Biological Characteristics Of Hawksbill Birds

BASIC BIOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Hawksbills, like other marine turtles, have a complicated life cycle and also their own characteristics. Each female leaves the sea, crawls up a sandy beach, and locates a nesting site above the level of the highest tide, typically within, or under, an area with plants. A female hawksbill turtle might make more than one attempt at digging a nest in the sand until she has successfully deposited a clutch of eggs in the nest which is at least 10 cm and as much as 90 cm underneath the surface of the sand. Each egg weighs 25 grams or more, and an average nest can have about 140 eggs (but sometimes there are as many as 250). After covering the nest, and after spending between 1 and 2 hours on the beach, the female hawksbill turtle will go back to her home in the sea. About 15 days later the same female hawksbill turtle will return, usually to the same area on the beach, and nest again, this process will be repeated until she

The gender of the hatchlings depends mostly on the temperature of the nest. After hatching, the hatchlings may take many days to dig up and emerge from the nest, which usually happens during the night. Once the hatchlings are on the surface of the beach, they crawl to the sea and swim away from the shore. To emerge from the nest and get into the sea as quickly as possible, hatchlings must make a series of unlearned “innate” responses to various stimuli. Each hatchling digs up, away from gravity, toward the top of the nest, the hatchling will become very weak in the top layers of the nest if the hatchling experiences extremely warm temperatures. Once the hatchling is on the beach it will start moving toward the part of the horizon with the greatest light strength and usually with light of the shortest vision, at the same time, the hatchling will also move away from objects and certain kinds of shapes on