I had a really fun night out on the beach, mainly because I had 2 turtles. Shana was not so lucky with leatherbacks, she got all the loggerheads on her end of the beach. but before the fun, my ATV broke down near the Marinelife Center so I had to get another one out of the shed. we ended up towing my broken one off the beach at 5:20 am - a sight I'm sure we were, the 3 of us bundled up for cold weather, towing and pushing a big ATV. we'll figure out what's wrong with it later today. after I got a new bike, I headed back out. as I was nearing the end of MacArthur park, I saw a big turtle come out of the water, and although it looked bigger than a loggerhead, I used my night vision scope to confirm it was a leatherback. she took a while to make it up over the scarp and then she took another long time to get comfortable and start digging her egg chamber. when I was able to check her tags (she only had 1 on her left rear flipper), I found that it was Spica. Spica is our 8th recaptured turtle from the 2002 season. she had some bad cuts and scrapes on her and she is missing most of her left rear flipper (but she was missing that in 2002). she had not grown at all in 2 years. I spent a long time with her, and waited until she was covering her nest before I went back north. I was hoping that I hadn't missed any turtles by staying at the south end so long. I was coming up to our friend Andy's house (where I stay for the field season) and I said to myself 'there's another leathery turtle.' thankfully this one was on time-delay and was nearly ready to lay her eggs. sometimes when you have more than one turtle a night, they tend to be on the beach at the same time, at the same stage of nesting. She was already tagged and it turned out to be Maya, the first turtle I tagged this season. we have now seen her 4 times here. she's one of our biggest turtles of 2004. She had managed to climb up a 4 foot scarp near a rocky outcropping. I left her to cover her nest and then headed up to meet chris and shana - chris had coffee waiting. we were able to do another pass, but nesting was over for the night. I did catch Maya moving back to the water and was worried about her getting back down the scarp - I was concerned that she would roll sideways down the cliff. but as she neared it, her enormous weight caused some of the sand to collapse, and she slid right down to the water's edge.

we towed the bike in, and headed home. I noticed this morning when I went out at sunrise that the shorebirds are starting to arrive. I saw several species down by the water. beside the regular sanderlings, I saw black-bellied plovers, an ibis, semi-palmated plovers, a black crowned night heron, some ruddy turnstones and a short-billed dowitcher (no Andersons this morning). not bad for half an hour.