Sea turtle tracks coming up the beach and zig-zagging through the sand. Photo by CHNS.

A Green Sea Turtle nest found December 3 on Hatteras Island, NC is a record for the latest nest ever laid! The previous record was October 31! This year also marked the return of the Leatherbacks for the first time in 11 years!

The new nest also means that 2023 now boasts the second-highest number of turtle nests reported on Ocracoke, Hatteras, and Bodie Islands since data collection began.

The top three years for sea turtle nesting activity within CHNS have all occurred within the past five years, and are as follows:
2019 – 473 nests
2023 – 380 nests
2022 – 379 nests
Of these 380 nests in 2023, 324 were Loggerhead sea turtles, 52 were Green sea turtles, 3 were Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles, and one was a Leatherback sea turtle.

To read more about the track at Cape Hatteras National Seashore click here.

An adult male Saba Isle Anole. Anolis sabanus
Saba!

What is Saba?

Saba, it turns out, is a tiny upthrusting in the northeastern Caribbean. Only about 5 miles across, this tiny island has sandy beaches (expensive hotels), 4 main villages having descriptive names such as The Bottom (Saba's capital), Windwardside, St. John's and Zion's Hill (aka Hell's Gate), and even has some rainforest. Oh yes, it also has 3 indigenous and endemic reptiles, an anole, a Sphaerodactyline gecko and a Colubrine snake.

But initially it was only the anole that I found of interest. I had learned of this lizard through Jake, who had talked of both its homeland and beauty for months. In fact, Jake wanted to fly to this lizard’s dot of land to photograph it. But to me it seemed a long journey simply to photograph a single lizard species, and an anole at that.

Then Jake found an online pic and my attitude was swayed. I had just about made up my mind to opt into the “Jake’s Anole Expedition” when an online ad for that exact species popped up on my computer screen. Rather than take the trip. I bought a couple of the lizards…both gender. The live lizards that arrived were even prettier than the pix I had seen. The anoles are sexually dimorphic, the female lacking the polka-dots of the adult males.

Both the male and the female, seem to be doing well, eating tiny crickets and flightless fruit flies. Males have a beautiful, large, deep yellow throat fan. I hope you’ll agree that, although not one of the larger species, it is a species well worth looking at.
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