PEI fieldwork

Went to PEI for some field work. We were there to collect DNA samples for one girl's project which is comparing maternity colonies across the maritimes.

 Beach by Stanhope where we camped, Dalvay National Park

 

 bat from the 1st colony sampled - an alopecia bat - missing fur from her chest.

We sampled two maternity colonies:

• 1st colony: caught 10 bats - 4 pulled from the attic and the rest from the mist net set up outside. Had a few adult females, but mostly juveniles - males and females. 
• 2nd colony: very cool colony! in an amazing house that was 110 years old, some cool hippies lived there with a few musical instruments. We caught about 9 bats in the attic and 6 from the net outside. Turns out that there were 3 northern long-eared bats in the attic! this is very cool since they are a tree roosting species! and what is even cooler is that one of them was a juvenile that was very young and couldn't even fly yet! this is rare to see since they are usually in tree roosts at that age which we can't access. this little guy was 4.7 grams - and the adults are around 7-8 grams, so yeah, he was a little tiny adorable bat with huge ears, beyond cute. 
• it is hypothesized that since PEI has been completely logged, there are no mature stands of forests, so the northern long-eared bats which rely on old trees for their roosts have no where to roost - and thus are forced to use attics and man-made structures

 an awesome campground we stayed at, just overlooking the river where it met with the ocean.

 jake had a blast, as usual. but it was a tough trip, and much of it was spent in a car which sucked, so I felt pretty bad for him, although he did get to run around here a bit.

 leaving PEI - after all that I've heard of it - I cannot say I love the place... it's flat, there are farms...

Back in Tatamagouche - trapping at a property by earltown lake, quite a pretty spot:

We only caught two bats - one was in the bat box, so that was easy to catch. The other flew into our net near midnight when we were just taking them down. She appeared to have some odd scarring/sores:

 bump along tip of uropatagium

scars along the edges of her ears.

she went into torpor very fast while we handled her, and after trying to warm her up for over an hour, we placed her in a bat box near where she was caught, and hopefully she takes off tonight. both bats we caught, octavia and petri, are radiotagged and will be followed for the next (hopefully) 10 days.

back to halifax on august 1st, meeting up with a friend for breakfast (I met her in BC and she showed me how to make pierogies and we saw lemuria and living with lions play!), then food not bombs, then who knows.

newfoundland on the 4th!

"rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth" - Thoreau

- alicia