We're happy to report that no roadkill was observed this week. We documented two occurrences of live terrapins out in the marsh. Looking at last year's data, we had observed road-killed juvenile and hatchling terrapins during late July and early August, then again in September. Last year, depredated nests were not continuously documented, so we don't know if breeding happened earlier or later this year. I hope to find evidence of successful terrapin nests. Ideally this would be in the form of live terrapin hatchlings, but I anticipate some will be killed by vehicles. With nest predation being so intense, I wonder what the recruitment rate for this population is.
The number of depredated nests indicates a large population here. This week we counted at least 35 terrapins congregated in one creek near a culvert. There were also schools of small fish breaching the water's surface. It seems like some type of interesting behavior is going on here. I took video footage of this with my iPhone, and you can just make out the terrapin heads and occasional fish activity.
We're also happy to report that we removed a second bag of litter. We started where we left off last time, and spent a solid hour working our way along the roadside. Like last time, we mostly filled a 30-gallon trash bag and covered 138 meters (roughly 0.1 miles) of roadside. We've now covered about 8% of the entire roadside at this location, all of which is litter-ridden.
Following tropical storm Isaias, we noticed much more litter in the marsh than before. Strong wind and rain moved a lot of litter from the roadside into the marsh and wildlife refuge. Tidal currents have inevitably already carried much of this into Long Island Sound. I would love to have enough funding to spend more time removing litter, and to recruit a few additional team members so we could keep the entire causeway as litter-free as possible. I also want to spend more time engaging in community outreach and collaborating with other organizations to find ways to reduce littering.
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