Mammals (and more!) of Nova Scotia
First-time Earthwatch volunteer Chantil Sinclair shares her experiences on Mammals of Nova Scotia
September 21
Morning - It’s two hours before my flight and I’m waiting at Heathrow airport ready to set off on my first ever Earthwatch expedition. It’s difficult to put my emotions into words; I’m so excited about my trip but I’m also very nervous. In just over 7 hours I’ll be meeting with the other 12 volunteers and the principle investigators at Halifax airport in Nova Scotia, ready to spend the next two weeks together.
Evening - We arrived at the house after a long drive. Once there I was quickly put at ease with everyone’s friendliness and started to relax. We spent time in the evening getting to know each other. The group was quite diverse, with 6 Americans (including 4 teachers), 2 Australians, 1 other English girl besides myself, a girl from Japan and a guy from Switzerland. And then of course there were the principle investigators Chris and Christina and their dog Lycos who was a big hit.
September 22
We have just returned from a four mile walk around the coast. The scenery was stunning! The idea was to introduce everyone to looking for field signs. We searched the coastal path for signs of animals such as scat, prints and fur. As we found each one Chris or Christina told us what they were and their distinguishing points so we could identify them next time. It wasn't all signs though; we saw animals too, including a porcupine to everyone's delight.
September 24
Having set our small mammal traps yesterday we headed down to the research site to check our traps for small mammals. The traps are checked and reset twice a day; once in the morning and once in the afternoon. In total we caught 18 rodents for the day, which comprised of mostly rock voles, plus a common deer mouse and a bog lemming. Once caught, we checked them for condition, weighed, sexed and marked them by making a tiny cut in their outer fur. They were then released in the same place they were caught.
Also today we carried out deer dropping counts by marking out a quadrat and starting in a straight line, walking/crawling through it slowly looking for droppings of any kind. We’re all rapidly becoming excellent poo spotters!
September 27
Today was our recreational day and we went to the seaside town of Lunenberg.
Lunenburg is a bustling town with lots of great little shops and a rather large fisheries museum. A group of us decided to go whale watching. It was near the end of the season so unfortunately we didn't see any whales, but we did get to see two different types of seal; the grey seal and the harbour seal.
September 28
Today we went to Kejimkujik National Park and enjoyed a couple of walks through the hemlock forest. Among the beautiful scenery we spotted a white tailed deer at the side of the road and the visitor’s centre had some three day-old snapper turtles which they had rescued from the car park.
October 2
The last few days have been back to the research site, sampling two more areas with our small mammal traps. My group even caught a flying squirrel who, much to my delight, happily posed for photographs. Today we collected our traps for the final time and with some sadness said goodbye to the research site. The afternoon was spent back at the house where Dr Chris Newman gave a very interesting talk on geology and the mammals native to Nova Scotia. We were also given some useful feedback on the data we had collected and what that meant in real terms.
October 5
Today was our last day and I think everyone was a little emotional as we said our goodbyes. Everyone on the trip was so fantastic and I don't think I stopped laughing for the whole two weeks. Helen, the other English girl, and I were on the same flight home and so we spent the day together in Halifax; visiting the natural history museum and doing some last minute shopping, and at least got to delay one farewell until the following day.
I've made some great friends over the course of this trip and we have all promised to keep in touch. On arriving back in London, I find I have just two questions: when can I see everyone again and where am I going for my next expedition?
By volunteer Chantil Sinclair who joined this expedition in 2008.