As it turns out, eight is not enough.

It was a dark and cloudy morning in Estabrook Park, and I even contemplated not going for a visit. All the migrants have moved on, so what did I expect to see anyway. Well, my producer was having none of that, handed me my camera, and marched me out the door. Talk about luck!

When I got to the pond, it took me a moment even to realize what I was seeing. It looked like someone had dug up all the fresh soil that the parks department had raked out around the new park bench they had installed. Sure enough, someone had.

In case you don’t recognize her, that’s Ms Snapping Turtle, to you, and she was busy laying her clutch of eggs. I didn’t want to get too close, but here’s a slightly better view of the hole she had dug.

The whole process took at least an hour, and in the meantime, I spotted the wood duck hen and her three ducklings.

I watched a kingfisher do its best to choke down a nice, big goldfish it had just caught.

I hiked down to the river, but there were no herons there today, and here’s why.

Once the eagle had continued on, look who came out to say, “I’ll see your eight, and raise you to eleven!” Yes, you read that correctly. If you look closely, you can count eleven little yellow and black-striped heads. Holy Toledo!

Then I hiked back up to the pond to see how things were going. There was a green heron fishing.

And then finally, here she is covering up her clutch, and you can still see one stray egg that she will include eventually.

Here she goes back to the water.

And here she is about to take a well-deserved soak.

I did my best to smooth out all the soil, without interfering with the eggs, to make it look like nothing had happened, but I probably should call Parks to see if they have an expert that might want to move them to someplace with less foot traffic to hatch.

Not a bad morning after all, eh?