Friday's Finale

Today's scat of the day has maggots in it!! Can you guess what it is from? Today we spent the morning calculating our data for our second week's trap lines and the rest of our deer dropping counts. We also looked at the photos from our camera traps --mine took NO photos. We caught people (ourselves) walking on the trails and a deer. It was a bit of a disappointment. After data Jane Dan and I walked and looked for trail signs near Chris and Christina's home.--It was a long walk (we were given an hour and 45 minutes to complete it -- we finished it in 45). I found 'treasures' on the side of the road, and Dan filmed our farewell to the world video. Jim and Natalie showed up, and Natalie taught us all how to play French cricket with my new beach ball -- later to be sacrificed to Lykos. We then went and saw the beavers again --this time seeing several of them swimming about with sticks and seeing some tail slappings. I was most cold, but it was most wonderful to see. SO now I am trying to finish this blog while not wanting this to end, but eager to share my adventures now in person with all of you I can. Have you guessed what the scat is? {No one knows what it is!}. 

Friday Bonus

I walked down to the shore this morning --- and I just wanted to share with you all what it looked like...just me and the sunrise. I will tell you more about the day once I experience it, but this is enough to fill me.

Survival Thursday

Today we checked our traps one last time and packed them away until the next group of volunteers comes next year. Nothing very new in them, most were recaptures. We will do the math and estimate the populations tomorrow as well as look at what we caught in our camera traps. Here is a video showing the set up of the camera trap.

Jane and I also filmed Carmen and Lu checking our trap lines for the last time. I will put just one of these up for you --- the forest lines as it is shorter. If I hear a loud clamor, I can put up the clearing's video later.

After lunch Chris gave us a demonstration lecture on survival skills including how to create a spring trap and make fire using a spindle and bow. We then returned so I could Skype my class while everyone else had a cheese and cracker party. Jim Jones kindly gave APES a chat on the status of dormice (hint, their relationship to global warming is much the same as small rodents face here in Nova Scotia). I also threatened my APES class with work to come -- can you believe I will be there Monday? I can't. 

Hopefully it won't be too frigid in the morning, and I will walk down to the shore before breakfast to take some pictures to show you of the local coast. We are looking at camera trap photos and doing data analysis as well and then doing transects for signs or vegetation or ? near Chris and Christina's house. 

W is for Wet, Wednesday and Wellies

Today was an honest to goodness field day. It rained and was about 44 degrees F, and we spent the entire day outside. This is the view of the field today. It is near where we eat lunch, and our mighty clearing of pines and alders is up and to the left out of the photo. After our first checking of our traps, We found several dead animals today, 4 in all. 

Why might they have died? {It had nothing to do with the traps.} 

After resetting the traps, we tested our abilities to find field signs of mammals: tracks, scats and other signs.  What might have been other indications of mammals we looked for?

Pauline, Nataline and Dan walked the 'trail of broken tools' with me, and we found signs of more mammals than we suspected. 

Natalie is pointing at deer prints in the mud, called slots.

White-tailed deer arrived in Nova Scotia only 100 years ago or so and are competing with another large herbivore that is also found in Utah...ideas?

After lunch we went back to our traps. We found our first shrew. This is a short-tailed shrew, and they aren't normally found in traps.

 We bait our traps with bird seed and a bit of apple (for moisture). Why wouldn't a shrew be interested in this? The reason his teeth are black is also interesting if you are curious.

We also ran out of birdseed for the traps and used granola bars instead. So Lykos is not really my best buddy, but in my role of rodent dropping cleaner and trap resetter, I had control of all the bits of granola bar he so desperately desired.

So tomorrow morning we run our trap lines one last time, and I will report on the final rodent counts by state. Will we beat Idaho? I haven't the foggiest. We will also retrieve our camera traps, learn survival skills, look at beavers again and perhaps listen for bats. I will also Skype with my AP Environmental Science class as well...so more than a full day, and our last one at Cook's Lake, a most fascinating piece of land. 

Back in the Forest Again

Today's scat of the day will be brought to you by Carmen the Florida cougar. So rather than guessing it's identity, I am asking you to guess what it will look like....I will put its picture at the bottom of today's entry. Here is Carmen at Lunenburg with her new friend Lu the Lobster.

Our day was more of the same. BUT since it is all new to you, here is a video of how a trap is emptied and a rodent is measured.  

I was asked if we had lots of free time...nope. I wake at about 5:30 a.m and do my MSU course work until someone else  

shows up about 6 a.m., and things slow down as there is someone to chat with. Breakfast is at 8 a.m. on trapping days, and I choose to do coffee/toast/dish duty in the morning. We get back from the field around 6 p.m., and I start work on the blog until dinner at 7 p.m. or so. Tonight at 8:30 I am still working on the blog, and hope to finish by 9. Then a bit of conversation with others and packing up for the morning, and it begins again. So time by myself to do nothing = maybe 30 minutes. We are really tired at night. We walk several miles a day over rough terrain in wellies plus all the chopping of forests shrubberies. So relaxing in a vacation sense --no way. Interesting, and gorgeous and stimulating...definitely.

Here is a red back vole sitting in a plastic bag before release. The picture shows something unusual happening with its coat.

Can you guess what is going on? 

Here are Carmen's byproducts.

The Traps are Back

Hare is today's scat of the day hint --- this little guy is one that you might expect to find in larger groupings. We got to the field a little later than usual today so I began my time at Cook's Lake with more alder pruning. The alternative task was looking for deer scat in quadrats...I prefer the attacking and killing of defenseless trees. I enjoy a solitary scat as much as the next researcher, but hunting piles of them, well....I'd rather chop down trees with small saws.

It was muddy on the trail in, and as Jane and I were carrying the ice chest down to the clearing, she stopped as there were these fresh prints in the mud. Christina believes they are lynx which they had thought might be here, but the prints help confirm it.

Feline prints show only four toes and no claw marks (as in dog types) as cats retract them. The print looks large because the lynx steps into his front print with his hind foot.

We redeployed our traps in two new areas: again in a clearing and a 

forest. We kept the same teams as before, and we worked quickly to get back to curry and a NEW supply of ice cream (which is how PI's keep their volunteers quiet and content at night). Here is Chris (PI) with the full allotment needed.

There is a really good article in the Globe and Mail concerning the warming fall temperatures in the arctic. If fall seasons are warm, then small rodents are too active in the fall, and in the spring, they may run out of food having had faster metabolisms longer than they should have.

Did you guess that the scat of the day was Arctic Hare? (I wouldn't have)

Keji

Harrow all!

We had the weekend off of trapping work. Yesterday we went to Lunnenburg, a historic shipbuilding town where we touristed about. We ate fish, shopped, hung out in a coffee shop, and I took lots of pictures of Carmen Cougar, the Florida elementary science mascot. Today we went to Kejimkujik (Keji), a large national park with old growth hemlock forest. It is also where we find our scat of the day...identified by its multiple lumps and sitting by a coin a little larger than a quarter. (If it helps you to guess, it is a bit furry in content).

The oldest tree there is a 400 year old hemlock. 

The trees make the soil acidic, and you can see in the photo that not much grows in their understory. Here is a very unusual tree. How would you explain its peculiar growth? 

I also saw a porcupine in person! It was ambling along the road until Jim (our visiting dormouse

expert) got out of the van and scared

it away in his quest to take its photo. Jim would also like to know if you find him hot. (It's a competitive thing between him and our PI, Chris, who is posing with glasses.

So please let me know who is hotter as their pride is depending on your votes from Utah.

After our walk to look at old hemlocks, we scouted about for deer scat, and you can watch us in action as Chris narrates in the video below.

We found no scat but one very cold amphibian...the red-backed woodland salamander, Plethodon cinereaus.

Today's scat is a coyote, but they have cros

sed with wolves on the eastern coast and are twice as large as ours in the west. Tomorrow we set new trap lines!