Wonder Blog Entries Katie Brown

The adventures of Tonya the Diamondback Terrapin

Hi! I’m Tonya the diamondback terrapin and today I’m going to tell you about what life is like for me in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

A little bit about me, a Diamondback Terrapin is a kind of turtle that lives in areas near the sea called salt marshes in parts of Northeastern and the Southern United states. Here’s a little picture of me below. As you can see I have little diamond marks on my back which is how I got my name!

Salt marshes are coastal wetlands that are flooded and then drained by the salt water that is brought in with the tides from the ocean. They grow lots of grass and have very deep mud that is really easy to get stuck in!

Being a diamond terrapin is not a very easy animal to be, there aren’t that many left of us because a very long time ago someone decided they liked the taste of turtle soup! Because we were so tasty, we were hunted almost until there weren’t any of us left!

Because there are so few of us left around the United States, we are a protected species, which means it is against the law to harm or take us!

Also due to us being endangered, there are wildlife protection groups that have taken us under their wing, such as the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary! 

They have volunteers look for us along the roads, making sure we can get across safely. They also put up signs like these ones so that people make sure to go slow and be aware of their surroundings.

These volunteers also help look for nests that we make and we don’t make it too easy for them. It’s pretty hard to spot one of our nests, but with practice, it becomes easy for the eye to catch. Here is an example of what a Diamondback Terrapin nest looks like

The edges of the nest are slightly higher than the rest of the sand around it, there tends to be a little ridge. The area inside covering the top of the nest is also slightly darker than the sand surrounding it.

Here is another example of what the tops of these nests look like. And also since it had just rained before this picture was taken you can see some claw marks around the edges of the circle of the nest, the claw marks from these turtles only show around nests if the sand is damp.

When volunteers think that they have found a nest, they dig down with their fingers, gently, to see if they can find the egg at the top of the nest.

You see that white rock looking thing at the bottom of that hole? That’s the top egg of the nest. Us diamondback terrapins tend to lay 12-20 eggs at once! Once volunteers find these nests, they make sure to mark the date and time that it was found and put a cage over it in order to protect it from predators, such as coyotes, foxes, or raccoons.

Before the metal cage is put over the nest, the top egg is marked with a little stick, so the volunteers can know where to put the center of the cage. Then there is a six inch deep ring dug out to make room for the cage and to also make it deep enough so that the eggs are protected from predators, even if they try to dig around the cage.

Then the ring is filled in and the cage is tagged with a number so that it can be identified later for the hatchling season! The hatchling season is when all of these little turtles start to hatch from their eggs and make their way towards the water and out to the sea! 

Volunteers help make sure that we stay safe and make sure that we stay alive! We are so grateful towards them, even if we don’t always say it. We know that there are many people out there who could also be heroes to us just like these volunteers! There are many animals just like us that need people’s help! Animals like me are very interesting and fun to learn about and we hope to see you soon!

Wednesday

5/7/23 

Wellfleet,MA

1:00 pm

I can hear many different types of bird just trilling away, including the chickens next door. The most identifiable noise is the distinctive bark of a crow. There are lots of chirps, tweets, and trills of animals living in the tree filled backyard of my house. The trees are slowly swaying back and forth in the calm summer breeze. Vines are covering the trunks of every tree, some going as high as the top branch. There are many different types of trees throughout the backyard, especially many pine trees. Many branches on the trees are broken due to the recent storms that we have been hit with, the branches are strewn across the backyard.

One thing I’m wondering about is why there are so many Pine trees in the area, which led me to do some research on why this is. Luckily many sources had an answer. The most dominant tree species that are on the cape are the Pitch Pine, Black Oak, and White Oak. Early deforestation, coupled with intense forest fires in the 1700s decimated the Cape’s bigger and older trees. That then left room for the Pitch Pine to move in and take over. Pitch Pines put out lots of heavy low branches to crowd other trees out. Oak trees have a lifespan of 350 to 450 years so they grow more conservatively. It sheds lower nonproductive branches each year so it grows taller and its larger branches at the top will receive the most sunlight. Pitch Pines only have a life expectancy of 75 years, so there’s not much long term planning from their end. Pitch Pine doesn’t only push other trees with their branches, but they also blanket the ground in needle clusters that release a chemical which makes the soil undesirable for other rooting trees.

I noticed the light in different ways as I was taking these photographs, some trees or plants let more sunlight through than others. I also really loved taking pictures from different perspectives, going under bushes to take photos or squatting under a tree in order to make it look intimidating through its size.

In some ways it was similar to sketching in how much time it took and finding the right angle, I think it was similar in ways because you took pictures of something that caught your eye just as you drew things that caught your eye.

Throughout this exercise I learned a lot about Pine trees, I didn’t know how much space they took up compared to other trees. I think I noticed more about it when I was observing the trees through the lens of a camera, it made me notice more about my surroundings than if I was just looking at it through my eyes.

Friday, June 30th

2:30pm

Wellfleet, MA

I wasn’t sure why I didn’t recognize this one but I’m pretty sure that they’re just really tall dandelions that haven’t bloomed quite yet? The color and size thoroughly confused me, even though the buds were slightly yellow they were much taller than any dandelion that I have ever seen. Granted we have not weeded outside our front door in quite some time which probably let these dandelions grow into the giant that they now are.

I wasn’t sure why I didn’t recognize this one but I’m pretty sure that they’re just really tall dandelions that haven’t bloomed quite yet? The color and size thoroughly confused me, even though the buds were slightly yellow they were much taller than any dandelion that I have ever seen. Granted we have not weeded outside our front door in quite some time which probably let these dandelions grow into the giant that they now are.

Dandelion’s scientific name is Taraxacum officinale. I was researching yellow flowers/ weeds that tend to grow in backyards but nothing was really matching what I saw, so I looked up flower buds instead and the dandelion matched it perfectly. A fun fact about dandelions is that their seeds can travel up to five miles. They are also called pioneer plants because they are the first plants to grow on land that has been disturbed, such as land after a wildfire.

This plant is a known weed in the area, I’m not sure of the exact name, but it is a darker purple/magenta flower that gets lighter towards the middle of the flower. This plant also has some interesting leaves that I found much to my surprise were fuzzy! The color of the flower was the thing that caught my eye, was much different than the other green or yellow plants surrounding it.Th

This weed had a thin but sturdy stem and each of its little branches was covered in little round/oval “seeds.” This caught my eye because of the way it was swaying in the wind, it held it’s ground against the strong summer breeze.

This wheat-like weed was small in stature, maybe about three inches tall, each of its branches only has about one or two “seeds” on the end of them. At first glance I thought it was just a younger version of the plant right before this one but I noticed some key differences such as the differing number of “seeds” on the branches.

This plant kind of reminded me of lettuce, with all of the leaves coming from one place, the middle of the plant. There were some key differences though, this plant had slightly thick leaves with a white outline around them, which I hadn’t really seen on a plant like this before. Also something else interesting is that the plant’s leaves were fuzzy! It makes you wonder what the advantages of a fuzzy leaf are for a plant such as this one.

I really loved this sketching assignment, it made me have a closer look at my surroundings, I had never noticed just how many types of weeds were in my front yard. It made me focus a lot on certain aspects of what I was looking at, such as the texture of the leaves, the number of seeds on the stems, the types of stems, etc. On my next visit I really want to find out what kind of weed the purple flower was in my drawing, I was doing a lot of research on it trying to find something but I couldn’t find anything I was 100% sure of in terms of identification.

Entry 1, Mass Audubon Wellfleet sanctuary 6/23/22

Friday, June 23rd 9:00 am

Overcast with a lots of humidity

The park bench that I am currently sitting on overlooks the marsh and can see Indian neck as well as the small Islands that are connected by a boardwalk

I hear loads of little bugs buzzing all around me, all around my face

I hear the Willets that must have a nest near to where I am sitting, they are extremely defensive creatures as well as extremely protective, when you get too close to their nest they will let you know and keep letting you know until you move

I can hear the leaves scratching against each other due to the soft breeze, as well as the sea grass rubbing against each other

There are coyote tracks a couple feet to the right of me, you can tell they’re coyote tracks because of the X indent in their footprint on the sand. It seems like there were two running side by side. Upon further investigation, I also found some deer tracks, some of the footprints much deeper than others, which means they were most likely running at full speed away from a predator.

As I was walking and investigating these tracks I saw a strange kind of coral looking thing, it was white and round, kind of looked like a small white tree stump, turns out that it was a Whale vertebrae, which I had  never seen up close before. The whale skull was further ahead but I simply did not feel like looking at that further.

Why are Willets so agressive?

Where do Willets make their nests?

How many bird species live in the marsh?

What other bird species are protective of their nests?

Why do coyotes have X’s on their paws?

What do coyotes eat?

How big do coyotes get?

Where do coyotes typically nest?

Are coyotes a protected animal?

When is the busiest time of day for deer?

How long does it take for a whale to decompose?

How many whales are beached per year in cape cod?

How tall can seagrass grow?

What kinds of trees are in/around the marsh?

How does seagrass help keep the ecosystem in check?

How is a marsh a good habitat for animals? What does it bring to the plate?

What are the protected species of Cape Cod?

Why are horseshoe crabs protected?

Why are diamondback terrapins protected?

Why do diamondback terrapins lay their nests higher up in the marsh?

What is the most endangered species that lives on Cape Cod?

What kinds of bugs live in the marsh?

What do ticks do/ what are they?

What kinds of soil do marshes tend to have?

Where do animals tend to make nests in a marsh?

How does a marsh help protect animals?

Why are willets so aggressive?

Willets tend to sound the siren whenever something that they deem a predator gets a little too close to their nest. Willets start to make noise, and trill loudly until that predator goes away. Willets are so protective that they are actually known to fake injuries, most typically a broken wing, in order to lure predators away from their eggs or their chicks. Willets nest on the ground, usually among dense short grass, sometimes on open ground. Willets are so aggressive towards humans because we get so close to their nests on the ground, their nests are extremely hard to see and find. Willets tend to just stand and yell at people until they go away. From my own personal experience, if it gets really bad they sometimes divebomb who they perceive to be predators.

”  “Noisy Willets of the Salt Marsh.” Menunkatuck Audubon Society, menunkatuck.org/noisy-willets-of-the-salt-marsh. Accessed 23 June 2023.  ”

Sitting on a bench and exploring the trails of the Wellfleet Mass Audubon society was a very interesting experience. Observing for so long was really interesting going from one spot to the next, always trying to find new things to catch your eye. The Willets really caught my eye because they simply just didn’t go away and basically forced me to focus on them. I knew that i was most likely close to a nest to make them act like that, but I had no idea the lengths that htye would go to or the fact that their nests were on the ground hidden in the tall grass.