Week 2 Begins: Coastal Trapping Area, Deer Dropping Surveys, Camera Traps

What a busy day!

We started by driving to East Port Medway, near the big house that Christina and Chris are building. Here, we walked a transect of about 1 mile, recording all signs of mammals. To maximize our chances of seeing wildlife, two volunteers started at one end and three at the other. It took us over an hour to carefully scour the transect. We saw lots of coyote scat, deer tracks and finally deer scat, a bird carcass, trees gnawed by beaver, porcupine poo, and hare poo.

Field work is going to get interesting as many are a bit distracted after Paige found a tick on her and Bree and Erin from the other group found five.

Next, we conducted five deer dropping quadrat surveys at a nearby area. This area, as the name (East Port Medway) implies, is near the coast. Christina expects fewer deer but more hare compared to Cook's Lake, the inland site where we sampled last week. At Cook's Lake, we found a total of four deer piles. We collected all the hare poo we found, with a high count of an astounding 600 or so pellets in one 10m X 10m area. Yesterday at Kejimkujik National Park we found no deer scat in our five surveys. Today, we found a couple of deer piles in each quadrat (you may see exact numbers later) and over 2000 hare pellets in the last 10m X 10 m quadrat! If 600 is astounding, what is 2000+?

We also found porcupine poo. And we found that this area, where we will also do our trapping this week, is characterized by what has to be the densest undergrowth in the province, if not the entire continent!

Picking up over 2000 quarter-inch pellets (see photo to left below) from dense undergrowth (see right below) takes time, even with 5 people, and we ended up having lunch at about 2:00.















After lunch, we set five camera traps. This is what they look like:

Watch the short video below and think about this: How do you suppose a wildlife camera operates for taking still photos like we'll be doing?

My camera trap is just down the hill from the scientists' house on a quiet bay of the Atlantic.

Next, we assembled all small mammal traps, not each assembling their own set, but working as a group on all sets in an attempt to we eliminate any scent bias from the handlers. Then into the deep, deep woods. Did I mention how deep? There are tough shrubs everywhere! Except where there are huge boulders. We set 5 lines of traps, 2 traps at each of 10 sites along each line, or transect.

We're looking forward to the possibility of trapping a wider variety of mammals, maybe even flying squirrels! But we're not looking forward to going into those woods twice a day until Friday morning.

Humans are the ultimate reason for our dread. Humans 100s of years ago made the decision to clear the hemlock/white pine climax forests for lumber. Year after year, clear cutting continued before succession had a chance to continue to the original climax community. Now spruce/birch forests with thick understory prevail. So what did the hemlock/white pine forest look like? We drove to Kejimkujik National Park on Sunday and experienced the hemlock/white pine forest:

Compare this to the dreadful photo above taken in our trapping area. The hemlock adds a lot of acid to the soil in the natural climax community, keeping many other plants from growing beneath it.

Well, perhaps those shrubs will trample down some so that by midweek, walking will be easier. One thing for certain, no one wears shorts!

After dinner, we attempt beaver watching at a pond where Christina always sees beaver. She's never seen fishermen there, but tonight one beats us to the spot and we go elsewhere. We see two muskrats. Christina teaches us to tell them from beaver by the way their backs bob up and down as they use their tails in swimming. And otter can be ID'd from a distance by their squarer heads that sit higher in the water because their eyes are set lower on their heads.

Looks like I might get to put my UnderArmour to use after all when we attempt beaver watching again. Just sitting and standing at 38 degrees gets chilly!

It will be an interesting and challenging second week!

More soon!
Mrs. Megivern