Into the school year

Well apparently people still lurk my blog, so I thought I'd give a little update.
I've lost my camera battery charger, so no cool pictures of adventures.

School has been crazy, and full of presentations.

Started off with a 5 minute one on vampire bats:

 went well, aside from the comment from someone about how my plugs were distracting and possibly unprofessional. but anyway, vampire bats are badass and regurgitate blood to even their non-relatives when they are starving.

Next: 20 minute presentation on dolphin societies:

Dolphins are so cool! the one's in shark bay live in these crazy societies where males form stronger bonds than females and there are no social boundaries, yet there are close knit groups that are still going after 17 years of research on them.

then there was a committee meeting, where I presented a progress report/my proposal for my project:

this was terrifying because I was only presenting to three professors. gahhh. but it went okay, although the genetics part of my project is going to be too much to include with the social analysis and so it was cut:( but I'm okay with it because the genetics part was actually overwhelming.

and now tomorrow - a 15 minute presentation on one of our supervisor's papers:

instead of practising for it, I'm writing a blog post. poor life choices.
basically fragmented forests negatively impact northern long-eared bats, big surprise.

jake has been having great dog-park playdates, we've made new friends, and things are going well. starting to freak out because I'm leaving for puerto rico on the 21st, and I have to have the poster for the conference ready for friday - and I just started today. but I may have some data to put on it! we'll see how the week unfolds.

back to reading about forest fragmentation.

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”
― Werner Herzog

Cape Breton: epic times

I left for cape breton on monday.
This is the study site:

There is an old coal mine entrance by the sea, and it extends back into the forest where there are open pits where people dug to steal coal and some of them are just parts of the mine that have collapsed. The pits need to be closed in for safety reasons, but when they started this in the winter, bats started to fly out. We went here to sample and see if bats are swarming here.

a gull pellet I'm assuming - there are lots of crab bits in there! 

snails giving piggy-back rides<3

 the city of sydney, cape breton. beyond this, not much to see in the city.

 deploying equipment to record bat calls. shortly after, I threw the microphone over the cliff to get it close to the mine opening. very fun!

 setting up mist nets to catch bats!

 red bat, never before recorded on cape breton island! we caught one our first night, along with 3 northern long-earred bats. both sexes of the red bat are solitary, and the females can give birth to 3 or 4 young! she roosts with her young until they are weaned.

 on our second night, we caught another red bat!

 this is a male, which have very red hair; females have chestnut coloured hair. during the day, they hang from a branch by one foot (or from mom by one foot), turning in the wind, looking like a leaf or pinecone!

 colouration on the wings is quite remarkable!

 trying to bite me while handling, and he had a good bite!

after catching the first red bat, our prof said sarcastically "now go catch a hoary!" and there were laughs... but then we actually caught one!
they have never been recorded on cape breton island, and they are the largest bat species in canada!
both the hoary and red bat are long distance migrators, and are on their way south soon. both can curl their fuzzy tail over themselves as a blanket on chilly nights.

just taking a bite, but I was so stoked that it was okay.

 both the hoary and red bat made horrible hissing sounds while we handled them - it was pretty terrifying, something expected in a horror film. but they were fuzzy and cute, so it was okay.
summary: in one night we caught 4 species of bats: little brown, northern long-earred, red bat and a hoary bat! what an amazing night!

we took a different way home, heading over seal island bridge:

 off to the right down a dirt road is a beautiful waterfall:

on our way back to the highway we found a squirrel who had been hit by a car and was flopping around on the road. we took him with us back to halifax and brought him to hope for wildlife... hopefully he does alright.
jake was very excited when I got back. I'll be in town until the 29th - and then off to ontario...
my schedule is not very nice:(
aug 29th - leave hfx at 12noon
aug 30th - arrive in toronto at 4pm; couchsurf two nights
aug 31st - fullblast show
sept 1st - bus to guelph, hangout in guelph with cassie, fullblast/moneen show
sept 2nd - bus at 7:45am to toronto, bus at 11:30 to montreal; arrive in montreal at 5:30pm, hang at lindsay's for a night
sept 3rd - 6:30pm train to hfx.
sept 4th - arrive in hfx at 5pm, start school next morning.

but I still think it's worth it, I'm really excited. just wish I could bring jake along, but I have a friend who's going to watch him instead.
talking to folks and setting up a display on sunday at the hope for wildlife open house, come talk to me about bats!

Cape Breton

So I've been in Halifax for a few days. 
I have hungout with Jake and Lucas: 

we went for a walk around the city, and took a water break in the oaks by the saint mary's garden.
I almost went to a show, but then hungout with laura and her friends instead, which was more fun/less awkward and involved a campfire:)
I cooked for foodnotbombs today, we made some sweet food, and even an awesome apple/cherry/berry crisp. met some new people, it was sweet.
tried to get out of going to cape breton - didn't work. I have to go there for field work which is fine, but I can't bring jake, which is terrible. luckily a friend has agreed to watch him, again, even after watching him during the 10 day newfoundland trip, ughhh.
went on a hike at the bluff, did the lake pot trail, it was pretty cool! didn't do much tree ID or any plant ID really since the person I hiked with wasn't into that, but it was a nice hike and jake got to play with another pup and swim a lot. as for the trail itself - trees and lakes, typical, but nice since there weren't a ton of people and it was pretty natural.

so much for spending more time in halifax for the summer, but oh well. need to stop slacking and book train tickets for guelph, but it looks like I may be able to spend a night in montreal and hangout with an old friend from highschool which will be swell.

lab meeting at 8am and then leaving for cape breton, and I haven't even packed yet.
moneen on repeat.
xx

Newfoundland - pt2

Arrived at Salmonier Nature Park, a truly beautiful place. This is where I do my research for the little brown sociality questions.

caribou pair and their calf from the spring - pretty big now!

bat houses at a close by property that we were trapping... this is the tarping method... invasive but great when you need to catch a lot of bats.

last bat being processed - taking a hair sample for isotope analysis. released at 4:05am, concluding a long night of processing 90 bats.

harp trap set up by maternity colonies in bat houses - works well, relatively unstressful.
after 6 nights of trapping, we ended up tagging 226 new bats: 77 lactating adult females, 18 non-reproductive females, 2 reproductive adult males, 61 juvenile females and 68 juvenile males. out of the 240 we tagged in may, we ended up only recapturing 14 adult females... meaning the population there is huge!
one night after trapping I stayed up to monitor the bats around the boxes and make sure the equipment was working properly.
and I had the coolest morning... ever.
I checked the boxes hourly to see if there were bats inside or flying around. at 5am there were so many bats flying around and I almost got hit in the head quite a few times.
after that I was too stoked to sleep, so I walked the trail of the park in the early morning fog:

lynx stalking me as I walked by - ready to pounce. the two lynx at the park are from fur farms. really sad.

eagles watching for fish in the stream - a juvenile and adult.

isabella the moose, raised at the centre, now about 3 years old.

minks playing in the stream.

a gray jay - first time seeing them was at this park. they are very habituated to humans here, but very curious of course, since they are part of the corvidae family.

Melanie, an animal care person from the park, had some time off and took me hiking with her the day before I left. we went to a little town called brigus, which was cute and tiny. then off to madrock, which was beautiful but it was pouring so we left. rain let up as we were driving back so we made a stop at the east coast trail and hiked along there for some time.

winston, a pretty nobel dog:)

and through the fog a barely visible island exists where puffins breed. the puffin babies are called pufflings, doesn't get much cuter.
back in halifax for a couple days, unexpected trip to cape breton on monday. this just doesn't stop. will miss the open mic on monday and the one starting up on wednesday... so that sucks, was really looking forward to that. 
rat school tonight and a show tomorrow, so things are still good.
decided to stop wasting my time with people. keeping in touch with old friends, and the new awesome ones, so priorities are in check.
found out I may be presenting a poster on my project at the bat conference later in the fall... in puerto rico!  
now to bike home in the rain,
alicia
xx