie and turtle-tracking sidekick, is a pro at using radiotelemetry and [...]
Hello readers! Thank you for hanging in there and patiently waiting for this LONG overdue post! I am super excited to give you all an update on my first field week back with the pups! Yes, the John and his dogs joined Turtle Team in May but I was still cramming way too much info [...]
Hi and welcome back to the blog! Last week Kayla and I had great trap success and spend lots of busy days with stacks of Blanding's. However, we did have one (major) hiccup: It was a nice Friday afternoon and I was excited to start fieldwork. I pulled my very first trap of the day [...]
Dr. Allender teaching me the art of the "shell-fie" These past 3 weeks have been spent tracking our Eastern box turtles with radio-transmitters on base for their second round of sampling. This time around was hotter and much more humid than before which slowed us down a bit in the woods. It was [...]
Hi all and welcome back to the blog! Last week we continued the tradition of participating in Blanding's Bowl - a week when we make work into a game. Each year, everyone who works in the Blanding's Recovery Program sets their own traps and looks for hand captures to earn points. Each Blanding's turtle caught [...]
This week I will be showing you all how I process my samples once I get back to the lab. Whole blood samples get processed as soon as I get back for the day, and swabs/plasma get frozen for further analysis once I get back to the lab in Urbana. Depending on the number of [...]
What am I doing here? What is the meaning of all of this? Ok, don’t worry, this is NOT an existential crisis. I thought I would take a minute this week to show all of you the process I go through when processing box turtles! Each turtle has a different personality and varying levels of [...]
Hi Everyone! We know we’ve been away for awhile but there’s lots of exciting stuff to check out in our vlog! Last week was full of fun-filled field days. We caught PLENTY of Blanding’s, along with many snapping and painted turtles. We also had a very unexpected guest in one of our traps! See [...]
