Willow Hall . . . Nursery?

Last Friday Passaic River Coalition staff met a new resident at Willow Hall. Our newest tenant is a female painted turtle who decided that the dirt driveway to the garage in the backyard would be a fine place to lay her eggs.


We were a bit surprised to find a turtle laying eggs so far from the lake and up quite a large hill. But if she was bothered by us, she didn't show it. We watched her for over half an hour, bobbing her head in and out of the shell and using her feet to push dirt back into the hole she had dug (you can see the little dirt mound in the photo below). While we weren't able to count, we have read that painted turtles can lay between three and twenty eggs, depending on the size of the mother.


She won't actually be a permanent resident of our backyard; once the eggs are laid painted turtles leave the nest alone and go about their business of being turtles. The eggs will incubate 65-80 days and then they'll hatch. Though some of the life histories we read said that in some parts of the country, the turtles will actually stay underground all winter and then emerge in the spring. That's quite a wait to see if anyone will hatch. Too bad we can't charge for babysitting.

We will be keeping an eye on the area, it's currently marked with a bale of straw so no one is driving over it.