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ritory, will always attempt to return. In the absence of landmarks they probably use some sort of sun-compass method of orientation.
The home ranges of several dozen box turtles include portions of our yard.
Each May and June, these same turtles (first males, then females) emerge from the forest and plod with antediluvian determination toward the same nesting sites.
We know they’re the same turtles because we’ve marked them using a safe and permanent system of scute notches that permits recognition of individuals.
Fifty friends
We’ve now marked about 50 turtles over a 10-year period. One of the first turtles we marked is a female. We fondly refer to her as “003.” She’s been returning to her favorite nesting spots for 10 years now and we expect she will be doing this for many years to come.
After all, turtles have life expectancies similar to those of humans, with most reaching 50 years or more (if they can get past the hatchling stage).
Some of the best records of this come from a long-term study of marked turtles begun in the 1940s by Lucille Stickel at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland.
Most of the thousands of turtles there are marked, and some of the original marked turtles can still be found today.
Maybe the next human inhabitants of our property will see good old “003” decades from now. We hope so.
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