31/05/2026
Did anyone else see the Turtle at our local beach this week??
Please keep a look out for our beautiful wildlife this season
Be safe Friends
🐢🌊☀️🏝️🌧️
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It’s hatchling season for our beautiful South-Western Snake-necked Turtles 🐢!
Perth may finally have a little rain this week 🌧. Although hatchlings generally emerge from their eggs once they have eaten their yolks, they will also respond to rain-bearing low pressure systems (similarly to female nesting behaviours). If you live within 800m of a freshwater lake, you may see these tiny babies emerging from the ground and searching for their mother's waterways. If they get there safely, they will feast on tiny invertebrates like mosquito larvae 🦟 - one hatchling can eat up to 70 a day!
Every one of these precious hatchlings is important – especially now that turtle populations are suffering as a result of fox predation, off-leash dogs, outside cats, inattentive drivers or cyclists, rubbish, pollution, weeds, climate change, excessive bore water use and the destruction of their wetland habitats.
🐢 If you find a healthy hatchling (strong, active, all limbs moving well, no wounds), you can help it by keeping guard, while it makes its way to its nearest fresh water lake
🐢 If it is at risk from people, predators, cars, cyclists, fences or rubbish, you can pick it up gently and place it in fringing vegetation around the closest freshwater lake (contact us for advice, if needed)
🐢 If you ever find eggs or an injured, sick or dead turtle of any age, please call us immediately. Injured turtles should be transported in a bucket on a damp towel (not water) at around 26°C (the preferred body temperature for this species).
Female turtles lay their first batch of eggs in September and a smaller, second batch around December-January - so we will see another, smaller emergence of baby turtles in August!