Just a cute headstart as compensation for the delayed blog! Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It's been a while but I've been up to some pretty amazing stuff while saving the world all at the same time. Three weeks ago, we discovered that there were 35 headstarts up in Lake County that needed [...]
Throughout all of these posts, you may have been wondering what we do with the turtles after we catch them and hopefully this post answers all those questions! Once we catch the turtles in the field, we place them in pencil cases with a letter associated with their ID. These pencil cases are placed in [...]
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 [...]
We have some exciting news! Next week we will begin our Turtle Tour of 2020 with some sassy yet classy Ornate Box Turtles (OBTs). These last two weeks have been pretty hectic in the lab between packing, ordering last minute supplies, a freezer mishap and animal care but we are finally ready to go! Check [...]
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 [...]
The first week of Blanding’s turtle work has been fun, hard, hot, cold, wet, and awesome. We have had a great time getting to know the wildlife biologists and techs we will be working with throughout the summer, and getting settled into our new roles as part of this collaborative team. Every day has been [...]
The Amphibian Pathogen Project (APP) has officially begun and the students, teachers and myself survived some sweltering 9-hour days. A typical field day involves: 1-2 teachers, 3-4 students, 3-4 different wetlands and lots of critter catching! We use nets, buckets and our hands to catch the animals before we process them. Ideally, we’d catch mostly [...]
