Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey, both PHRatz and Kensopher, I enjoyed seeing the pictures of the turtles and wildlife. I love seeing other people's pictures. I also have a digital camera and I go crazy when hummingbird season arrives. No matter how many pictures I have I always take more. Silly I guess, but I love to try and get that one special picture! Some day I am going to actually get the one I think is better than all I have already taken.

I have pictures of my boxies as well of course....then there's my kids, the grandkids, the pets, etc.etc.etc. Anyway......I love seeing posts with pics attached. Maybe some day I will learn how to post pictures on this board too and show you all my boxies.

By the way, it has turned cool here again, but that is ok because I am getting the outdoor enclosure finished up. Over the week-end I bought some bermuda sod and planted in the front section of the enclosure. I cut out holes to fit the watering dishes into so maybe the boxies won't get so much dirt in them.

Also the feeding squares have sod around them too to keep the food cleaner until they are through with it and I take it up. When we had a foundation poured for our new store-room, I had the guys make me some cement squares, about 18" x 18". Anyway.....that is what I put the food on out in the pen. That way I figure it will help keep their beaks from over-growing. All my boxies seem to do fine eating together, but perhaps I should get some smaller squares and place around different areas of the enclosure for them to have a choice.

I bought some strawberry plants, half of which will be planted inside the enclosure and the other half outside. I figure that way they can munch some, but I will also have some growing outside the pen so they can actually mature.

The back half of the pen has the cubbies in it with a very large one in the center of the pen. My boxies tend to bunch together, so I figured I might as well have one place that they can all get into if they so desire. Oops.....guess I have written way too much this time. Any thoughts about this would be welcomed. You all have a good day! Take care!..............9boxies

>>Hey, both PHRatz and Kensopher, I enjoyed seeing the pictures of the turtles and wildlife. I love seeing other people's pictures. I also have a digital camera and I go crazy when hummingbird season arrives. No matter how many pictures I have I always take more. Silly I guess, but I love to try and get that one special picture! Some day I am going to actually get the one I think is better than all I have already taken.

Then you understand!! I've spent 10 years trying to get the perfect photo of a roadrunner & the day I got the photo of him/her leaving with tail up was the day I FINALLY got what I was after. I was literally in the dirt up against the fence trying not to scare it but he/she saw me & was about to run. I snapped & snapped & got that one, 20 seconds or so later that bird was over the fence & gone. I was thrilled more than I can tell you. LOL

Now you've reminded me, the hummingbirds will be here soon and the Bullock's orioles. I have them to get pics of next. The orioles arrived here for the first time in the mid 90s, I'd never seen them before. They feed off the hummingbird feeders too and they are beautiful orange birds. Most birds that live around us are brown, gray, or black. Colorful birds are few & far between.
Thank you for looking at what I've been driving my friends nuts with. Since I joined Kingsnake then got a new camera I've been having a lot of fun creating the photo album. I love to see everyone else's pictures too.
Ok so now I can't remember what you were saying about box turtles so I have to hit send then go back & reread your post lol.
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PHRatz

........Then you understand!! I've spent 10 years trying to get the perfect photo of a roadrunner ...

I understand too well. I lived down in Jamaica for 4 1/2 years with DH and there wasn't a day go by that I didn't just long for a really magnificent camera that would take my "perfect" picture of a streamer tail hummingbird. Known as the "Dr. Bird" by the Jamaicans. They are just an awesome bird in my opinion. I have lots of photos of them but none that I really perceive as my "great photo". Oh well......I have the memories of all of them coming to my feeders and sitting in my lime bush waiting for their daily showering from my garden hose. They are just a neat little bird. I got all kinds of photos of birds while there. Beautiful, colorful birds that I had never seen or heard of, and lots of them came to my yard where I of course kept food for them.

The only drawback on putting seed out for the birds was that I also had 4-legged birds..nasty big rats! So I had to keep an eye out and remember to bring my hanging birdseed feeder in each night! Yes....hanging birdseed feeder! The rats which lived in the coconut trees down in the gully would climb from them to the limbs of my sweetsop tree and into the feeder they would go. That is wierd to be on your balcony and see all this movement in the trees and finally realize it is rats! Ha-ha-ha-ha! You rat-lovers would have enjoyed the sight I suppose! Not me! Rats scare me. Take care........9boxies

I've never heard of that type of humming bird..they sound pretty I'll have to go to a field guide site & look them up.
Those four legged birds in coconut trees must've been either the black "roof rats" or some other species. They wouldn't have been the species I keep as pets. My species wouldn't live in trees like the black rats will.
We had a woodrat problem under our house for a time & although I don't dislike pet rats, we can't have wild ones living under the house. The woodrats are a totally different genus & species than our pets. They looked like our pets on steroids lol.
We used lawn sulfer to drive them away, it worked.

Now that we have box turtles in the lawn & will have more out there once the pen is built we can't have a lot of wild rodents hanging around putting them in danger.
The thought of the roadrunners hunting around here is scaring me, I don't know if they'll attack an adult turtle or not.
We have more cats in the neighborhood now than we used to, I am counting on them to keep the rodent populations down.
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PHRatz

PHRatz.....if you don't find the picture of the streamer tail hummingbird.....I can send you one via e-mail if you would like. or....perhaps I can figure how to post one on here along with the boxies....9boxies

>>PHRatz.....if you don't find the picture of the streamer tail hummingbird.....I can send you one via e-mail if you would like. or....perhaps I can figure how to post one on here along with the boxies....9boxies

That's going to have to be the plan because so far I haven't been able to find one online.
If you don't mind, please do either send or post it.
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PHRatz

Hey that was a good idea to have the guys pouring a foundation to make you some box turtle dinner plates.
I am so jealous, you are nearing the end of construction on your box turtle pen. I want mine NOW! lol
We are only still in the planning stages, I realized that if we begin right now we'll disturb Hobo the box turtle. He is hibernating in the burrow that was abandoned by a Mexican ground squirrel and that burrow is right on the line where we need to dig to create the foundation for the pen.
We can't disturb him so we can't begin just yet. Arrgghh.
My DH has a man lined up to build this thing & once he starts it should take about 2 days max to have it done.

Growing strawberries sounds like a plan. I may steal your idea on that.
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PHRatz

Thanks for the compliments. I plan on having more pics loaded once everybody starts waking up.

Strawberries are a great idea. I must confess that I don't have much luck planting anything edible in the enclosures. The turtles absolutely destroy them. With drought tolerant plants, I can do the following: raise the bed up a little bit...buy a plastic pot or bucket and cut the bottom out, bury it slighly in the ground, and keep the parent plants safely out of reach. Then, most strawberry cultivars will spill over the sides...dropping little red treats for the turtles. It gets so hot where I live, I can only do this with drought tolerant plants...the water evaporates way too quickly out of the raised bed for more tender plants.

I am "fortunate" enough to have wild strawberries growing in my backyard. They ruin my lawn, but I don't mind. They don't get the big, juicy strawberries that everyone thinks of. They get these tiny little red fuzzy things that my turtles chow on anyway. The upside is...you can't kill these little suckers! Also, my dog likes them

Drop us some pictures of the enclosure before and after construction if you can.

im glad this forum is starting to perk back up! and i love all the pics of new babies and everyones boxies waking up... (makes me feel like less of a fruit for phtographically documenting every single thing my turtles do) maybe you guys could give me your opinion on this.. since you all seem to have or be in the process of building an outdoor enclosure... im still in the planning stages for mine, but i cant decide if i should keep the turtles covered or just leave the top open.. its going to be in a fenced in back yard, so i dont have to worry about dogs.. but how big a threat are racoons and opossums (i live in georgia).. the majority of the outdoor homes ive seen online are open but every book i read says keep it covered to protect them from predators... any suggestions?
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my pets: clown treefrogs, reed frogs, big eyed treefrogs, tiger leg monkey frogs, gray treefrogs, milk frogs, cuban treefrogs, whites tree frog, green treefrogs, squirrel treefrogs, blue webbed gliding treefrog, red eye treefrogs, chameleon treefrogs?, mossy treefrogs, dusky salamanders, tiger salamander, box turtles, mud turtle, map turtle, yellowbelly slider, florida softshell, two saltwater tanks, five cats, two chinchillas, and a boyfriend.

sleepofapples.....in answer to your question about whether or not to have a cover on your enclosure......I don't have one on mine, but I have a high cinderblock fence out back and there are no predatory animals here that I know of. I do have a huge gathering of white-wing dove on the telephone poles that run down the alley, and also a lot of grackels which tend to make me worry sometimes. I don't know if a grackel would try to carry off a turtle the size of mine or not. I have never seen one appear to be curious of the turtles when it lands in the backyard, so I am not sure about them. I have toyed with the idea of making a certain area of the enclose a "safe haven" for them at night though, just in case any of the neighborhood cats decide to check out the enclosure. It would take a lot of wire to do so. Hmmm...I will keep thinking on that. As for your pen...if you have possums and raccoons, perhaps you should have a covering for the pen. Help 'sleepofapples' out here folks! You all are more knowlegeable on these topics than me. .....9boxies

If it were me & we had raccoons & opossums around us who can attack, I would put that cover on top of the pen. I think you could make covers with a wooden frame filled in with metal fencing of some type. Since we don't have these types of animals here I am not sure if flimsy chicken wire would work for you or if the tops would need a more sturdy type of fencing wire.
I have "talked" with people online in the past who did lose box turtles to these species of predators & so they then did build tops for the outdoor pens. I just can't remember exactly which type of wire fencing they used to make those tops.

9boxies, about the grackles, we have plenty of those too. I don't think they would bother a normal adult box turtle but I do believe they would try to attack a hatchling. I find baby birds in my sulcata water dish sometimes, grackles kill & eat baby birds & they like to wash their food before they eat it so I know it's them leaving little dead bodies in the water dish.

I had Shell E outside one day, I don't recall which year it was, so I don't recall if she was my only box at the time. She was walking on the ground as I watched, I saw a large male grackle look at her & then he started checking her out a little too closely for my comfort. He looked like he was going into attack mode so I got up & scared him away. The problem with Shell E is that she's lost too much of her carapace which means that she can't close all the way up so she can't protect herself from a predator.
Shell E is just Miss Boldly Curious, she'll walk up to anything & check it out whether she should or not. Which is probably how she lost that much carapace in the first place!

The only thing we see around us that will intimidate the grackles are the roadrunners, the grackles will still walk in front of them but they do keep their distance from a roadrunner.
I am leery of them because they can be very dangerous to smaller animals.
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PHRatz

thanks for the advice... i would be most upset if one of my babies got eaten by a racoon... i really wasnt planning on a top, but ill figure out a way to work that into the design.. rabbit wire would probably be sufficient.. its easy to work with and i doubt a racoon could get through it.. we have it on our chinchillas cage and although she tries quite hard, she cant gnaw through it or pull it up.. ill probably repost the question a little closer to building time and see if anyone who lives in or near georgia has any comments.. the landlord said that they had problems with deer eating thier tulips in the spring.. he never actually mentioned raccoons but i imagine if there are deer, then racoons are more than likely around too..
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my pets: clown treefrogs, reed frogs, big eyed treefrogs, tiger leg monkey frogs, gray treefrogs, milk frogs, cuban treefrogs, whites tree frog, green treefrogs, squirrel treefrogs, blue webbed gliding treefrog, red eye treefrogs, chameleon treefrogs?, mossy treefrogs, dusky salamanders, tiger salamander, box turtles, mud turtle, map turtle, yellowbelly slider, florida softshell, two saltwater tanks, five cats, two chinchillas, and a boyfriend.