Exploring Nova Scotia! Eh??

What We Did This Weekend: EXPLORE!!

1. Saturday involved a day to Halifax, which is the main town in Nova Scotia. (Looking at the map, Halifax is in the bottom, right corner of the map-lavendar colored province). We wandered down to the wharf (ocean shore) and explored the harbor area. No trip to the oceanside is complete without a meal of seafood. I took a picture of the plate of Mussels & the seafood chowder soup I had at a small local restaurant (hey, biology class..... aren't you wishing I'd share this plate of food?)













Cool trivia for Halifax, Nova Scotia:
Did you know that Halifax was the closest harbor to bring the survivors and bodies of the sunken ship, Titanic? (which sank April 15th 1912) The 3 rescue ships actually came from the town of Halifax. Many of the bodies that were unidentifiable or unclaimed, are buried in 3 of the local cemeteries in town.




The Museum of the Atlantic has artifacts from the ship.
Copy and paste this link for the museum website (awesome place!)

http://titanic.gov.ns.ca/
http://titanic.gov.ns.ca/discover.html














2. Sunday we went to Kejimkujik National Park, a park located in the interior (inland) part of Nova Scotia. Most of the towns are located on the shore of the ocean, while the interior stays fairly sparsely populated. This park is very remote and is peppered with lakes amonst MANY trees. It has an awesome stand of hemlock woods. Hemlock are a old growth pine tree which is not found in many areas that were exposed to logging during the late 1800's & early 1900's. However, the interior was such a remote area that logging didn't reach this area, leaving many trees to be 400+ years old. Gorgeous 6 mile walk through a trail in the woods! Awesome! Above is a picture of a hemlock growing on top of a huge rock (can you imagine how long it took for that tree to climb up there??.....really? No....)

Whenever you're in another country, there's always a variety of unique brands and foods. The candy bar of choice this hike was the Big Turk Candy Bar - chocolate covering a cherry-jellied flavor in the middle - kind of like a gooey chocolate covered cherry. Yum!!




What We'll Do Tomorrow:
1. Back to the Small Mammal Traps tomorrow. We'll be setting up traps in another area. It's in the interior part of the Nova Scotia and about 30 miles away. This will be used as comparison from previous years and also to the East Port Medway Site.



For YOU......
1. Research the Titanic. What safety features are now in place (because of this shipwreck) that would have deterred the Titanic from sinking/allowed for more survivors?

2. How does a Hemlock look different than other pine trees?

Friday's Picks:
1. Our hare dropping plots were 10 meters x 10 meters. What is the size of this box in feet?

About 31 feet x 31 feet (count 31 squares on the floor of our room)

2. What is the reason for the Jolly Seber Method being more accurate than Mark & Recapture (when we're taking data for more than 2 times)?
Jolly Seber Method is much more accurate because since our second catch/third catch/fourth etc... goes over several days, we are unsure if the recapture is the exact same recapture as the day before. (The same mouse may be getting recaptured 5x OR 5 different mice may be getting recaptured) This eliminates this error.


3. What is our estimated population of voles and mice in this area, using the Jolly Seber Method?
Red-Backed Vole: 1 + 1 / 1 x 5 = 10
Mice: 2 + 1 / 1 x 2 = 6

See you soon!
KVWH