Bay County Box Turtle Project

This hatchling appeared in the backyard near our resident female Pauline. I figure it must have hatched this spring.

Let's all do our part to prevent turtle mortalities on our roadways. One of the best ways to do this is to not tailgate. For every 10 mph of speed, keep a full car length (10 ft minimum) between you and the car in front of you. If you're driving 50 mph, that means at least 5 cars could fit in between you and the car up ahead. Maintaining this distance will give you time to see and react to avoid hitting a turtle crossing the road. Every time you catch yourself tailgating, think about the turtles!

A new turtle tagger recently asked me, "At what size do we start calling females adults instead of juveniles?" The answer is, no one knows when Gulf Coast Box turtles become old enough to reproduce. It's one of the many questions the Bay County Box Turtle Project hopes to answer with your sighting reports. Every box turtle sighting is important but the more information you can include in the comments section, the more we will know! One of our turtle taggers collected a young road-killed box turtle last week and discovered she was carrying eggs. This report will be instrumental in determining the size at which females become sexually mature. The turtle was only 5,5" long and each of her eggs was 1.5" long. By counting the growth rings on the scutes, she was estimated to be 8 years old. It's very possible, these were the first eggs she produced.