KDH Ocean Rescue called with a report of two hatchlings coming out of Nest #29. This was a shocker for the team as Nest #29 has only been incubating for 42 days which is nearly physically impossible to produce full term hatchlings (the temperatures required to “cook” that fast are lethal for a nest). We immediately suspected we might have another ‘surprise’ nest on our list.
It is estimated that on any monitored beach, there will be 1 nest for every ten documented that goes undiscovered… unless we’re lucky enough to catch them emerging. We call these wild nests. In this case, we think this nest was within nearly 10 feet of marked off Nest #29. Oddly enough, that puts it almost two weeks before Nest #29! In our area, females lay nests typically about 2 weeks apart from each other. Could this be the same mom?