It’s probably safe to say Nancy Rabke hasn’t met a conservation or science project she didn’t like.

And she’s not afraid to take on the hardest jobs: from surveying horseshoe crabs at night or rescuing stranded sea turtles, also at night—even in blustery cold! And like many of her fellow diamondback terrapin volunteers, she’ll do what it takes to protect turtle nests despite heat and greenhead flies.

Nancy’s drive as a Wellfleet Bay volunteer may reflect her earlier years as a member of the Peace Corps when she was assigned to Ivory Coast in Africa. After retiring as a school nurse, Nancy plunged into sea turtle rescue in 2009. She was being trained on South Sunken Meadow Beach by Jerry Hequembourg when they came upon a stranded green turtle in the wrack line. “Picking up that turtle , so cold and thin, but luckily still moving well, I realized how crucial it  was to get this turtle back to an environment where it could thrive,” Nancy recalls.

And whether it’s rescuing a cold turtle or surveying for spawning horseshoe crabs, Nancy says she really doesn’t mind walking the beach at night. ” There is a special beauty and peacefulness about it, even when there are blustery conditions. But I probably wouldn’t do it without the incentive of finding a sea turtle or helping with horseshoe crab data!”

The daily job of counting glass eels at the eel ladder isn’t the most exciting work in the world, but Nancy says she enjoys talking to people, especially kids about what she’s doing and why. And her work at Wellfleet Bay has impressed the children in her own life. ” The knowledge and experience I have received allows me to have a little niche of expertise to share with my grandchildren which, hopefully, will influence their future choices.”

With the roles of trail naturalist and marine life cruise volunteer rounding out her roster of duties, it’s probably not a surprise to learn that Nancy is one of 17 volunteers to have clocked more than 250 hours in the past fiscal year.

 

 

 

Who would you expect to find conducting a butterfly survey? Aloof, preoccupied men and women in sensible shoes sweeping the grass with nets?

The surveyors we encountered one recent hot Saturday afternoon were sporting a look more akin to Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders only with better optics.

Wellfleet Bay’s science coordinator Mark Faherty and his brother Brian were taking part in the North American Butterfly Association’s annual butterfly count. Much like the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, every butterfly seen gets tallied, as does each species. And like birding, butterfly surveys can take you to less than delightful spots, such as the sanctuary’s seriously thorny solar panel area.

Mark says his first advice to anyone who wants to learn more about butterflies is to think smaller.  ” I tell people they have to scale down their search image from monarchs and swallowtails. Once they do, they’ll begin to key in on and appreciate the diverse beauty of butterflies.”

Mark says what’s fascinating about butterflies is how closely tied they are to the plants they use for nectaring (eating) and, most importantly, laying eggs. Of course, butterfly weed is a native milkweed that lives up to its name. It provides nectar for adult butterflies of many species and also serves as a larval (caterpillar) host for the Monarch.

And then there are the butterflies that zero in on a more select habitat, such as the Hoary Elfin which specializes on heathland plants, such as bearberry, flying only in early spring:

And if you (gently) shake an Eastern Red Cedar tree (Juniperus virginiana), you could find these guys who feed exclusively on junipers:

Mark says one of his best experiences during a count was spotting an American Copper butterfly, a very common one on the Cape, being consumed by an exquisitely well camouflaged crab spider in a rare Ragged Fringed Orchid at Hatches Harbor in Provincetown.

Like all wildlife surveys, the goal is to build a long-term dataset that can indicate the overall abundance of the population. While not the powerhouse pollinators bees are, butterflies nevertheless , like birds, are a species that can be an early indicator of the overall health of the environment.

Mark says 8 years of survey data for Wellfleet Bay shows no clear picture of the butterfly population at the sanctuary.  But he says this year’s Truro count resulted in 634 individuals and 30 species, both of which may be all-time highs for that particular count.

There’s something else butterfly surveying has in common with birding: if there’s a nearby food source for what you’re hoping to see, counting, especially on a hot July day, can be done from a seated position!

 

For most of June and July, female diamondback terrapins have been making their way from Cape Cod’s marshes to sandy areas above the wrack line in an attempt to dig nests and safely bury their eggs. With well established “turtle gardens” on coastal conservation land from Wellfleet to Orleans, this may sound like an easy task. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.

One obstacle: how dry this summer has been. Female terrapins like to nest in sandy soil in direct sunlight so their eggs can properly incubate. But the sediment should also be damp enough for the nests to remain structurally sound. With little rain these past couple months, some turtle gardens were too dry, causing nests to cave in on themselves before females could lay their eggs.

This year in particular, cars have also posed a serious threat to female terrapins. During the nesting season’s peak, our regional team of devoted staff and volunteers responded to 17 terrapins who had been hit by cars. While we expect some “turtle Xing” incidents to end badly for our nesting females, 17 is unusually high. Last year, only 5 terrapins were reportedly injured while trying to cross roads. Since Cape traffic doesn’t seem heavier than usual this summer, we can’t help but wonder if more terrapins are getting hit by cars simply because there are more of them wandering around the Cape than there were previously.

Eastham terrapin coordinator Bill Allan got permission from the town to temporarily install garden fencing along Herringbrook Road where it comes close to the marsh. Watch this video to see how it worked!

Another expected obstacle to high reproductive success is predation. Rather than hunting adult terrapins, foxes and raccoons will go after their eggs. Based on previous years’ data, we expect almost the same number of depredated nests as we do protected ones at each site. During the 2015 nesting season, for example, there were 59 protected and 42 depredated nests at the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary (WBWS). Similarly, there were 63 protected and 61 depredated nests on Lieutenant Island. But what we found this year was a little different.

Over the course of 4 weeks, a whopping 81 nests were laid and protected at WBWS, with only 7 depredated. That is a record-breaking 93% protected when compared to the total number of nests revealed so far. This may have something to do with the fact that no foxes have been sighted around the sanctuary this summer. Even at Lieutenant Island, where foxes have been spotted in the turtle gardens, the number of depredation events has noticeably declined since last year with 68 protected and 50 fully depredated nests so far in 2016.

Though wild terrapin nests might still be depredated before the hatchling season begins in August, I would not be surprised if the total number of depredated nests remains low at both sites. Sarcoptic mange has been taking a serious toll on red foxes in parts of Cape Cod by compromising their immune systems and making it difficult to hunt. Only time will tell if this grim diagnosis for foxes will have a significant impact on the conservation status of terrapins in Massachusetts.

This post was produced by Wellfleet Bay diamondback terrapin field technician Olivia Bourque. Olivia, who grew up in Norwell, MA, received her masters degree in May in Environmental Science & Policy from Clark University and hopes to pursue a career in wildlife conservation.