7-20-23 Day 2: First day of collecting data

Today was our first day of collecting data for the research team, and it was a full day.  We will be doing the following each day:

In the morning:

• Trapping small mammals

In the afternoon:  hike to a specified location and

• Measuring tree growth
• Checking nest boxes
• Bird banding
• Checking cameras
• Checking rates of soil decomposition

I will detail the location each post (this changes each day) and then describe one science item for each post.  So although we did both trapping small mammals, and then hiked to site 7 and did measurements, today I will just be describing how we trap the small mammals.

SMALL MAMMALS

In two locations, the scientists want to monitor the small mammal activity, and then make the correlation to various factors:  temperature, rain fall, human activity, etc.  So in order to do this, they have picked two areas, and then for each area, they have two sets of 36 traps, laid out in a 6 by 6 configuration:

While the traps are in a “line,” they are actually not in a straight line, as you can imagine, as it’s hard to do this on a mountain slope.  So today we started at area “1,” and we will monitor the traps each morning for 3 days in a row, and record the captures.  Then later in the week we will move to area 2.  The traps look like this:

In each trap, we add apple pieces, tuna mixed with flour (basically to make it in a ball), and some cotton.  The vegetarian and meat foods are to accommodate the diet of different small mammals, and the cotton is to absorb humidity, any waste from the trapped animals, etc.

If there is a capture, each animal is:

• weighed
• sexed
• measured (tail, foot, etc)
• if female, if pregnant or not
• and tagged (in the ear)

Between the 72 traps, we only captured 6 small mammals:  all female, and over half were pregnant.  It has been hot and dry in Andorra, which is not the norm here.  Jana was saying that in good years, between the 72 traps, they could capture 60 mammals.

Here are the highlights!

When we open the traps, we dump them into a large plastic bag

Then they are taken out, and the measurements are done

Here are some other cuties we caught today (and yes, we release them back).  We had one recapture (she was tagged last year)

And of course, I can’t resist posting some more pictures of this amazing area – enjoy!