It’s turtle time of year. The time of year when turtles are seen crossing roads, traversing backyards, and just about anywhere else you might look. The other day I was stopped at a traffic light and looked to my left. A large truck towing an even larger trailer was skidding to a stop in the turn lane. Just in front of the truck was a large snapping turtle crossing the road. When the truck came to a stop the passenger door flew open and a guy got jumped out and trotted up to the snapper, grabbed it and walked the turtle to the side of the road where a small pond was and released it. I thought to myself, turtles could use more friends like these two guys. I have done this very thing hundreds of times over the years.

So what are turtles doing when they are crossing roads and wondering in backyards? Well, most likely they are female turtles who are looking for a place to lay their eggs.

Turtles spend most of the life in water. In spring and early summer male turtles seek out females for mating. Male turtles in most species tend to be slightly smaller and have extra long front claws that help them hold onto the edge of the females upper shell during mating. Males also have a concave area on their lower shell (plastron) that fits over the domed upper shell (carapace) of the female.

Once the male has mounted the female a packet of sperm is passed from the male to the female which will fertilizes the developing eggs. The female has a short window of time where she needs to find a suitable place dig a nest and lay her eggs. Unlike birds, turtles don’t incubate their eggs but rather they leave it to the sun warmed earth to incubate.

The female turtle will leave her lake or pond and travel up to a half mile until she finds a place where the soil is soft enough to dig an egg chamber. Sandy soil is often chosen because it’s easy to excavate. Using only her back legs and feet, she begins the digging process by wetting the soils with extra water she has stored in her bladder. One scoop of her hind feet at a time she begins to dig the nest chamber. It’s a slow process that she can’t see because it behind her. If she is disturbed during this time she will abandon and head back for the water.

A nest chamber of a Painted Turtle is no deeper than 3 to 6 inches deep, or the depth in which she can reach with her hind feet. In the chamber she will deposit 5-20 pink to white leathery eggs. Once she starts to lay the eggs the female usually isn’t scared off and is completely vulnerable to predators.

Once the eggs are deposited in the chamber she takes great care to back-fill the chamber with dirt and tamp it down. She even goes as far as moving debris over the chamber to completely camouflage the location. Once this is done the female usually makes a bee-line back to the safety of the water. Just yesterday I watched a female painted turtle (see photo) dig a chamber and lay 6 eggs in less than 30 minutes. She may have several nests in one season but it’s usually several days or weeks between nesting.

Now it’s up to the sun to warm the earth and incubate the eggs. This is the dangerous time. Most studies show that 70-90 percent of all turtle nests are predated by raccoons, skunks, domestic cats, dogs, opossum, fox, coyote and just about any other animal that has a nose good enough to smell the buried eggs.

In most species of turtles, the chamber temperature during incubation determines the sex of the offspring. Generally speaking, warmer nests incubated at around 84-87 degrees F, produce mainly females. Cooler nests at 76-77 F, produce mainly males. Nests incubated at 82-84 F produce a mix of males and females.

For the painted turtle the length of incubation is 70-80 days, so eggs laid now won’t hatch until September or October. If the weather is good when they hatch, the young will emerge from the chamber this fall and head directly to the lake. However later hatching young turtles will remain underground in their nest until the following spring before heading to the lake which starts the entire process all over again. Until next time…