Mystery Nest at 37A? July 2

This morning Barbara Jervey and Joan Dougherty were on patrol when Barbara found a loggerhead at the beach just finishing up the nesting process on the beach near the house that Taylor Swift rented a few years ago near Access Path 37A. Barbara took pictures and the Team arrived in time to scan her for tags and measure her shell as she crawled a long way back to the ocean. But the strange thing was that instead of quickly finding the eggs, we were unable to do so in spite of many hours of probing and hand digging. The turtle's behavior and all the field signs seemed to verify that it was a nest and not a false crawl although we did not see the eggs dropping.. Some team members went back at midday and kept searching and then again after supper, finally leaving and giving up as it was getting dark - NO EGGS and very discouraging for everyone. But because of the high probability that it is indeed a nest and because it is near a known coyote den, we screened it, and it was recorded as a "Possible Nest" in the database. We will check for signs of hatching when it would be due. If we do find the egg chamber when it hatches, we can do an inventory and get a genetics sample. Sometimes it's not as easy as it should be.