From the text of TURTLEʼS JOURNEY:
“The turtle almost seems to be dancing as she works to hide her nest, and she continues to scrape and twist grasses and moss as she moves away from where she has buried her eggs… At last her great mother-turtle work is done for the year, and she heads back to the safety of the swamp. She will not come back to the nest she leaves behind.”
Spotted Turtle Departing From Her Completed Nest
The story begins with a spotted turtle out to nest, seeking the site in which she will dig her nest chamber and lay her eggs. This watercolor depicts her departure from her completed nest, after her night-long nesting. A cutaway shows the eggs in the chamber.
The three near-complete watercolors in this Turtle Nest Hatching Sequence was developed to illustrate a childrenʼs book I wrote many years ago. Entitled TURTLEʼS JOURNEY, it was first drafted in 1989. I have worked on this project off and on over these in fact many years, and several years ago sent the completed text and sample art off to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, publishers of my last three books.
Ann Rider, Editorial Director for childrenʼs books at HMH, who felt very strongly that it should be published, took it in for consideration several times in various states and slight revisions. The writing and art received high praise, but in the end the project was declined: “We fear it would fail to find sufficient readership.”
Anne urged me not to give up on the proposal, which has since gone to a number of publishers via my agent Meredith Bernstein, and again received with high esteem, but again declined. “The book is too quiet for todayʼs child reader.” “We are looking for something with a new twist, an edge”; “… it is too straightforward.”
It is indeed straightforward, a story from nature set in nature – within a natural ecology. There are no human constructs, drama physical or philosophical; no intervening child or adult, no dog, no cat (this is not how to sell books). It is the story of a hatchling spotted turtleʼs nest-to-water journey, a journey of time and landscape dimensions.
This remarkable first orienteering is a critical formative, adaptive, aspect of the life history of many species of freshwater turtles, a behavior markedly different from the hatchling sea turtlesʻ dash-for-survival from the nesting beach to the ocean. All manifestations of the nest-to-water journey of freshwater and marine turtles incorporate perilous migrations, which are no less than their first trackings of their environments on planet earth, and a vital component of their some 220 million year evolution.
From the text of TURTLEʼS JOURNEY:
“Night after night, and sometimes by day, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, and other predators search the sandy field for turtle nests. They seem to dig everywhere as they discover nests and eat many eggs; but this year they do not find the spotted turtleʼs nest. Day after day the summer sun heats the earth and warms the eggs hidden within it. Rain comes often enough to keep them from drying out. Inside bright eggshells in a dark underground chamber, tiny turtles continue to grow.”
Hatchling Spotted Turtles Developing Within Their Eggshells
Another cutaway shows the nest chamber and the eggs within. Additional cutaways show the embryonic turtles at a well-developed stage, but yet some time from their eventual breaking out of their eggshells (called “pipping”) and digging out of the nest.
This another long and perilous process in the life history of a turtle. It can take from two months or so to three months or more from the time of nesting to the hatchlingʼs emergence from the nest to take up their nest-to-water journey.
Times of waiting play a significant role in the pattern of the lives of many turtle species. This incubation period varies with the species and such factors as the precise location of the nest site, weather conditions over the long season, and how far north or south in the specieʼs range the nesting takes place.
There are many predators who dig up turtle nests, from the day or night the nesting occurs until the time of hatching. The great majority of turtle eggs never get to hatch.
From the text of TURTLEʼS JOURNEY:
“As summer moves on toward fall gray goldenrod begins to bloom in the field, and grasses turn gold, bronze, and purple. In the lowland swamp the red-maple saplings already blaze with autumn color. One hundred days after they were so carefully hidden in the earth, narrow slits begin to appear in the turtle eggs. Using the pointed egg tooth each one has at the tip of her upper jaw, and their tiny but strong feet with sharp claws, the hatchling turtles break out of their eggshells. When this hard work is done they rest and wait. Then one of them begins to dig upward. The journey begins. It may take several days for them to break out of their eggshells and finish digging their way out of the nest.”
The Hatchlings Begin to Dig Out of Their Nest
The number of eggs in a clutch varies among turtle species, and the age and size of the nesting female. Spotted turtles may lay from one to eight eggs, commonly three or four. In my observations in New Hampshire I have on several occasions recorded a maximum of six eggs in a nest.
Snapping turtles may lay up to one hundred and four, but twenty to forty is the common range. In my earlier field work with turtle-nesting the largest clutch I found in south central New Hampshire was fifty four.
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