nesting

For anyone who enjoys nature, summer is a fascinating time to be outside. Animals are on the move: Turtles are nesting, baby birds are testing their wings, snakes are foraging and young mammals are emerging. In central Pennsylvania, where I live, last year’s hatchling painted turtles have overwintered in their nests and emerged looking like tiny helpless snacks for raccoons and ravens. I’ve already rescued a baby killdeer – a shorebird that nests in parking lots – that ran off the road and got stuck in a grate. And I’ve watched an eastern chipmunk prey on a nest of towhee chicks. I moved the killdeer to safety because it had fallen into what we call an “ecological trap.” Humans create these traps when we degrade habitat that looks suitable to animals. For killdeer, parking pads and roofs give off all the vibes of a great nesting site – except for the drains – and they have less natural habitat available these days. But I d...

Many of the ocean’s most charismatic animals spend their lives swimming, flying or gliding thousands of miles, from the coasts to the high seas. Arctic terns, humpback whales and sea turtles are examples. Scientists have spent many years documenting and studying these magnificent journeys. Chronicling where these species go is just the beginning. The next steps are understanding when and how far each animal travels and what triggers it to roam. We are a marine biologist and an evolutionary ecologist and have worked together to study the nesting and migration habits of endangered olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea). This information is vital for managing the turtles’ recovery – but our research shows that two identical-looking olive ridleys may follow very different paths. Approximate range of olive ridley sea turtles. NOAA Protecting animals that move Mapping the s...

Playing with my children on a beach on Hatteras Island, a barrier island off the coast of North Carolina, I struck up a conversation with a man walking his dog. We were standing next to a turtle nest, which the National Park Service had roped off with a sign stating that the spot was federally protected. “Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly when the baby sea turtles will come out?” I mused. He smiled and said “Well, we’re working on that.” That conversation generated a partnership to develop TurtleSense, a novel, inexpensive way to monitor turtle nest activity remotely. In a newly published study, we describe how it works. Participants included Eric Kaplan, the man I met on the beach and the founder of the Hatteras Island Ocean Center; David Hermeyer and Samuel Wantman, retired engineers at the San Francisco nonprofit Nerds Without Borders; IBM master inventor Thomas Zimmerman; and veterinary student Joshua Chamberlin. As a developmental n...