bird of paradise | Abbe's world of wildlife

Those are turtle eggs, freshly laid. They came by the way of their mother turtle this morning around 8am. I had gone out to take some photos of the crappy day. We had a good rain and it was so dark. The cranes came in for breakfast,
and I had walked to the lake to take some photos of the ‘band of brothers’ who were frolicking in the water. It was truly a day to be a duck! It was drizzling a bit after a hard rain. I started walking back toward the house when I saw a turtle making her way from the house to the lake. She was quite slow in fact, probably because she is a reptile and it was cold and she was tired from laying those eggs.

She ignored the cranes attempt to peck her, and could not even get the energy to run past me to get to the lake, usually the turtles will crank on the speed when they see humans near them. I’m sure she was exhausted and cold. I walked back to where she had come from and could see where she had buried the eggs, I gently extracted five eggs that were not buried too deep. The raccoons would have easily gotten to them or the cold coming tonight would have killed them. I have raised successfully a number of snake eggs, and did have luck with one clutch of turtle eggs a couple summers ago. They were the size of quarters, but it was always summer when we incubated the eggs so the heat naturally kept them warm enough to grow into full term turtles and snakes that broke open their shells and were ready for the world. The turtles looked just like the ones we kept as kids in those little clear plastic turtle bowls we had in the 50’s before they scared us all with the “salmonella” stories.
The eggs I took I have placed within a small plastic fish tank that has a night light incorporated into the top of the tank. I also placed a thermometer inside and the temp is almost 80 degrees with a tiny 7 watt bulb — that’s perfect, so maybe on February 19th, there could be 5 little baby turtles hatching. I must keep them moist without being too wet, and heated without getting hardboiled. This should work perfectly:
Will keep you posted. They say you can’t “candle” them like duck eggs. We never did get one fertilized duck egg.
It was just a dreadful morning, I ran to Michaels and as I looked for a frame, it began pouring. I had to wait for it to settle down a bit before going back to the car. As I drove from the parking lot in the pouring rain, I noticed two vultures up on a light post waiting out the burst of water. They looked rather stunned. Notice that it was so dark, the lights were on at 11am.
Even driving through the neighborhood looked blurred — Now comes the cold, and tonight, you can feel the temperature drop! Ringo is inside on my bed, he hates the cold too.
My little brother is here and we took Adam and got all bloated eating Chinese at Lee’s Palace then topped it off with ice box cake, Judd’s favorite made of pure whipping cream and Nabisco chocolate wafers.
I finished framing and should be ready to drop off work on Sunday, will let you know if there is a reception and what the dates are for the Gateway Members Exhibit.

Those are the pics, though I think they are only using two per person. The next pics below are some I took this am.