Just an Ordinary Day......?

What We Did Today

1. Today started like an ordinary day, checked the small mammal mouse traps. 100 traps in our group, only 3 had closed doors. Ended up being one vole, one mouse (recapture) and one chipmunk. Kind of an uneventful morning.... It got cold last night with plenty of frost in the morning. Evening checks of the traps showed 3 closed doors & 3 voles - 1 of them was a recapture. We'll look at the week's data tomorrow.


2. Second on the agenda was collecting more hare pellets. Hare poop MANY times a day and at different amounts, so it's hard to estimate a population with straight on observations. We again made a 10x10 meter/yard grid and were on our hands and knees looking for poop. We were turning over leaves and scratching the leaf litter for hare pellets for our baggies. Imagine my surprise when I was sitting at the base of a tree with lots of roots sprawling everywhere and scratched my fingers and nails along the roots of the tree....... and it slowly moved!!! I wondered if I had seen my eyes correctly and of course, bent down real low to look closer.... and it moved real slow again. It was a huge snake all curled up at the base of the tree in partial hibernation! Yes I was a bit surprised. The two scientists here say it's one of the largest if not the largest snake they've ever seen in Nova Scotia ..... maybe I unearthed the new Scotia Record!

For AWESOME videos of the snake, check out the following link from one of our teachers here:
(cut & paste this address at server page)

http://lionsgateearthwatch.wikispaces.com/
**Choose April 16th on the day.
(This teacher posts great videos- check out some of his other days!)

http://www.earthwatch2.org/lff/buesching09_team1/

***Pictures won't upload today, so check out some of the other team's sites today. Here's the link.

Choose several of the other teachers sites and check it out! We all post different ideas and pictures purposely....check it out!!

3. This evening we went to a wetland area looking for a family of Beavers and their lodge. Found several big adults, no young. Awesome beaver lodge in the middle of a swamp area. And a muskrat that kept zipping by the shore where we sat. He was a bit curious about us....

What We'll Do Tomorrow
1. Last day for mouse traps in the East Port Medway Research Site (pull trap lines to move to new location next week)
2. Deer/Hare dropping survey


For YOU....
1. What's the difference between a rabbit and a hare?
2. What type of snake is this? (Google it!)
3.What is the Nova Scotia Provincial Flower?

Wednesday's Picks:
1. Why do we study the mouse population on Nova Scotia as potential bio-indicators of climate change? (many correct answers... this is a complicated one. Do your best!)

2. Imagine our teams catch 50 mice and mark them. Next week, we catch 30 mice and 20 have a small "haircut" marking. How many mice are there? (Use Mark & Recapture Method!)
50 x 30
--------- = 75 mice
20

3. Which ones are the mouse, vole, and chipmunk?
Upper Left: Vole (Red-Backed)
Upper Right: Mouse (Deer)
Lower Left: Alvin, Simon, or Theodore?

**From Monday: The Provincial Dog? The Nova Scotia Tolling Retriever