Day 4: First Time Checking Our Traps!

Today was a looong day, but seeing the results made it worth the while. After breakfast we checked our traps, then we would take the traps that had an animal inside and bring it back to the front of our transects. After we checked our forest traps we went over to check our clearing traps. We had a rather heavy trap that we brought back and Christina thought that it was a chipmunk since they way more. As she was telling us to be careful with chipmunks since they burrow their way out of the bags, she let it out if the trap. As it turns out it was not a chipmunk but a red squirrel. Not expecting that, the squirrel, it jumped out of the top of the bag and landed on Alex then ran for the bushes behind Brittney and I. It was really funny. Tomorrow we should have more in our traps. When we finished we had lunch, then split into two groups. Some stayed at the gazebo and worked on the new shelter they are making, while my group went and did deer scat surveying. It was pretty neat; however, it was difficult to set up the 10 by 10 meter squares in the terrain with fallen trees and sinking swamp. Once we did five squares, we set back out to meet up with the other group to go check on our traps at a little bit after five. Total for the day we had two red backed voles and a red squirrel, this is pretty typical on the first day. In the morning since they were so new and didn't smell natural to the surroundings and then again in the afternoon since it gets to hot for them during the day. On the way home we stopped in a mall in Bridgewater, Brittney and I got our energy drink fix for tomorrow morning. On the way home for the store we saw a porcupine sitting right on the side of the road, but when the van backed up to see, it had a;ready disappeared into the nearby shrubs. When we got back to the house, Brittney and I volunteered to wash the dishes from lunch. So we pretty much stayed in the kitchen with Chris till dinner. After everyone finished their delicious Asian dinner, Chris gave is an hour long lecture over climate change. It was really interesting with global warming, ice age and those affects on badgers and other mammals. When we finished it was pretty late and everyone took their showers and went to bed. I had my first tick today, not exactly a pleasant experience; but Brit and I managed with a little help from google. Here are the pictures from today.

This is the green house, it is all girls and the meeting room that we eat our meals in. The top middle windows are in my room, the one on the middle right is where my bed is and I can open it and night and get a fairly decent breeze.Here is the group first catch, this is a red-backed vole in the bag that we put them in when we release them from the traps.Christina showed us how to grab him so as not hurt them or let them escape.Here she is giving them a sort of tag, you simply trim the fur in the right leg and expose the dark under coat. This way we will know if we have any recaptures - which are quite common.
This is our trap with the red squirrel inside, it was pretty heavy and with usual mice and voles they will weigh less than the trap itself. Thus making it pretty clear to Christina that there was in fact something inside and that it was not a dud. You can see the B7a, the B is for our group, the 7 shows which trap number we are on and the a tells you that it is in the clearing not the forest.

You can barely make out the fur if the squirrel, that is the escape hole for shrews. They are so tiny that it can be dangerous for them when we capture and handle them. This is the only picture of the squirrel before its escape.Here is the front of a closed trap, when the animal reaches the end of the first tunnel the lid will swing closed. The dark colored bar is what keeps the door open when the trap has not caught anything; it is what will release the door to the shut position. Thanks for checking up on me! It is tiring work, but it really does pay off. :)