When it rains, it pours!

So the weekend weather wasn't particularly kind to us; though we hoped for some rain to muddy up the corridors, creating great substrate for animal tracks, we got a bit more than we bargained for! It rained every day over the weekend, and even rained this morning. We're not talking a light drizzle, either, but rather, side-swiping, large-drop showers, and even hail.

Nevertheless, we were all very excited to check out if we'd caught anything on motion-sensor camera, or with our soot-traps. When we arrived to the Warren farm, we could see that the corridors we'd measured out were pretty flooded, just as we'd expected. Most animal prints that may have accumulated while we were gone were lost to the watery landscape. However, we were fortunate enough to come across some great finds anyway, including several clear moose prints and some coyote scat just off the pathway. Our soot traps yeilded mixed results; though we were disappointed to see that the wind and rain had wiped away most evidence of animal tracks, the small mammal trap did have obvious scratch marks and scat deposits which indicated mouse activity. Leah even later found a clump of brownish fur near the trap, givng further evidence that our bait had been taken by a field or jumping mouse. The large mammal trap was a bit less successful - there were no definite prints to be seen, and the bait seemed untouched.

Next, we traipsed along, accompanied by Lara, in exploration of the farmland and woodland transects we'd measured out. The woodland area was where we had the greatest success today, locating the scat and moose prints. The farmland area soil, however, soaked up all the rain, making it very difficult to find any signs of mammal presence. We spent so long scrutinizing that particular corridor that when we finally came up for air, it was already time for lunch! We parted ways with Lara and concocted a game plan:

Driving to the nearby Market Basket grocery store, we decided to buy a few items to help us reset the soot traps. Dan had suggested using a blowtorch or other powerful flame device to procure the sootiness. He mentioned that using a candle would also provide good, but slow, results, and encouraged us to experiment with other methods as we saw fit. As supply-deficient poor graduate students, we opted to try the flame abilities of a good old sterno, and rather than contact paper as the sooty-paw print collector, we selected a classic notepad of plain white paper. Lizzy had heard that bait-wise, fishy smelling catfood was very effective, so we bought a few tins of that. To entice the small mammals, we also bought peanut butter.

Back at the Warren farm, where it was already raining again, we headed under a canopy to test the soot-producing abilities of our sterno. Well, we spent more than a few minutes trying to gather soot that way, but to no avail. With limited other materials at hand, we decided to experiment with another option: mud, rather than soot. The small mammal trap was baited with peanut butter and "sooted" with mud. For the larger trap we wanted to try using a blow torch, so Lizzy called her boss at the Thompson School Green House, who agreed to let us use his. Matt and Lizzy took the trap over there while Leah and Vicki stayed to reposition the motion-sensor camera. Over the weekend, the camera gathered only six photos, and while we were extremely hopeful that even just one of them would boast a shot of wildlife, the only pictures it caught were of other class members!

Shortly after the camera was set in a hopeful location of the woodland corridor, Matt and Lizzy arrived back with an unsooted trap and a very interesting story... apparently Matt lit up the blow torch and began heating the foil to accumulate soot, when, after just ten seconds of success, flames engulfed the entire apparatus, including Matt's hand! The only utterance Matt could find within himself were the repeated words, "bad, bad, bad," in a completely monotone voice. Looking at Lizzy for guidance, which he got, in the form of her frantic pointing outside, Matt marched the flaming device out of the green house and doused it in a puddle. He is ok, though! His flaming hand lost mass amounts of hair, but apparently the two group members who witnessed the fiery debachle thought it was hilarious.

In light of the blow torch incident, team Scat Track Fever decided to adopt the mud method for the large mammal trap also. For bait we left a delicious-smelling combination of ocean whitefish/tuna catfood and cheap peanut butter, to attract both herbivorous and carnivorous mammals. We left both traps in what we determined to be high-traffic mammal areas, turned our motion-sensor camera on, gathered up our things, and headed back to the computer classroom to begin compiling our data. We hope that when we return tomorrow, our camera and traps will have more to tell than they did today! Also, if the rain wouldn't mind holding out for a few more days, we would be most appreciative :)

A Pork Filled Day

We are the dream team, and we plan on living up to our name.

It all began with a common interest to learn more about the animal population in the woods we have been exploring during the Summer Institute of our Environmental Education graduate program at UNH. We are interested in examining how various mammals use three different habitats - managed farm land, woodland, and the fringe area in between - and how/if the present species are moving between these habitats. In order to accomplish this goal, we are using a variety of methods including locating mammal tracks, examining scat, setting up mud and soot traps, and utilizing a motion-sensor camera. When we see signs of mammals, we take pictures and/or make molds of the tracks we see. We are noting track/scat size, stride length, direction, medium in which we found the track, weather, date, and time. Once we collect all of our data we can identify which animals prefer which habitats, and therefore determine the importance of maintaining these different habitats in the interest of biodiversity.

Our success thus far has been surprisingly great! Yesterday we had the privilege of working with Dan Gardoqui again, who is a master at tracking animals and noticing the nuances of the woods. He was able to show us things we never would have even looked for before, like mice and chipmunk tracks. While these were very cute and important in their own right, we also ran into signs of larger mammals, as well. We saw two separate coyote scat samples, moose prints, and our biggest find... bobcat tracks!

Not only did Dan give us great advice and hands-on learning, but he also gave us insight about our project goal. Initially we wanted to investigate corridors and how heavily different ones were used. However, Dan informed us that corridors are difficult to find outside of winter. So instead we are looking at absence and presence of different mammals in three different habitats, which should turn out to be a very interesting and exciting study. It's all part of the research process, and we are definitely learning a ton along the way.

We accomplished a lot today. First of all, we knew we wanted to set up our soot traps before the weekend, so we needed bait. We looked for the dead woodchuck on Main Street, but it was no longer there. Our quest for roadkill on Route 4 was also unsuccessful, so we made a pit-stop at Market Basket where the butcher was kind enough to donate leftover pork fat to us. Let's hope that attracts some cool creatures!

Now that our question was clearly defined, we decided to set up our line transects. We did one each on the farmland, in the fringe, and deeper in the woods. We measured them out, found their direction, got GPS points at the start and end, and set up soot traps next to them. We also hauled water from the farm out to all of our transects to wet down the mud and left some of our meat there in hopes of getting new, clearly defined, tracks by Monday. Finally, we set up the motion-sensor camera and left meat around the area it is covering. It would be fantastic to snag a shot of something chewing on our bait over the weekend.

After all that work our time was up, so we stopped by the vegetable stand to let the farmer's wife know about our traps, and then we left our study site for the long weekend. We are all really looking forward to what we will find there when we come back in three days!