Last week, there was a hold-up on Old House Lane, as an odd traffic jam of bicycles, heavy equipment, and golf carts carefully maneuvered around a female Eastern Diamondback Terrapin as she attempted to find a suitable place to lay eggs.
Turns out we are not alone. Ginny alerted us to the fact that National News outlets reported that yesterday a large number of terrapin (reported numbers range from 150 – 200) crossed a runway at Kennedy airport, snarling air traffic. According to the Wall Street Journal,
At first, workers tried to remove the reptiles one by one between takeoffs. Pilots and air-traffic controllers at times struggled to suppress laughter as they radioed back and forth about the incursion, according to a recording of transmissions that was posted on liveATC.net.
The turtle news broke on Twitter Wednesday morning, when JetBlue Airways posted a message on the incident. When users asked why this caused delays, the airline said: “Running over turtles is not healthy for them nor is it good for our tires.”
Kennedy Airport is adjacent to Jamaica Bay wildlife refuge, and the turtles were heading from a marsh to lay eggs on a sandy beach on the other side of the runway. Eventually the runway was shut down and the turtles were transported by pick-up truck to their preferred nesting destination. The New York Post’s article, amusingly titled Yo, get the ‘shell’out of the way!, found some humor in the situation,
“We got a couple turtles storming the access road here off our right,” the pilot of JetBlue 102 said at 9:05 a.m. “Can we really use the word storming about a turtle?” another pilot chimed in.
CNN titled their report, Mating Turtles Shut Down Runway, but I am guessing there is a biological error here. Terrapin nest in the sand, but mate in the water, and mating likely took place weeks ago in the water. The video is worth watching, because there are actual photos of the turtles on the tarmac.
We took a video of the one we were watching, who never did find a suitable spot that day, but you can see how she digs and searches for a suitable spot. We followed her for an hour; you can see the highlights in under a minute.
Dewees Island has been the site of other terrapin projects: We headstarted some in our nature center and released them, we tied up traffic watching them hatch, and we have monitored nests.
