LOCAL TURTLE EGGS

      Females of all species of turtles, world-wide, lay eggs with leathery, flexible shells in holes they dig themselves in sand, soil or mulch.  There the eggs are incubated by sunshine heating the materials they were laid in. 

     Turtles in southeastern Pennsylvania where I live, and across much of the eastern United States, including common snapping turtles, eastern painted turtles and eastern box turtles, lay eggs in soil and mulch in June.  And the cute baby turtles hatch about two months later, and are immediately on their own.  Aquatic baby turtles quickly make their way to the safety of a pond or slow waterway where they hide among water vegetation to avoid would-be predators.  

     As reptiles, turtles are cold-blooded, have scaly skins and descended from an ancient lineage.  They were present on earth before and during the age of dinosaurs, many millions of years ago.  And many turtle species hibernate where winters are cold. 

     All turtles have unique features, revealing their common ancestry.  Their bony, protective top shells are composed of ribs and backbones grown together.  And their lower shells are their sternum bone grown longer.  They also have sharp, bony jaws, but no teeth.  

     Big, 40 pound, female snapping turtles plodding slowly across fields, lawns or roads are startling to see.  They appear to be, and are, remnants of the Dinosaur Age.  Those huge, aquatic turtles are searching for a place to deposit their up to 30 eggs.  And like all turtle species, female snappers use the claws on their back feet to dig cradles in soil or mulch.  When her eggs are laid, each snapper pushes the material back into the nursery with her rear feet and retreats to her home pond.  There she is totally carnivorous, feeding on fish, frogs, ducklings and any other creature she can handle.  

     The aquatic painted turtles are colorful with red and yellow stripes on their necks and legs.  These pretty reptiles live in ponds and sluggish creeks.  And every sunny, summer morning, painted turtles of both genders and all sizes line up on half-submerged logs to bask in warming sunlight until they have the energy to hunt food and mates.  Paints consume aquatic invertebrates, tadpoles, snails, water vegetation and other edibles in their home ponds.  

     Female painted turtles dig nurseries in loose, bare soil near their aquatic homes.  Each larger female may lay up to twelve eggs in the little nursery she dug, then went back to her sheltering pond.  

     Box turtles, which are land turtles, inhabit bottomland woods floors, where they hide under the fallen-leaf cover every summer night.  These are beautiful turtles with yellow or orange markings on otherwise dark shells, legs and heads.  

     They are called box turtles because they close their bottom shells against the top shell as tight as a box for their protection.   A muscular hinge on the lower shell allows them to do that.  

     Box turtles ingest invertebrates, berries and other edibles from dead-leaf-strewn woodland floors.  And female box turtles lay three to five eggs per clutch in holes in loose soil they dig in woodland clearings.    

     Raccoons and striped skunks dig up and consume turtle eggs, when they find them.  And those two fur-bearers, plus opossums, mink, herons, large fish and other predators eat some of the baby turtles.

     Turtles, world-wide, are fascinating creatures.  They all hatch from eggs and are on their own at birth.  And the common species of turtles in southeastern Pennsylvania are no exception to that.