Nova Scotia 2010 - Earthwatch

In July 2010, I spent two weeks in Nova Scotia. One of the amazing things about this expedition is that it gave me an opportunity to see parts of Nova Scotia that most tourists would never get to see or experience. Chris & Christina had two houses that the volunteers used as living quarters in a little village called Cherry Hill. The research was done at Cook’s Lake, which is about 45 minutes away from where we stayed. During the first week, we set up 100 traps in a cleared (50 traps) & forested habitat (50 traps). The mammals that we trapped included red back voles, chipmunks, & red squirrels. Red squirrels were released because they are easily stressed & could become so stressed that they give themselves a heart attack. The traps could also trap shrews but they are able to get out through a hole in the back or side of the trap. Toward the end of the week, I had the opportunity to hold a red back vole. It was amazing. I was nervous at first because I didn’t want to hurt the vole. We also did deer surveys, where we looked for white tailed deer scat. While we looked for deer scat, we also noted the presence of snowshoe hare & porcupine scat. Toward the end of the first week, we set up camera traps to see what we kind find. At the end of the first week, we had one research-free day. We went into Lunenburg for the day. It is a nice little touristy town. Most of the group went on a whale watching tour. I didn’t go because I didn’t think that it was going to be a good day to see any whales. I spent most of the day going in & out of the Fisheries Museum. You pay the $10 (Canadian $) & you get a blue wrist thing. That gives you access to the museum for the full day. I walked around in the museum for a while, and chatted with some of the workers, decided to tell me about the coyote problem. After awhile I had lunch, which was interesting. I actually ate fish (haddock) for the first time since 1997. The fish was excellent and cooked the way that fish should be cooked…fried. When I finished lunch, I walked around & visited some of the shops. I got all of my Christmas shopping done too. I went back to the Fisheries Museum & went to the exhibit where I held a starfish. That was neat. The starfish felt weird but was still neat. I was going to pick up a crab but a group of children came up so I decided to move on. I spent the last hour or so before supper in the movie theatre in the Fisheries Museum. I watched several videos about the importance & history of fisheries in Nova Scotia. I met up with the rest of the group at 6:30 pm at a pub where the locals frequented (The Knot Pub). I had the best grilled cheese sandwich ever. The second week of trapping was done in a shrub environment and a meadow environment. We didn’t capture anything at all in the meadow environment. In the shrub environment, we trapped a lot of meadow jumping mice and chipmunks. Christina and Chris were expecting to find at least a few deer mice in the shrub environment but this was the first group of volunteers where no deer mice were found. When we asked about the why this might be, there were some thoughts. One thought was that the snakes in the area were eating the deer mice since they may be easier to catch (versus trying to catch jumping mice). Another thought was that jumping mice hibernated and deer mice didn’t hibernate and that the decrease in deer mice numbers could be due to the food availability. Of course, they also said that the decrease in deer mice population would need more attention (to determine the cause). Toward the end of the week, we took down the camera’s that we had put up the week before. On the last day (the day before we left), we spent the morning talking about the data that we had collected and the potential impact of the results. That afternoon we went to a provincial park and tested our skills in field identification.