This week is brought to you by World Turtle Day and very sticky marsh mud.

 

While Week 2 was a short week for us, we were still able to have a successful haul and celebrate World Turtle Day ft Dr. Kaitlin.

This week, we were mainly stationed in one location. We started off the week with setting traps. On Tuesday, it was World Turtle Day and we were able to sample a whopping count of 9 TURTLES!!! How exciting! We believe it was the power of the magical Dr. Kaitlin being by our side.

 

In honor of World Turtle Day, the creative media coordinator of the Kane County Forest Preserve interviewed and watched us do our magic with 3 Blanding’s turtles.

 

Later in the week, our sample counts remained really good for Kane Co and we ended the week with pulling traps.

 

Here you can see Dr. Kaitlin, Nick, and Surina utilize the back of our Polaris Rover to sample 3 more Blanding’s. One of them is  named Gandalf which was the first Blanding that Bill ever caught and recorded.

 

At this site, the marshes tend to be pretty sticky which meant Surina’s wader boots kept getting stuck in the mud of the marshes but fear not, she did not flood her waders this week (though there were some close calls).

Now onto what you are really looking forward to…this week’s tallies:

Total Turtles Sampled: 23 (in 4 days)

Surina’s Fall Count: 3

How many times did Surina Flood her Waders: 0 WOOHOO

 

 

What’s a turtle’s favorite game?

Beak-a-boo

 

A painted turtle we sampled.