Mammals of Nova Scotia with Ms. VanWilgen-Hammitt

Goodbye Nova Scotia, Hello Bemidji, Minnesota!

2009-04-25T11:35:00.002-05:00

Today we all got up early, packed, and left our cozy fishermen shacks in Cherry Hill by 8:15am. I do believe this was the earliest that we've ever left! Although many of us did miss our "creature comforts" several times during this trip, I do admit there is a part of me that will miss doing field research.

There are many things I have learned on this trip. The main lesson I've learned is that no matter how much we think we live "globally" or environmentally friendly, there is always so much more we need to be aware of. Getting out of a daily routine allows me to really evaluate what I do each day and the decisions I make. I notice nature everyday in the rural town of Bemidji, Minnesota, but do I really notice nature? Do I really appreciate and observe all the adaptations that happen on a consistent basis? Our world is adapting constantly, long term & short term. I'll leave Nova Scotia with a new awareness and appreciation of all the fabulous and fluctuating phenomena on this beautiful land we live in. Absolutely wonderful!

Thank you so much to Drs. Christina Buesching & Chris Newman for all their knowledge, patience, and leadership during these two weeks. I know our group really was an 'entertaining' one! They'll miss us, I know it.....

Thanks again to WellsFargo for the fellowship opportunity with the Earthwatch organization. Just within our teacher group, we figured we reached out to over 2,000 people - just within our group of 10 teachers! Incredible! What a wonderful way to spread the message about personal choices and responsibility.

What a wonderful experience!
Thanks to all who read the blogs and sent emails.
Hope you learned a bit out of my trip too.

Signing off!

Kristina VanWilgen-Hammitt
Environmental Science & Biology Teacher
Bemidji High School
Bemidji, Minnesota

Great Last Day to a Great Trip!

2009-04-24T20:17:00.004-05:00

Our awesome 2 week adventure concluded today with a trip to the Seaside Adjunct of Kejimkujik National Park. The main part of Keji is in the interior part of Nova Scotia, but there is a small peninsula that sticks out into the Atlantic that has recently been adopted into the Keji Park System.

What a gorgeous day spent along the oceanside! We took a fabulous 5 mile walk along the edges of the peninsula looking for animal sign (mammal transect). Ironically, for an area without many trees, we found quite a bit of porcupine droppings. Not what I anticipated.

Another new animal we saw today were Common Harbour Seals! There were 9 of them sitting on the rocks during the low tide. They wait for the tide to come back in, then most likely eat again - either from the lobster traps or schools of fish coming in during the tide.
Absolutely gorgeous day!

One thing I thought you'd be curious about... this big wolf-like dog that appears in several pictures. This is Lycos. He belongs to the two scientists that we work with. Lycos is part German Shepard & part Husky. He LOVES to come along on all our trail work, and as you can see, he loves to sit with the gang in the van. He comes in quite handy around dinner time- his favorites are chocolate ice cream and anything it seems in a crackly wrapper.

Like I said, a fabulous last day on a fabulous trip!
Wish me luck at the airport carnival tomorrow.
See you Monday at school!

KVWH

Last Day of Data Collecting!

2009-04-23T18:54:00.008-05:00

What We Did Today:
1. Picked up all our traps at Cook Lake Research Site. Picked up the lunch tent.
Quiet day in Trapville. Based on our data, the vole and mice population is going down. This could very well be a result of a cooler and wet spring - a later winter.

2. Had afternoon to skype with kids back home and then explore the oceanside!

Millie and I walked down to the wharf to check out any lobster fishermen that may be there. (The green house in this picture is the house we're living in.)
We found one! So...... some lobstering facts for you:

Lobster fishing is the main occupation all along the Great Banks - which is the ocean edge that runs along the eastern coast of Canada and the very northern part of the US. According to the man we talked to, lobstering starts at the end of November and runs through April/May. He did say that often during February & March, bad weather hinders them from going out though. Traps are put down in November and will stay underwater until May. The traps get checked every day or as often as possible. Lobster Scott says he puts out ~250 traps that are marked with bright orange bouys. They range anywhere from near the coast to 15 miles off shore! He find them with GPS and markers, but he still says the best way - by far- is his brain. He relies on his brains first, and the technology last.

One trouble they've been having with the lobster netting is having seals eat all the bait, small lobster, and also nets and bait for net fishing. There is a quota of ~64,000 seals that can be killed this year by the lobster fishermen in order to help preserve their nets & lobster, but probably not enough to dent the population.

What We'll Do Tomorrow:
1. A trip to an adjunt (addition) part of Kedjimikujik National Park. We'll visit a small sector that's near the oceanside. We'll do some outdoor survival skills and also practice some of our mammal transect skills! I'm excited because this will be along the coast! Great place to be for our last day in Nova Scotia.

Wednesday's Picks:
OK: Not only are we in Nova Scotia, but our Scientists are from England & Germany.
Here's some Great British slang.
See if you can figure out what some of these things are:

1. Baggers & Mash: Sausages & Mash Potatoes
2. Bubbles & Squeak: The 2nd day of Mash Potatoes with onions added to it (it bubbles & squeaks as you cook it.)
3. A Cool Box: The Cooler
4. An Articulated Lory: A semi-trailer
5. A Recovery Lory: A Tow Truck
6. Loo: A Toilet
7. Queue: A line of people (used commonly in Canada as well)
8. Chips: French Fries
9. Shepard's Pie: Mashed Potatoes, Veggies, poured and cooked in a breadish pie shell.
10. Crisps: Potato Chips
11. Sticking Plaster: Band-aids (didn't guess that one I bet!)
12. Jumper: Sweater
13. Wellies: Rubber Boots
14. Rubbish: Garbage
15. Brill: Brilliant, Superb

**For short videos of several of us in the rain yesterday, copy and paste this link to youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2N5T3W52hA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxTUsWbjyPM

Can't believe I only have 1 full day left! This fabulous trip just FLEW by!
See you Monday!

KVWH

Singing in the rain, just singing in the rain.....

2009-04-22T19:42:00.015-05:00

What We Did Today:
1. GOT WET!!

Today it poured!!
Rain or shine, we've got to check the traps - both morning & afternoon. When we all got ready this morning, we knew it was going to be a sort of miserable, cold day. I do have a new appreciation for my knee-high water boots! Matter of fact, I LOVE my knee-high water boots! Without those today, life would NOT have been fun..... I was in rain gear all day with a hood up to keep my hat a bit dry. (In the picture is Millie Wong Tang- from California, me, Mr. LongVoelkner, & Caroline Rodgers - an Earthwatch employee from Oxford, England)

Checking traps this morning, we did have 1 closed door in the wooded traps. BINGO! The trap held a Red Backed Vole. I scruffed it (reached in and pinched it between the shoulder blades- like a mama cat picking up her kitten), and its eyes bulged out of its head. When I commented on its huge teeth and eyes, Dr. Beusching casually said, "Yes. That's because you're suffocating it. You grabbed too much fur and you're pinching it too hard". Oops. The vole was fine, but probably not feeling so hot after I handled it. Further proof of its superb health showed up when we put it through the Mouse Scrambler Maze. It set a new land speed record of 4 seconds! (A little faster than our yesterday's vole which reached 4 minutes. We pulled the tape off the lid to let it go and still couldn't even shake it out of the box! 6+minutes later it fell out.)

It rained all day. Animals are smart sometimes and showed us that even they don't venture out when it's raining. No full traps this afternoon. Quiet day in the woods. We spent most of the day creating some new trails through the woods to Cook Lake. (Whilst getting very wet)

Check out this video of Dr. Beusching scruffing a chipmunk that we caught in a trap. She often does these because they get aggressive and bite quite a bit more than the mice ever would.

2. Thought you'd enjoy hearing about our accomodations. There are 2 houses that the teachers stay in: the green house and the yellow house. Yellow house is the boy's house, and according to the unanimous vote amongst them, the house strongly resembles the house from the movie Psycho. The green house is quite cozy. This is where we gather for meals and blogging in the evenings (since the yellow house has no furniture, nor heat, much less internet access.)
I attached some pictures from supper tonight (which was spaghetti).

-We all take turns doing dishes - breakfasts & suppers.
-On the stove is tonight's supper - canteen style - serve your own.
-This is our Dinner Table - packed with chairs for 13 people to eat at. Not everyone is sitting at the table in this pix, the rest are in the kitchen serving their plates.
-Last picture is one of the girl's bedrooms (Millie's & I's). We have all our wet gear hanging everywhere!)

What We'll Do Tomorrow:
1. Check the traps again, but just in the morning. We'll take up the traps over lunch and head back to the shack to skype our classrooms at home.
2. We'll also take a look at the Field Cameras we've posted at several different areas around Cherry Hill where we stay (I'm especially curious about the one that's mounted above the compost pile in the backyard!)

For YOU.......

Not only are we in Nova Scotia, but our Scientists are from England & Germany.
Here's some Great British slang. See if you can figure out what some of these things are:
1. Baggers & Mash
2. Bubbles & Squeak
3. A Cool Box
4. An Articulated Lory
5. A Recovery Lory
6. Loo
7. Queue
8. Chips
9. Shepard's Pie
10. Crisps
11. Sticking Plaster
12. Jumper
13. Wellies
14. Rubbish
15. Brill

Tuesday's Picks:

1. We've only found woodticks so far, but Lyme's Disease and Deer Ticks are becoming much more common in this area? What's the difference between these 2 ticks?

Woodticks are bigger than deer ticks. They are much more spherical (round) and also have smaller mouth parts in comparison to a deer tick. Woodticks are usually a dark grey/black color with white marks on them (a white "necklace" is a girl tick, 2 white stripes along its back "suspenders" is a boy tick). Deer ticks are usually much smaller - in the spring time, the nymphs are small enough that you often don't even see them. Their bodies are more burgundy/dark reddish shaped with a black head. Deer ticks mouth parts are quite long in comparison for its body and it is also more teardropped shape.

2. What are Owl Pellets? Why do they make them?
Owl Pellets are really Owl ThrowUp. Sounds gross, but actually a very good adaptation for the owl. Owls are birds of prey, so they eat living things that have bones, hair, muscles, and organs. Their bodies can digest the muscles and organs just fine, but not the hair and bones. The owl stores all bones and hair from the animals it eats in a crop/gizzard structure in its throat. When it gets full (depending on how often it eats, but probably every 24 hours or so), it regurgitates/throws up this wad. We find it at the base of the trees where owls hang out. Awesome to dissect and pick apart. Always fun to try and guess what was eaten! The picture below is a bag full of the owl pellets we found yesterday under a big spruce tree overlooking a field.

See You Soon!
KVWH

Let it Rain! Ugh!

2009-04-21T15:58:00.010-05:00

What We Did Today:

1. Checked our Traps!

First thing we did was open the doors in the field traps. We didn't want to catch a species of shrew that's found here (it's too big to fit through the escape hole in the back and it'd otherwise die). So each morning we open the doors and each evening we close the doors.

Secondly, we checked our traps along the woods. Nothing for C group today, but one other group did get a vole.

By this time, the clouds had pretty much taken over and the wind was coming in strong! Hail and rain started to take over and the temperature dropped. It was cold!

2. We did a Woodtick count. Unfortunately, it was so cold they weren't moving real well. Taking a light colored blanket from one of our beds (no kidding!!), we'd drag it along the ground in a field area for 10 meters. Then flip it over and count the ticks on it. Today, with 5 swipes = nothing. Yesterday? We each had about 20 ticks on all our pantlegs, shoes, necks, hats... you name it. They were out in full force yesterday - although it was MUCH warmer yesterday! Tomorrow's supposed to be just like today, maybe we'll have to wait for Thursday for the tick studies!

3. Trail Creation. Part of our job today involved some trail maintenance, so we spent several hours cutting trails that will eventually go around a cottage area and near a lake shore.

LUNCH!

4. Afternoon involved hare droppings count and checking the traps one last time (& closing the doors in the field traps).

COOL STUFF:
**One cool discovery today?
Owl Pellets! At the base of a spruce tree, we found some Owl Pellets... what are they?

**Cool Video Clip. Copy and paste this youtube address. Short (& silly) video clip of us setting traps in the field.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7HT68vIXPU

What We'll Do Tomorrow:
1. Brave the downpour rain and check the traps again!
2. More tick checks if the weather holds out.
3. More deer & hare droppings counts.

For YOU......

1. We've only found woodticks so far, but Lyme's Disease and Deer Ticks are becoming much more common in this area? What's the difference between these 2 ticks?

2. What are Owl Pellets? Why do they make them?

Monday's Picks:

1. In reference to the fire holes: Besides being a great water source, what other positive thing did it provide - without really intending to?

A fabulous wetland for water fowl and amphibians! Spring water time is crucial for amphibian eggs, nesting areas for water fowl, and creating more food for animals that are farther up the food chain.

2. If you didn't know the Cook's lake area was an old homestead site, what information could give you a big clue that there was probably a house(s) in this area before?

The apple trees. Apple trees rarely grow without being planted in a certain spot. If there is an apple tree in the middle of the woods, chances are very good that it was put there by someone - usually near an old house many years ago.

See you soon!
Hope the weather will take a turn for the better!
KVWH

Back To Work.

2009-04-20T17:20:00.015-05:00

What We Did Today:
1. Time to go back to work. This week's studies will take place near Cook's Lake, which is about 30 miles into the interior part (remember, we're staying on the south shore).

a. Notice this picture of a swamp. Actually.... not a swamp. This water pond was man-made about 20 years ago, along with many others around the interior of Nova Scotia. The interior has only 2 meters (7 feet) of topsoil. (Nova Scotia basically one big rock with a bit of dirt covering it) Right now in the spring, the snow melts & then it rains. There is water everywhere. During July and August, however, when it doesn't rain much, this area gets VERY dry - there's not enough moisture in the 7 feet of topsoil holding all the tree roots together to keep fire hazards low. The government implemented "fire holes" which are water ponds every 2 km along roads to allow a water source should a forest fire break out. This fire hole was at one time a lot wider, but now has been growing over with vegetation. Fire holes are still used and valuable parts of the wilderness.

b. We set up traps again today to catch the elusive small mammal (voles & mice). One difference today is that instead of all 100 traps in the woods, we're putting 50 on the edge of the woodline and 50 in a grassy area next to the woods.

First we had to prepare the traps. We set up the traps very similar to the traps in East Port Medway, only difference is that we stuffed them with the pasture grass on the field (rather than hay). We then set up traps along a 10 meter grid. All groups A - E, were spread out evenly at the edge of the woods. We all walked in and placed our A traps every 10 meters so as to have a 50 traps, all 10 meters apart from each other.
Then went to the field area and placed the other 50 traps (B traps) every 10 meters also. One odd thing is that we left the doors to the traps in the field closed for today. Since we aren't back until morning to check these traps, we run the chance of catching a shrew or another species of vole that would die if left in the traps too long. We'll open the doors tomorrow morning to catch during the day.

Notice how we mark the field. Just like in the woods, we mark each trap with tape that has the trap # on it, otherwise we'd never find it amongst the grass. We 'ponytailed' the grass with orange flag ribbon to find it easier.

c. Neat thing about Cook's Lake: It was an old homestead. This area has some cool history to it. It happens to now be owned by Dr. Buesching's family, but for the previous 150 years before they owned it, it belonged to the Koch Family (now Cook). Nova Scotia still has a definite european influence to it - and you can notice it from the house styles to the old rock walls that define land boundaries. The field area we study was the old pasture land from the homestead. An old orchard, with now dead apple trees :( , is now the perfect place for our "camp" and our lunch site.

**In case you're wondering how well we eat while we're here..... Here's the ice cream tower at the table every night. I think I've eaten more ice cream in the last 2 weeks than I've eaten in the last year.....

What We'll Do Tomorrow:

1. Check our traps! I'm curious to see what we get in the field vs in the woods!
2. Deer and hare pellet counts. So that means more crawling in the woods picking up poop - oh, boy.... hope I find another record-breaking snake again....

For YOU......
1. In reference to the fire holes: Besides being a great water source, what other positive thing did it provide - without really intending to?

2. If you didn't know the Cook's lake area was an old homestead site, what information could give you a big clue that there was probably a house(s) in this area before?
Sunday's Picks:

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?

Many safety regulations have changed as a direct result of this accident. Several are: enough life boats for ALL bodies on board, rules regulating when ships can go "off-line" or without radio contact, and it also instigated the advancement of technology to detect icebergs.

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

Hemlock are gorgeous old pine trees that have been almost logged to extinction. Here's an excerpt from the New York Times:

Tsuja canadensis, considered the redwoods of the East, range from Georgia to New Brunswick and west to Wisconsin. The tallest are 170 feet and the oldest 600+ years old. And according to the New Yorker, they create whole ecosystems.

Hemlocks create deep shade and cover the ground with beds of needles, altering the temperature, moisture, and chemistry of the soil around them, and creating a distinctive habitat for certain animals and plants. Some ecologists believe these coves contain - or, until recently, contained - the last examples of primeval rain forest in eastern North America. Only small fragments of old-growth forests remain in the East.

Fabulous Day today! 50 & Sunny!
See you Soon!

KVWH

Exploring Nova Scotia! Eh??

2009-04-19T18:49:00.020-05:00

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

Just the Facts, Ma'am.....

2009-04-17T11:49:00.012-05:00

What We Did Today:
1. Collected all 100 traps from the woods.
This morning we went through the lines and checked for any captures. Team C was 0 for 20 today (that's me). No luck today. Several other groups did have some voles. Then we went back and collected all 20 of our traps, emptied them out of hay and feed, and stacked them in our crates. On Monday, we'll survey another site several miles away in order to compare data.

2. Counted hare poo.
We collected 3 bags of "CoCo Puffs" hare droppings. Our next job was counting all those droppings! After counting over 4,000 hare droppings/pellets, it was unanimously decided that we should invent a counter - like the coin sorter at the bank! We have 10 of us to count, but was still quite the task! (Another idea: this might be a new alternative to lunch detention.....) We averaged 1604 pellets per 10meter x 10meter quandrat. This was more than last year, which was ~1200 pellets. Unlike deer which leave a certain pile a day, rabbits & hares don't do this. We can only compare data from year to year to see a fluctuation, not an actual number.

3. Calculated Mice/Voles/Chipmunks.
We used Mark & Recapture Method for our small mammal population. We then used a second, more accurate method called the Jolly Seber Method. A slightly different equation, it's a bit longer and therefore more accurate.

# New Last Day + # Recapture Last Day
____________________________ X Total # Marked
# Recapture on Last Day

This method allows you to take into consideration that you're having more than one event. We didn't just have a first and second catch, we had a third catch, fourth catch, etc.....
Do the Math: How many is our population estimate?

Mice: #New Last Day= 2
# Recapture Last Day= 1
Total # Marked=2

Vole: #New Last Day=1
# Recapture Last Day=1
Total # Marked= 5

What We'll Do Tomorrow:
1. A day without small mammal research! A visit to the big town of Halifax (about hour and a half drive away). It has about 350,000 people and several museums. Looking forward to a huge plate of fresh seafood!

For YOU.......
1. Our hare dropping plots were 10 meters x 10 meters. What is the size of this box in feet?

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)?

3. What is our estimated population of voles and mice in this area, using the Jolly Seber Method?

**No pictures or video will post on the website today. Blogger.com is having trouble with the pictures/video. In the next day or so, I'll hopefully be able to upload some more visuals for you!

Thursday's Picks:
1. What's the difference between a rabbit and a hare?
Hare have longer ears, legs, body size, and an elongated face in comparison to a rabbit.

Copy this link for a picture comparison:
http://www.huntwatch.info/images/rabbit2.gif

2. What type of snake is this? (Google it!)
No good answer yet for this one! There are 5 native snakes to Nova Scotia, and it doesn't seem to be any of them. I'll keep you posted on this one!

3.What is the Nova Scotia Provincial Flower? The Mayflower (no joke)

Copy this link for a picture of it:
http://www.theflowerexpert.com/media/images/aboutflowers/stateflowers/massachusettsstateflowers/massachusetts-state-flower-image-white-mayflower.jpg

See you soon!
KVWH

Just an Ordinary Day......?

2009-04-16T12:05:00.017-05:00

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

Hare Poo, Mice, and Beaver... Oh My!

2009-04-15T16:16:00.009-05:00

What We Did Today:
1. Checked our Small Mammal Traps!
Yesterday, our group put out 100 Longworth Aluminum Mouse Traps, baited with grain/seed. Once this morning and again this afternoon we had to check our line of traps (each group has 20). We had 6 of 100 traps this morning that were sprung. Out of those, 3 of them had critters in them and 3 were false traps (the big donut).

When you have a critter, it is hopefully a deer or white footed mouse, but sometimes it can be a vole or a chipmunk. The mice are the animal that we take our data on, so we hope to catch as many mice as we can.

First Step: Place the trap in the bag, reach in with your bare arm to dismantle the trap by taking out all the hay and pine needles. Hopefully a critter pops out!
Second Step: Corner the beast and grab it by its scruff (between the shoulder blades). It has no feeling in this fur and you can pinch it fairly hard. If you don't, there are good chances it will turn around and bite you, it will hurt, and you'll drop him. Not good for research.

Third Step: Weigh it. If it's a mouse, record if it's male or female, pregnant or not, and adult or kid.

Fourth Step: Create a mark/check for a mark. We'll figure out population numbers with the Mark & Recapture Method we had used in class. How we mark the mice is to take a scissors and just cut a small swipe of guard hair on the right back leg of the mouse. Other teams this summer will mark different areas of the mouses body, so as to know what team had marked it.

Fifth Step: Put it through a Timidity Trap...... aka "The Mouse Scrambler". Tuesday between trapping, our groups made mouse mazes. Before we let them go, we'll put them through the maze. The hypothesis is that the mice around right now represent the carrying capacity of mice. These mice are the ones wise and smart enough to survive winter and they're all adults. So, they should be smarter than mice caught this summer - when they're juveniles and not as wise to the world yet. To test this hypothesis, scientists chose to challenge them through a maze and time how long it takes to go through. Crazy?? Maybe, but we're seeing if it will work..

Sixth Step: Time it through the maze and let it escape out in the same location you trapped it at.

2. "Finding Snowshoe Hare Poo in a Haystack."
With the varying temperatures during the last several winters, there is an interest on the amount of snowshoe hares (not rabbits) there are. They're hard to see and even harder to catch, so we have to go with secondary data..... that means we need to look at poo.
Similar to random sampling, we made a drive through the woods on our hands and knees inside a 10 meter x 10 meter quandrat and picked up.... you guessed it..... smart pills, Nova Scotia gum balls, Fecal Jaw Breakers.... Hare Poo. We got quite a bit. Looks a lot like a big ziploc of CoCo Pebbles Cereal... we made sure not to confuse this bag with our lunch (which followed shortly after this endeavor).

LUNCH: Food always tastes better outside!

3. Mammal Sign Hike.
During the afternoon, small groups of us took a 3-4 mile hike through the woods looking for mammal sign. The goal was to document as many different signs we found and also how many. Sign can be actual observations, beaver cuts/dams/poo, scat, porcupine chew marks, & hair.
What are mammal are these signs off?

What We'll Do Tomorrow:
1. Check Mouse Traps again - morning & evening.
2. Deer Dropping Counts
3. Field Sign Transects

For YOU...
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!)

3. Which ones are the mouse, vole, and chipmunk?

Tuesday's Picks:
1. Why do you guess we set up the traps with the tunnel slightly pointed downward and the nesting box up higher? If it rained. If it rained and the nesting box was lower than the tunnel, the water would sit in the hay - water's NOT very insulating. Mice get cold. Mice die.

2. What is this hole for in the nesting box?
The hole in the nesting box is for shrews. Shrews are not what we're studying and they're also very small critters. The shrews can crawl out that small hole and escape. They'll otherwise die if they don't eat every 4 hours.

Looking Forward to Tomorrow & See you soon!
Love your comments! Keep them coming!
KVWH

Setting the Traps! Watch Out!

2009-04-14T17:51:00.008-05:00

MY FIRST TRAP! WATCH OUT MICKEY!

What We Did Today:
SET SMALL MAMMAL TRAPS!
Today we set out to East Port Medway Research Site which is a wooded area about 20 miles south of Cherry Hill. It is a wooded site about 20 - 30 acres. Our goal today is to set out small mammal traps - specifically looking for mice. Being a smaller mammal, the fluctuation of their population numbers between year to year and also spring through fall is of interest to climate/environmental changes.

So.... step one: Set up the Trap!
1. This aluminum trap has a tube (smaller tube) and a nesting box (bigger square). The nesting box needs to be filled first with some hay/straw. Mice need have very little body fat and need to eat about every 4-6 hours to keep warm and to fulfill their fast metabolism. The hay is there so they don't get hypothermic in the cold April weather (since they're not zipping around the forest floor when they're trapped, they need an alternate way to keep warm)

2. Fill with Pine Needles- dry ones. This hopefully helps get rid of/camoflauge any not-forest-like smells that are in the hay and the metal traps. It's like Glade Air Freshner, Outdoor Flavor.

3. Fill with feed. We add about 2TBSP full of food - a good handful. It's chopped up corn and grain/seeds. This should be enough for it to eat for about a day or two, although we'll check the traps twice a day (morning & night).

4. And don't forget, just like my expectations for YOU to have manners in class, I expect the mice to have them as well......

5. Set them up! Environmental class: Think of our random sampling lab... orange paper with the morrel mushrooms in grids..... Using 20 yard/meter quadrants, we set the traps up. Each group has 20 traps. We were Group C. Notice the labels on this box of traps. Example: C3b on a trap is: Group C, the third trap site (there's 10 total) and it's trap b at the third site (each site has two traps set at it- A & B)
We have to mark where we set the traps, otherwise we'll never find them again! We use flag tape to mark each spot....
All 5 groups( A, B, C, D, & E) walked in lines like a deer drive through the woods about 20 yards apart. As a group, we'd stop together for trap site 1 and place down a & b there. Then move to trap site two, and so on....

6. Think like a mouse! Put the trap in a spot where one would run by and get caught! Mice don't usually run in open areas. (have to know something about animal behavior before you study it's population... heard that before?) So, we have to place traps along rock and tree lines. Borders that the mice will travel along..

Hopefully we'll have something in our traps tomorrow morning!!

What We'll Do Tomorrow:
1. Check our Traps!!
2. Hare & Deer dropping Counts
3. Camera Traps
4. Porcupine Damage Survey

For You......
1. Why do you guess we set up the traps with the tunnel slightly pointed downward and the nesting box up higher?
2. What is this hole for in the nesting box?

Monday's Picks:
1. How many miles is a 10km walk? 6 miles

2. What animal made the droppings? Upper left: Fox (can you see the claw from a small mouse/vole in the poop?)
Upper right: Porcupine (many times Porcupine poop is called a "pearl necklace" - not a good idea for prom....)
Lower left: Rabbit (Notice how circular they are compared to deer poop.)

Can't wait for tomorrow.
Hey.... click on "comment" and ask me a question. I'd love to hear from you!
See you soon!
KVWH

Our First Day Mammal "Hunting"

2009-04-13T17:09:00.003-05:00

BROAD'S COVE, NOVA SCOTIA (that's Atlantic Ocean in the back!)

What We Did Today:

We took an invigorating walk today along Broad Cove-where we're staying, which is on the south eastern shore of Nova Scotia. (About 56 miles from Halifax - Did you figure that out from Sunday's Blog?)
It snowed and was sunny all day..... the weather changed every 10 - 15 minutes. I could hear the ocean waves crashing, watch huge, fluffy, snowflakes hit my face, and feel my face get intermittently sunburned all day long! It was an awesome 10 km walk along rocks and through the woods.
The main goal today was to focus on evidence of mammals in the area. Ideally we'd like to SEE one, but didn't happen today. Lots of observational evidence: scat (poop), chew marks, and claw marks. Here's some of the animal sign we saw:

Below is a link to watch us identifying some droppings. The man in the green hat is Principal Investigator (the lead scientist) Dr. Chris Newman and the tall lady taking a whiff of our findings is Principal Investigator (other lead scientist) Dr. Christina Buesching.
Enjoy!
Copy & paste the link below in an internet browser.
http://earthwatch.wikispaces.com/file/view/otter%20feces.mov

What We'll Do Tomorrow:

Make and deploy small mammal traps!!
We'll start checking them twice a day now!

So......
1. How many miles was our walk today?
2. What animals made the scat samples in the pictures?

Sunday's Picks:
1. We're Atlantic time zone here in Nova Scotia, which is 2 hours ahead of Minnesota. So.... 6pm here is only 4pm there.
2. 90 km? = 56 miles
3. Nova Scotia Dog? Think on that one for one more day... look it up! (Hint: it fetches)

We're Finally In Halifax, Nova Scotia!

2009-04-12T20:57:00.007-05:00

What We Did Today:

Arrived! After missing a connector flight & spending an overnight in the Newark Airport floor (new appreciation for mattresses!), we arrived at 11:45am, Nova Scotia time.
Foggy, drizzly weather welcomed us- temperature was ~38 F*. Gorgeous 90 kilometer drive southwest from Halifax to Cherry Hill. Lots of trees, wetlands, actually a lot like the Duluth/North Shore area only many more houses, more rocky, and they're close to the road!
Cabins are cool - literally. They're fabulously old and unique, but a little chilly. Were told the next step in the remodeling stage is more insulation. Glad I brought plenty of long underwear!

Our Plan Tomorrow:
Tomorrow morning we're meeting in the dining room of the green house (girl's house) and discussing Mammal Monitoring Science to get us familiar with some of the processes and reasons for our methods the next couple of weeks. Afternoon agenda involves a walk at Broad Cove doing a Field Sign Transect Hike along the coast.

For You:
1. What time was it in Minnesota when I arrived this morning?
2. How many miles is 90 kilometers?
3. What is the Nova Scotian Provincial Dog? (Example: In Minnesota we have the state bird- Common Loon. In Nova Scotia what is the "state" dog?)

Looking Forward to Seeing You!
KVWH

4 Days & Counting!

2009-04-07T09:40:00.002-05:00

4 days and counting until I'm off to Nova Scotia!
Back here at home, "Beaver Feaver" is running wild!
Our small town Division I college hockey team, Bemidji State, has made it to the Frozen Four.
As the town anxiously awaits Thursday's game, many are using our snow to cheer on our local boys!
Go Bemidji State Beavers!

Hello!

2009-03-15T12:46:00.001-05:00

Hello!
Have fun in Nova Scotia!

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2009-03-13T17:08:00.001-05:00

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