Porcupine sign

I. Love. Porcupines.

They are unique, mild mannered, CUTE, and one of my favorite mammals to observe.

Porcupine caught on camera trap in Soldotna, Alaska

I became enamored with them a year or so ago. I had a fairly large writing assignment ecology course that I was taking at the time. We had to pick a plot of land, and do a complete survey of it. All species of plants, animals, fungus, soil types, climate, elevation, aspect, slope, values, etc. I think that paper was 18 pages long. Then we had to write another paper selecting just one facet of our plot, and expound upon that. I chose the North American porcupine. They are found in the Finger Lakes of NY. Just apparently not as frequently in the Northern half, where I lived. I received teasing and jabbing about how I was chasing down a locally "mythical" animal. Whatever! I then began my quest to find the "elusive porcupine".

Porcupine climbing a tree in Soldotna, AK

And actually- porcupines are anything BUT elusive. They are conspicuous, slow-moving, and have an attitude. My very first porcupine sighting was in Montana over 10 years ago. Ok, so that doesn't count. My next several sightings were all in Alaska this past summer. Nope, they don't count either.

Then I've seen 2 dead porcupines this past fall. One less than a mile from my house, and the other on the side of the road in NE Massachusetts.

Each time I spot one, dead or alive, I think to myself "HA! I told you they were he....oh. Wait. I'm not in Ontario County. Or even in NY."

I've not given up on seeing them in the Finger Lakes, just set it on the back burner for now since I don't live in the area.

Porcupine in Soldotna, AK

My past two blog entries have been about the Wildlife Techniques course I'm taking this semester. The most recent of the two entries explains wildlife sampling techniques. At the end of our lab session, our teacher took us on a short walk to see something "really cool", as he put it. I'm down to learn about anything "really cool" wildlife related, especially on a gorgeous morning in the snowy woods.

Where did he bring us? To a porcupine denning and feeding site!

Porcupine den in a hole in a dead conifer tree. He may or may not have been home when we were there!
It was too high for us to see in his front door.

Ahhhh! Porcupine scat! I love scat. It's usually easily found, or more easily than the animal itself.
And porky poop was on my bucket list...check!
Porcupines are one mammal that has no regard for a clean den. Many other animals, including our domestic pet dogs, don't like to "mess" where they sleep. Not porcupines. There was scat spilling out of that hole, littering the forest floor. If this den happened to be on the ground, allowing for no place for scat to fall...the den would have been full of scat.

At first glance, this looks like a pretty snowy forest picture.
But to someone who yearns for porcupines...this is gold. All of this twigs and debris you see on the ground, are hemlock twigs, "nip twigs" is what I call them (I think I read that somewhere). Porcupines will hang out in a tree, and gnaw off the bark of a branch or twig to get at the cambium below. The keep moving out and out the branch until it can't support it's weight anymore. Then, they sometimes nip it off. This is a really important favor that porcupines unknowingly pay to other animals. Other herbivores (deer, rabbits) who can't reach vegetation in the tree tops, have been known to visit porcupine trees and browse the off castings.

A "nip twig" with obvious signs of cambium feeding.

I was so excited, and no one else seemed to even care! I think I even smacked the arm of the guy standing next to me when he handed me that twig above and exclaimed "NO WAY!". He looked startled and let it go.

I'm not sorry that porcupines and their sign excite me. I do apologize for hitting you though :)

Maybe I should set up a camera on this site???

Non-invasive wildlife sampling methods

The location of our lab today- a private property
(that we had permission to use) in Richmondville, NY. 2/4/13

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog entry, I’m enrolled in the “Wildlife Techniques” course at SUNY Cobleskill this semester. There is a 1 hour lecture, and then a 3 hour lab that makes up the course. The lab section will largely be field based, which seems to be everyone’s favorite. Even though today in Richmondville, where the lab was held, it was snowing steadily the whole time, everyone seemed to enjoy our time in the woods.

So the course covers a whole gammet of topics that we’ll likely experience as professionals in the wildlife field. This week’s lab focused on non-invasive means of sampling the local wildlife. And I don’t mean served up at Applebees in a sizzling skillet, but taking information down on local species of wildlife found on this property. Haha…. Also, non-invasive simply means that we wanted to conduct research about local animals without having to actually handle the animals. It’s much easier logistically, and less stressful on the wildlife.

The class used 3 different means of data collection: hair snares, camera traps, and track plates. Hair snares, in this case, are a simple set up of making a barbed wire “cage” between trees, and putting a bait (roadkilled deer) in the center. As animals clamber through the wires to get at the carcass, some of their hairs are pulled out and left stuck in the wire. This can tell us not only species, but individuals within a species. DNA can be extracted from the hair samples. This means of sampling will primarily pull hairs from mammals that are large enough to brush against the wires, and won’t slip below the wire undetected. Camera traps (aka: game or trail cameras) were used with bait as well. This is a station that I set up, so I’ll get more into that in a moment. Finally, the track plates are really cool ways to see what species are roaming around. It’s essentially an ink pad that you lure the animal onto and their feet picks up whatever medium you lay down, and then they have to walk on a clean surface to deposit the track. The board is placed within a box to protect the tracks, as well as to guide the animal where you want. At the far end of the box you place a bait or stinky lure of some sort to draw the animal in. Usually this is typically for just small to medium size mammals.

Alright, so my team (myself, Austin, and Joey) chose to mount an infrared Reconyx camera trap. If you’ve been following along with my blog, you know by now that I love to use these cameras. It’s a lot of fun to set the camera out in the yard, leave it for a week or so, and then check it to hopefully find video or pictures on the SD card. Today, for example, I checked my personal camera and came away with 34 pictures of fisher, some cottontails, and raccoon. So cool! We also used bait: our teacher picked up some roadkill deer to use to hopefully lure some critters in.

For our set, we used a Reconyx camera trap and white-tailed deer legs as bait.

Our teacher gaves us all predetermined locations, and we set off following a map of the property. The boys and I had a nice little hike uphill, and I don’t know about anywhere else in the Capital Region, but between 9 and 11am today, it was snowing so hard! It was a beautiful morning to spend some time in the woods. We reached our location and went about setting up the area.

We wired the deer leg to a tree, about 5-6 feet off the ground. We are attempting to target the fisher (who avidly climb trees), and weed out other critters from making off with the deer leg too easily. Then we mounted the camera between 10-15 feet away from the bait. We set the camera to only take pictures over the next 2 weeks.

Austin and Joey took the slope (degree of incline), aspect (which direction the slope is facing) and the latitude and longitude points. I kept record of all of these things on our group data sheet. We also recorded things like: snow depth, wildlife sightings, track sightings, date, location, equipment used, etc.

We will leave all of the sampling methods out in the field for 2 weeks. On February 18th we will return to check our results! I’m really eager to see what turns up at all of the stations. On this property, there have been fisher, bobcats, bear, coyotes, red and gray foxes, deer, and many other mammals…not to mention birds and other vertebrates!

Stay tuned…

Yes, there's an app for that!

There seems to literally be an app (or application for smart phones) for everything these days. In this case, I'm referring to an app that helps the user log road-killed animals into a data base. Yes, you read that right. An app about roadkill.



Photo credit: abcnewsradioonline.com

I first heard of this smart phone application over the summer. Someone sent me an article about a new app that was just coming out, in which anyone who wanted to participate, was invited to stop on the side of the road and document a road-killed animal. But I was in Alaska (did you know I lived in Alaska for 3 months???), and distracted and never really read it or thought much about it.


UNTIL...

This semester I am enrolled in a course called Wildlife Techniques (FWLD 125) (3CR):

This course will cover a wide range of laboratory and field techniques related to the sampling of wildlife. Students will be provided first-hand experience with wildlife habitat improvement, developing Power Point presentations, global positional systems, digital photography, and capture, handling, and banding of birds. Field trips will be taken to examine deer winter ranges and other wildlife habitats. Each student will independently conduct and write up a field study.

Ok, so for my "field study", I've chosen to download the app and learn how to use it. This is a 100 level course, so the field study doesn't have to include any ground breaking research. Our instructor, just really wants 2nd semester freshman (which I'm not, but I transferred in and FLCC didn't have a class like this when I was there) to get excited about the field and how to access information via the college library.

I'm going to make this a beefier project and play the angle up of the "citizen scientist" getting involved. This app, if used correctly can show those of us who care, when and where animals are moving. Anyone with a smart phone can participate. You don't need to be a biologist, you just need be able to identify native wildlife. The use of modern technology as means of data collection is obviously becoming more and more popular for it's ease of use and convenience.

The other part of this app that appealed to me, is that the developer is an Assistant Professor at SUNY Plattsburgh. It's neat that someone within the college system (State University of New York) that I'm apart of came up with something so cool.

I'll be sure to update my findings and what I think of the app as I get into the project.

In the mean time, if you'd like to check it out for yourself, check out the developer, Dr. Danielle Garneau's website. Anyone with an iPhone, Android, or other smart phone can download the Epi-Collect app, then add her project (RoadkillGarneau) to start documenting roadkill! Instructions on finding and downloading the app can be found here.

AND Danielle told me to be sure to mention that "The other thing you might note is that if you don't have a smartphone, you can still participate...the google form (to answer questions, put GPS coordinates) is at the very bottom of my webpage above. This way you can encourage participation from a lot more people!"...so there ya go, you non-smartphone using wildlife lovers!

Oh and in unrelated news: yesterday several members of SUNY Cobleskill's student chapter of The Wildlife Society of which I'm apart of, went to a wildlife festival at nearby Huyck Preserve. There was a wildlife rehabilitator there with some of her animals. These animals were unable to be released back into the wild for various reasons. One of them, a southern flying squirrel, had been legally purchased at a pet store under the species name of "sugar glider". A sugar glider is a real animal, a marsupial from Australia. Not the same as our native southern flying squirrel. I'm not sure why they are legally allowed to be part of the pet trade in NY, since they are a native species. And, their cousin the northern flying squirrel, is illegal to possess. The squirrel was owned as a pet for 5 years, then was not wanted anymore. Obviously it could not be released into the wild, so this rehabilitator took it, and let us handle it. SO very cool, and for anyone who's read this blog before knows that I love flying squirrels!!!