Day 11 (Thursday) Final Blog!!!

Hi, Kiddos!

Well, Students, this is the last blog from Nova Scotia. I am both excited to come home and sad to leave. It has been such a wonderful experience learning first-hand what type of research that scientists have been doing, as well as meeting so many interesting people. I have been enriched in many ways and can't wait to share with you when I'm back at home. Today, it rained so we did not get to do our survival skill training. We should be able to do the training tomorrow. We finished our last day of trapping today so we collected all the traps, cleaned them up and then went over all the data we collected. We looked at the numbers of voles, mice and lemming that we caught and then compared those numbers to previous data collected by other research teams. As the numbers change, we look at factors that may be causing those changes. I can't wait to go over all the results of the data when I come home.

I really miss you all and can't wait to see your smiling faces!

Love,

Ms. Bosetti

Day 10 (Wednesday) Traps, Big Trees and Flying Squirrels

Hi, Everyone!
The weather was a bit chilly today while we checked our traps. We caught voles and mice but were surprised to also have caught a bog lemming, a shrew and actually had two flying squirrels! Check out some of today's catches:

After a quick lunch it was time to continue our field clearing. It felt good to work so hard and soon it was not at all chilly. We had sweat pouring off of us while cutting these huge trees! This video is a bit long but shows how hard it is just to take down one tree. We'd already cut halfway through when we began recording.

Tomorrow we'll check our traps for the last time. From there we'll move on to survival skills training. Woohoo! You guys KNOW I've been waiting for that!

When I return home, we'll use yesterday's journal entry together. For today's journal entry, reflect on what is important to you. If all your possessions were to be suddenly taken away, but you were allowed to keep only two or three things (items, objects, possessions), what would you keep? For each of your items, explain WHY it is important and meaningful to you.

Miss you.

Love you.

"See" you tomorrow!

Ms. Bosetti

Day 9 (Tuesday) Traps and Field Clearing Again

Hi, Guys!

Today we checked our traps set yesterday. Everything is wet from last night's rain. We were pretty successful and had several species of voles and mice. Click on the video above to see a release of one of our voles. We also had a few more dead voles in our traps. We tried to resuscitate two of them (without much luck) by warming them in our hands. Parasites can be a problem for voles with weakened immune systems during this stressful time of their lives. We also caught many pregnant females who were close to giving birth.

From there we continued our work clearing the fields. This clearing is to support the diversity of the wildlife at Cook's Lake. It's chilly but we're sweating like crazy. It's really difficult (physically and emotionally) to cut down trees but we know it's for the greater good. Here's Pascal (from Switzerland) showing how it's done.

We are working so hard! Here's Amber after felling a huge tree. Team A rocks!

Here I am doing my part:

Tonight we went beaver-watching again. We were lucky this time. One actually swam right up to us near shore and slapped his tail on the water to scare us away. It was a great ending to an awesome day!

Here's your journal entry for today. Look at the labels on all the clothes you're wearing right now (at least those that you can see easily!). In your journal, list the countries from which they come. (For example: shirt=China) We'll do more with this tomorrow.

Miss you all!

Love, Ms. Bosetti

Day 8 (Monday) Field Clearing and Trap Setting

Hi, Guys!

We survived the hurricane. That's the first time I've ever been able to say THAT in my life. What an experience. Remind me to tell you about it when I get back. Cooooolest ever.

Today we went back out to Cook's Lake to start fresh with newly set traps in new areas. In addition to a "slicing-bait finger injury" we had some difficulty working as a team of 13 in keeping our coordinates straight. When there's a wall of forest in front of you it can be difficult keeping your bearing. The traps are set and we'll be back tomorrow to check them out.

We spent part of the day clearing certain areas to keep the diversity of this study site. Amber, Alan and I HAND PULLED trees from 2 entire fields. MAN, am I going to feel this tomorrow. My muscles were screaming at me.

Here's evidence of my brute strength. I'm sure you'll be so impressed! ;-)

Here's the final prize. It really was harder than it looked, especially after a whole field of them. Tomorrow we're coming back to finish!

"Talk" with you tomorrow!

Love, Ms. Bosetti

Day 7 (Sunday) Kejimkujik National Park

Hi, Everyone!
Today we headed over to Kejimkujik National Park to do scat surveys and explore the park. What a beautiful place! Here are a couple of views to give you a feel for the scenery.

Is it bear or is it coyote scat?

We ended up finding the scat of: snowshoe hare, whitetail deer and probably coyote (perhaps bear).

Hugging trees makes Amber and me happy. This really is a beautiful park. The rain is really starting to pour and a hurricane is expected tonight so we need to get back. We don't get a lot of hurricanes (never) in Wisconsin so I'm hoping for a big one. Wish us luck.

Love,

Ms. Bosetti

Days 5 & 6 (Friday & Saturday) Checking Traps, Videoconference and Lunenburg

Hello, Everyone!


It was sooo great to see all of you through the videoconference on Friday! I was so nervous but as soon as I saw your wonderful faces I calmed down a bit. I'm glad you enjoyed the Poop Master. He really is a riot and I have learned so much from him (and everyone here) just in these few days. It's very inspirational to spend time with (and actually LIVE with!) people so passionate about the natural world. My life is made richer from this experience and these people.


On Friday, before the videoconference, we checked our traps one last time and collected them. We'll re-set them next week again. We had a few dead voles and one dead mouse in our traps. Christina (P.I.) explained that this is the start of the season where many of the animals have reached the end of their lives. Many of them live only a few months. We returned them to the woods to become food for other animals and continue the cycle of life.

On Saturday we traveled to Lunenburg for our "day off." Most of our group decided to go whale-watching, which actually turned into seal-watching since we couldn't track down any of the whales.

After the whale-watching trip we visited the local museum and learned a lot about the history of fishing in this area. Here I am stuck in a lobster trap with Kim.

This is such a beautiful, peaceful place. Hope the weather holds out for us and we don't get hit by the hurricane tomorrow!
Love and miss you all!
Ms. Bosetti

Day 4 (Thursday) Scat Counts and Trapping

Hi, Everyone!
Today we did scat counts by sectioning off 25 different 10m x 10m samples of the forest and fields. When Chris (P.I.) yelled, much to our never-ending delight, "Ready, set, POO!" we'd slowly walk in a line across the entire square to look for any scat we could find. By applying a formula (since we know how much scat each animal releases daily) this will give us a good idea of how many mammals are in that particular area.
Here are a few videos of us doing this:

I know that looked pretty easy when we did these counts in the fields. Doing them in really, really thick forest is not so easy. Watch.

We also checked all our traps today at morning and in the afternoon. We filmed this release of a red-backed vole for you. Look how cute this little stinker is!!!

Here's your journal entry for today. I asked you to reflect on what you feel is the #1 problem facing the world today. I looked at the tallies and I'm really impressed. In today's entry, list between five to eight ways to lessen the problem that you said was the most pressing.

I miss you guys so much and am really looking forward to "seeing" you tomorrow (Friday) at the videoconference! I'm so nervous!

Love, Ms. Bosetti