Day Two, (Monday) Field Work

After another wonderful and hearty breakfast, we set out to Cook’s Lake to begin our field research. This will be the site for the majority of our research. Christina (Dr. Buesching) explained to us how her parents had acquired this thirty-acre piece of Nova Scotia farmland. They did this with the intention of using it for environmental research and animal conservation. Christina and Chris, who had been conducting their badger monitoring in the UK happily agreed to use this site to monitor small mammal populations in Nova Scotia, to see how/if climate change is having an effect on their survival. (Below, in the center of photo, are Chris and Christina. Pictured in the other photo is Christina training us how to load and set the traps.)

Now we were ready to begin. The first task was to set the traps. The ones we are using for this project are called Longworth traps, and run about $100. (US) per trap. Our principal investigators (Chris and Christina) carefully taught us how to add the right amount of straw, seed and apple to the little aluminum boxes. Setting them was a bit challenging at first, but after the first few we got the hang of it. The teacher team (Team E, Jennifer, Bob and I) set twenty traps in a grassland area, in two columns about ten meters apart from each other. We crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.

After gathering at our Cook Lake Base Camp (a netted gazebo) we had a delicious lunch of sandwiches, chips and fruit and cookies. We needed the energy for our introductory afternoon hike. Shortly after setting off into the woods, Christina spotted some extra-large tracks, which could only belong to our all-time favorite mammal, the black bear! Could I be so lucky to see one yet again this year? Only time will tell! Anyway, we walked toward the lake.

Another interesting thing we spotted was a porcupine latrine. Christina said that at some point earlier this year there had been a predator-prey interaction between a fisher and a porcupine. We were able to see the remains of the porcupine at the base of the tree; we found its quills, a shoulder bone, and an arm bone.

Finally, we saw a grouse perched up in a tree. This was a first (sighting) for me… Knowing that the traps were now set, our P.I.s explained that we would need to check each of our (20) traps for three consecutive days in order to collect our experiment data. Altogether there were 100 traps set by five different teams. We couldn’t wait until the next day (Tuesday) to check our traps. Back to Cherry Hill for some dinner and a good night’s sleep!