After a week in the field, the days following get pretty crazy! The first thing we do upon our return to the lab, is unpack the truck and put the samples in the freezer. Most days, we still have unfinished lab work to complete for the turtles we sampled that day in the field, [...]
Welcome back to the blog! Sam and I spent this week checking traps, running our lab work, and releasing headstarts. Releasing the headstarts was a really special experience. After we found the perfect release location, we first confirmed the radio telemetry signal for each turtle. Over the next few months, [...]
This week we kicked things off at two locations in Illinois sampling Ornate Box Turtles (OBTs). At our first site, we didn't find as many turtles as we had hoped for but that doesn't mean they weren't there! Our dogs search by picking up on scent trails left during a turtle's morning migration. Due to [...]
Welcome to the first week of our field season 2020! Sam was very excited to get back out into the field, and I was thrilled to go out for the first time ever. Huge shoutout to Sam and Timmy for teaching me so much! One thing you won’t get to [...]
Hey all you happy herps and hatchlings! This week was a bit of a blur but we’ll try to enhance the highlights for you. We were off to a strong start with our first experience with fieldwork without the supervision of our certified adult, Dr. Laura. We helped set out traps on Monday, collected some [...]
First Blanding's turtle of the season. After almost two weeks of preparation, (and months longer of building excitement), this week we made it to the field. We were given the address of our worksite, two genuine WEL hats and we were off. We loaded the car up on Wednesday, moved to the site [...]
Blanding's Summer 2020 Blog 3 The day we have all been waiting for is here: moving day! We finally moved our huge pile of supplies from the field closet into our car. With the help of caffeine, we made the 3-hour drive up to Lake County to set up our lab at Turtle Town. We [...]
Welcome to Blanding's Summer 2020 Blog 2 This week we further prepared for our move to Lake County by picking up our rental car and packing up the lab. Getting our car was quick and easy, but packing enough supplies for the summer is another story. It took us about 3 hours (and [...]
Hello readers, welcome back to another exciting installment of "Michelle and Alexis following protocol by basically hanging out". This week we settled in together and did a lot of what we like to call "anticipreparation". This is when you are so wound up with anticipation you start preparing and packing for something you do not really [...]
Hi everyone and welcome to the 2020 Box Turtle blog (a.k.a. The BEST blog)! My name is Kelcie Fredrickson and I am a rising second year veterinary student at the University of Illinois. The blog’s main focus will be on our health surveillance program which monitors box turtle population health and will feature my student [...]
