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

new projects

Morning sun coming up, two bright stars are actually planets - mars and jupiter or something..

stranded without a place to stay, so we went to malagash. at the beach with Laura and Jake.

at the farm there are some cliff swallows that like to hangout:

one of the bats we had caught, male northern long-earred, some scarring on the wing.

new project! near parrsborro, working with amanda to trap at a proposed wind farm site (around 20 turbines or so).
at the campsite - brought the wrong fly for the tent and it was raining, make shift tarping for the win.

 some views from the study site:

 blueberry fields everywhere

there were some orphaned mice we cared for, a farmer had set a trap which killed the mom. unfortunately they didnt make it, but lived for about 5 days. it was too cold and kitten formula was all we had available to us.

bat detectors deployed,

in the lower left corner, this device records bat calls as they forage along forest edges.

harp traps were used to catch bats here, since we were trapping in the forest:

they are basically metal frames with fishing wire. the bats hit the wire and fall into the bag below.
this project was cut short because the project was cancelled. there are moose in the area, and these are endangered in most of nova scotia, so DNR (department of natural resources) came in and said they required a two year moose study before the project could go ahead.

next site: a proposed wind turbine site, but this time only for 3 turbines. we stayed at cariboo provincial park, it was absolutely beautiful.

surprise, jake in the water

next project:
trapping a maternity colony by river hebert. turned out there were no bats. we just got eaten alive by mosquitos (and I mean this, it was terrible - at one point I look down, and not only are my arms and hands covered in mosquitos, but three land on my finger at the same time.)
on the plus side, we were able to go to the fossil cliffs in joggins:

summary of the week long/three projects: 6 nights of trapping, 2 bats captured :(

then a few days off back in halifax:
jake is excited to sleep in a bed again!

my favorite jake face

bike ride to long lake and a hike:

and I found a place to sublet for august, and it has a fenced in backyard and no other dogs! things are looking up, aside from feeling lost all the time.
-alicia

Sunset campground

hanging out at the farm, off for the evening. hemp bracelets and a game of fetch were involved.

 day off, walked around for hours with jake:

 unimpressed and ready to go

 roads not only made of dirt, but also the backbones of animals

Right now I am at Sunset campground, and this is Jake's adventures by the ocean:

This morning we went hiking to find the day roosts of bats, just the two of us, and it was wonderful.

Updates:
Current project:
Not finding any little brown bats, mostly doing northern long ears which are harder to track, move further during the night and roost in trees instead of houses - which means more work because we have to characterize all the trees in an 18m radius.  
We have started different tracking shifts - the early shift 9pm-1am, and then the late shift 1am-6am. With the early shift you are able to watch the sunset and with the late shift you see the sunrise, it's something to see. 

 

sunrise over earltown lake

These shifts sometimes involve catching bats, but mostly it's just tracking ones we've already put radiotransmitters on. Then during the day we hike to find the day roosts. Recently we placed radiotransmitters on 4 bats - one little brown: georgia, and 3 long-earred: hermini, izzy and joke. Georgia seems to have groomed off her transmitter or else she hasn't left the house in days (and nights). The other three were found in the same roost yesterday, but today Hermini and Joke were together but Izzy was on her own.
 
My project:
My prof was able to get the funding for 9 more PIT recorders which is amazing, especially since we only had 8 to begin with.  This means that the disaster when we first went to NFLD - finding that there were double the amount of bat boxes then we had expected - is no longer an issue because we now have enough recorders to cover all the bat boxes. We also were able to pick up 330 more PIT tags (microchips basically), so we can monitor even more bats! My prof just booked my flight, I'll be gone august 4th - 14th. It sucks that I'm flying since I hate flying, its bad for the environment and so on, and I can't bring jake, but I didn't have a choice in the matter. It looks like my new roommate may watch him, so that'll work out.
While in NFLD, we are probably only doing up to 4 nights of catching at just one site, and apparently I have the other 6 days to just hangout at the nature park, get to know the people that work there and read/write.

reading pedagogy of the oppressed still, need to finish it soon,
that's all for now, time to go enjoy more sunshine and start a campfire soon,
alicia

Home for a few days

what has gone wrong:

• dropped external harddrive. won't work anymore. only thing on my computer is less than half of my music, not even school stuff, so I'm kinda screwed
• tension with roommates, blahhhhhhhhh.
• not exactly home sick but feeling out of place. I dont want to go back to ontario, but I dont feel at home here (although I did before, and then people moved away/left to travel), and I want to be in BC working with seals, coons, squirrels and large birds! I've been volunteering at the wildlife centre here but its the first summer I havent done fulltime rehab in 5 years, and I dont like the way things are done at the centre here, so... ugh.

on the plus side:

• was home for 5 days, spent two at the wildlife centre, fed raccoons and fawns, good times.
• brought jake out lots, he played with lots of puppies which he hasnt had the opportunity to in the field.
• I'm leaving for tatamagouche tomorrow and will be gone for a month (minus one day to drive a colleague back to town which happens to be the same day as a show I'd like to attend.. bonus!)
• I'm getting excited for classes in the fall!

this entry was more so a rant/sad attempt to make it seem as if life isn't so bad. this had nothing to do with bats, sorry.
-alicia

mid-june bat update

Time to head to work, sun setting over old rusty.

Mist net set up: fine mesh net that the bats can't see well when there are trees in the background.

The house where we were working - has their own private pond.. and the bats seem to love it!

A bat from a different area near Tatamagouche, can see some wing damage.

This bat had the worst bite and a lot of personality. Jaws locked open and ready.

Night tracking, decided to catch up on some notes while Steph and Jordi pin-pointed the location of our bat Chloe. Jake doesn't seem to mind coming along.

During the day we spend hours hiking around and bushwacking, trying to find the bat's day roosts. Some bats in the study are fitted with a radio transmitter and we follow them during the night, and then tag their roosting trees during the day. Here is a colleague trying to pinpoint which tree the bat is in.

Jake basically runs around in the forest the whole time and has the best time ever.

Finally the tree is tagged, and then we move on to the next bat - there are 6 currently tagged, and there have been times it has taken us up to 3 hours to find just one bat, luckily they all aren't like this. The northern long-earred bats are the hardest since they are forest dwelling and they tend to switch their roosts up frequently, usually never staying more than 3 days. In contrast, the little browns roost in houses and hardly ever switch roosts.
The tree tagged above is quite special. One night trapping we caught two female northern long-ears, Ethel and Franny. The next day they were found roosting together, but the day following they were separate. This is day three and they are together again! How cool!
and off to find them again,
-alicia

Returned to Halifax for the night

Here's an update on life doing bat research:

Currently reading: Pedagogy of the oppressed, second time around.

Typical day: run around trying to radio-track bats to their day roost. This often involves Laura and I going through thick forest, through walls of trees, fields of thorns and huge dead logs until we find the tree where the bat, in this case Bella, has chosen to roost. It's possible that Bella is determined to ruin our lives and scar up our legs. We may set up equipment or check out possible new maternity colonies as well.

Typical night: If trapping, head out at around 6:30 or 7pm, arrive at site, set up traps, continue to radio track previously caught bats as they move throughout the night and check nets for new bats. Once new bats are caught, we sample them (tissue and fur samples, PIT tags a.k.a. microchips) and then decide if they are to be radio-tracked (only looking at females, so the males are released without radio-transmitters). Around 12 or 1am, traps come down and we continue to monitor the other radiotracked bats until about 3 or 4am, whenever they stop moving and find their night roost, and then we are able to go home and sleep.

I feel like I haven't had time to stop and think, to work on my project or just play catch with Jake. Struggling for a balance, but there are new people coming on board so things are looking up.

The people we've met have been amazing. The lady at the sugar maple farm near where we work has stayed out with us to trap bats, let us use her facilities to process the bats inside, and has even helped us characterize the tree roosts. There is another man who has helped us find out about trails and possible new colonies, as well as offer his home, water, laundry facilities and anything else we could possibly ask for. The place we are currently at has electricity but no running water, so we had become very smelly and it was nice to have the opportunity to grab a shower.

In summary, we've been living on an old farm in the middle of no where, can't even see the neighbours, Jake runs around free, and life has been good. I really wanted to come back to the city, but as the day approached, I didn't feel the need to go back, and now that I'm here, I'm just picking up dog food and heading back tomorrow (although to a new site for a couple days, then back to Tatamagouche).

Until then,

let your heart be free

-alicia

Veganism

Why go vegan?
Here is a video that explains some of my reasons to be vegan.