Tuesday Afternoon

Here are some answers to the questions from this mornings and yesterdays post.
How many of you guessed Cranberries for the mystery picture? Since we don't grow cranberries in Florida you probably did not realize what they look like on the plant. If you got the second part of the question which talked about eating them at Thanksgiving time then you were correct.

One of the classes wanted to know if we would see any of Wally's relatives. Yes, when we go to Kejimkujik National Park we should see some them. Wally is really excited about seeing some friends.

What signs do you think we would see since yesterday was the first day of Fall? In Florida we do not begin to see anything obvious mostly it is just a feeling of air that does not have as much humidity. In the northern states the trees begin to have the leaves change color and eventually fall off. Here is a web link that will help explain it more. Fall leaves web site
Nova Scotia has not had real cool weather yet so many of the trees have not begun to turn colors. There is a flower that only blooms in the fall that is called Golden Rod. Here is a picture of it.









Today was our first full day at the Cook's lake site. We walked into the forest all the way to the lake. Dr. Christina Buesching shared the local history of the area as well as the flora and fauna.

As we walked to the lake we found a cow skull. We learned the difference between the cow that has horns and the moose that has antlers. The cow has horns that are part of the hair. They grow straight and tend not to curl too much. They do not loose the horns.
The moose has antlers that they drop at the end of the year. When the antlers are velvet they are growing and have blood flowing through them. After they are done growing they loose the velvet and have a hard antler remaining.
Both the cow and moose use their teeth for eating plants and are considered ruminants.

We found some interesting animal prints in the mud.
This is a bear print. There is a quarter next to it to show the difference in size.



By the time we had lunch at the base camp we were pretty tired. After eating we got our energy again and then started out to the area where we set out 100 small rodent traps.
The traps need to be assembled with grass for bedding, seeds and a little piece of apple.
Rodents do not drink water but get their liquid from eating their food. The little piece of apple provides them with the liquid that they need.






We set out 50 in an area that had been reforested. Watch the video to see what the area looks like.

Then we set another 50 in area that had heavy forestation. It was a lot harder to set the traps because it was so wooded.

Tomorrow we will see if we caught anything? We will also talk about various animal scat.