Pie and beach times

It’s all good times round at Casa de Goatshed, with my first night-off of the season, yay! Abandoning my nightwork clothes, headtorch and emergency 3 sticks for the night, I even showered and began preparing a feast fit for people who spend the night with their heads in turtle behinds. This meant veggie pie with puff pastry that didn’t actually puff (there was some complicated folding business that I left out), an amazing salad created by Mr German, followed by apple crumble and sheep yoghurt (an alagadi staple). I think a few situps, lunges and buttcrunches were required when walking the beach after that lot.

Yesterday saw the arrival of Ella, a volunteer from last year, who was met with way too much excitement at the airport by me and Emma (in the swank new car of course). We almost had a bit of whiplash when I forgot it was an automatic and pressed the brake as the clutch, but aside from that we arrived home safely and sent Ella out on North after flying all night. Obviously. If any of you haven’t been to Ercan airport you should add it into your list of must see tourist destinations. Where else can you watch people get off the plane and collect their baggage from the floor above, while making rude faces at them through the windows?

Moving on to the business of our little green friends, the North coast group were unhappy to find a Turkish fox feasting on one of our turtle nests when they arrived on the beach yesterday. The nest was totally predated, sadly, and the fox got a good earbashing for his trouble. So, from now on the nests on the North coast beaches (Esentepe, Tatlisu, Kantara, Kaplica) will be caged with special metal pegs along with our usual flat caging to stop predation from fantastic Mr Foxes. This should hopefully stop one of the biggest threats to egg survival and help that 1 in 1000 to hatch. Also, well done to Emma and Tom for caging with heavy, rusty metal which is really a pleasure to carry around ; )

Onwards to night work and last night the loggerheads finally made an appearance after days of only seeing greens (I’m biased towards the loggers, they have more character than greens and are uglier. Not every turtle can be beautiful you know) with 3 logger nests and 2 green nests over our two beaches. The volunteers were run ragged, along with our 4 visitors, trying to stay with each turtle AND make sure the beaches are walked every 10 minutes. We’re a well-oiled machine now and 5 turtles on the beach are nothing we can’t handle! Well done to Celli for spotting the highly endangered german joke-back turtle and observing it for a few minutes before being given the fright of her life as Adrien jumped out of the hole with a logger carapace on his back. I hope you had fresh underwear on the beach Celli.
Here at alagadi we work hard and we play jokes on people. Then we work some more and some more and then we sleep.

Becca xx