Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Was out today taking a walk into a 110 acre wooded park,here in NJ. There is no standing water in this park, and the ground is very sandy so any rain that does come drains away quickly. The park is surrounded on all sides by housing developments. Today I came across 2 box turtles, in this park. On was a large male the other was a very small female. There is lots of turtle food in this park. Today I saw lots of wild blueberry, blackberries, and mushrooms growing. There are also lots of worms. The worms stay right under the leaf letter and are easy for a turtle to get at. When it does rain, storm water does enter the park but flows right out the other side. In time of drought the turtles in this park must have to go weeks with out a drink. In the future I will release some of my hatchling into the park.
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Jack

A fellow NJ guy here. You say you will release your hatchlings there in the future. I assume you don't mean hatchlings from those two turtles, which should still be in the wild there.

110 acres is not a bad size. There may be standing water somewhere there, even small amounts, that the turtles know about even if you have not seen it. There is an area behind my office, smaller than that, surrounded by urbanization for decades. There is still a small, relic, breeding population of box turtles there. These guys need all the help they can get.

Are your box turtles from NJ originally. If not, it probably would not be a good idea to let them loose here. That is, even though T. carolina carolina is native all along the coast, it would not be a good idea to release T. carolina from South Carolina (as an example) into NJ.

Box turtles are very resourceful when it comes to finding drinking water...during a rain, they will drink out of the smallest temporary puddles that form, or will drink the water held in the 'bowl' of a curled leaf. They also gain moisture from many of the foods that they eat. Mushrooms and fruit are a good source.

My niece lives in a densely populated neighborhood in Maryland. She bought her house last fall from a guy who had lived there for 15 years. When he sold her the house, he made her promise to be careful when she cut the lawn, because there was a phantom box turtle that periodically showed up out of the blue in the back yard. He had seen this turtle many times over the entire fifteen years. My niece hadn't seen the turtle all spring, so she figured the guy was hallucinating. I saw my niece at a party on July 4th and the first thing I asked her was "Have you seen your turtle?" Her eyes got like saucers and she said "I can't believe you just asked me that, I saw him this morning in the middle of the back yard!" It had rained during the night. She said she and her boyfriend snuck up close and the turtle was moving it's back legs really weirdly and looked like it was sitting in a hole. She went back inside and went back out an hour later and the turtle was gone and so was the hole. I told her it was a female laying eggs. She called her boyfriend and told him to cover the hole with something. I told her I'd come over the next day and dig up the eggs to incubate. The rest of the family got in on the story and we decided to have a pool to guess how many eggs would come out of the hole. I told them there could be as few as one and as many as eight or nine. The guesses ranged from one to seventeen. My brother guessed seventeen (he had been drinking). I guessed three (I was also drinking, but less). The next evening I went over to my niece's house to do the excavation. She assisted. She watched me like a hawk to verify the count, fearing I may cheat to gain an advantage. Her boyfriend had covered the nest with a flower box. The hole was well concealed, but we located it. When the digging was done, there were, in fact, three eggs. I won!....nothing. There was no prize, just bragging rights. I looked around the tiny yard and the contiguous yards and couldn't believe that a wild box turtle had survived there for years. If you go 50 yards in any direction, you hit a street. Not just a street, but streets that have curbs with every square inch taken up by parallel-parked cars. If this turtle ever made it into the street, she'd never get out alive. This told me that she lived in a microscopically tiny area, and had to be close by. There are no ponds, streams, or puddles within walking distance of where the eggs were laid. There are no vegetable gardens, berry bushes, or other obvious sources of vegetative food sources. Lots of back porch lights to attract bugs, I guess. The only trees and shrubs are ones planted by homeowners and landscapers. As we were finishing up with the eggs, I looked at a dense patch of pachysandra, maybe six feet by fifteen feet along her back property line, about ten feet from where the eggs were laid. I said "I bet she lives right there." My niece was scanning the perimeter, hoping to catch a glimpse of shell. I walked over to the pachysandra patch and started poking around. About five seconds into this, I saw her shell down in the leaves. Mystery solved. We picked her up and she was heavy and very healthy looking. From the looks of her shell, I guessed she was probably alive before the neighborhood was built in the 1970s. We put her right back in the same spot where she was sleeping. I told my niece that she had either been living in the immediate area when the trees were cleared for the development, or her mother had laid eggs in one of the yards and she hatched and survived all these years, pretty much completely isolated from what anybody would consider a suitable habitat.

Well, I have the eggs in the incubator. I'll be shocked and amazed if they're fertile, because I find it hard to believe she could locate a male, or vice versa, in that back yard. I guess if she figured out how to stay alive all those years among the lawn mowers and cars, maybe she's resourceful enough to figure a way to attract a boyfriend. We'll see in week or so when I candle the eggs.

thats so awesome keep us posted when they hatch

The turtles are still in the park. My original turtles came form Tennessee. Since then I have rescued one turtle from the side of the road that could not get over the curb. She was covered in blood. I thought a car hit her. This is the only turtle that I have removed from the wild. Some how she lost a leg, that was were she was bleeding from. She is now fully recovered and eats more than any other turtle I have. She has a hard time digging a nest with only one back leg, and most eggs are not covered when she is done. I worry that with only one back leg she would not be able to hibernate properly so that’s why I still have her. I have rescued several other turtles that people were keeping in fish tanks. This spring not long after they came out of hibernation I released 2 turtles back into the wild. These turtles were not sick and were released into a very large area with swampy areas and a lake.
I have walked all over this park were I saw the 2 turtles looking for a swampy area but there is none. The soil is very sandy but it does get lots of water run off form the housing developments when it rains but nothing stays. Were the run off water does go into the park worms have made a home there and are very concentrated and are in very large numbers. The worms are not your garden type of worm that you would did up in a garden. They stay on top of the soil under the leaf litter, which makes it very easy food for box turtles to find. They do crawl fast and wiggle a lot when you try to pick one up. The worms are juicy and I have noticed lots of moisture comes out of the worms when one of my turtles eats one. It’s my guess that the turtles are getting all the water they need from eating worms. I have searched the Internet but could not find out any information on this type of worm.

This is a picture of my turtle pen. It always seems to under constrution. I have stated my own "worm farm" in the upper left hand corner of the pen. My turtles now have to get there own worms.

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Jack

Jack-
Great and EXCELLENT pen! It is nice to see a nice roomy pen like that. Keep posting!

Also, enjoyed the survival story. She is probably a relic from predevelopment. Neat.

Very cool story! Amazing how they can adapt!!

Great story. Please do keep us updated on the eggs.
It'd really be interesting to know if they hatch or not.
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PHRatz

mj,
great post, bittersweet in a wy. I'm glad to here that girl is surviving in that habitat. Similar story here, live in a downtown area of a good sized city 1 block off campus of a very large univ. Neighborhood is 40-50 yoa. summer of 05 found a box dead in the street in front of our house. There had been some clearing of underbrush from the yard across the street. Subsequent to that the house nextdoor became vacant and the small goldfish pond in the yard was drained. Last spring, I was going out to pick up paper on a sunday morning a thought I was seeing things--- a beautiful male boxie looking right at me from the front lawn. I scooped him up and placed him in a recycling bin whilst I decided what to do . I was not going to take my chance with the street. Exactly 2 wks later, to the hour, I was taking out the trash an dstumbled across a turtle in our carport, I thought James had gotten out of his bin. Upon closer inspection, it was a female. She was not more than 12 feet from James' Box. Did she here him or was this just coincidence.??? I feel that somehow or another she tracked him. Make a longer story shor, we now have 3 hatchlings and the advice I get from this forum is invaluble.

I candled the eggs this morning and they all appear to be fertile. I couldn't believe my eyes.

One great source of water is air conditioning units. The condensation lines put out a ton of water. I have ours in a 25 gal. wading pond and it stays full and clean all summer long. We gave a friend a old bird bath and it is full even on the hottest days.

Just a thought

That is BRILLIANT! Not only is it a constant supply of water, but it is essentially distilled! Nice!