Day 7 had no major hike planned (and let me say, the timing was well-planned after the big hike yesterday). So the schedule was
- morning: small mammal traps, day 2
- afternoon: bird banding
Morning:
Generally, we are not getting as many captures in the higher elevation plot compared to the lower elevation plot. Still more bank voles, and a few recaptures, but so, so exciting, we captured an animal that has never been known to be in this area: a Crowned Shrew!! Jana said last year, a different team felt they caught a crowned shrew, but the pictures were not good, and so the museum discarded the finding. But voila! So many pictures were taken, and then an ear sample was cut to do DNA analysis to confirm the species. But Jana and Uri were quite sure, because of the 3-fur color tone: white belly, and then two shades of brown across the head and back.
Afternoon:
Instead of hiking to a research site to collect data, what we did instead was have lunch at a park, which is across the street from an area for low-elevation bird capture. We hadn’t had any luck with bird banding at the first high elevation site we went to due to the windy conditions (the birds just try to avoid flying when it’s windy), so we were hopeful for some captures at this lower elevation.
The nets are set up much like a volleyball net, but the net is extremely fine, almost like a hairnet, and the net takes up more vertical space than a volleyball net. I don’t include a picture because you literally cannot see the net, it is so fine (and hopefully the birds don’t see it either)
We got one capture all day (a chiff chat), but it was amazing. Jana, whose Ph.D thesis is on birds, gave just an amazing lesson on what parameters they measure on the bird after they band it, and how to take these measurements. So she banded it first, catalogued it, and took measurements.
Below are two video links to Jana explaining the bird cataloging process – I had to break the video into two parts because it wouldn’t upload otherwise
Jana explaining bird cataloging, part 1
Jana explaining bird cataloging part 2
Jana explaining fat accumulation part 1
Jana explaining fat accumulation part 2
Jana explaining fat accumulation part 3
And then she let Kevin release the bird
In the late afternoon…
Once we got back to the hotel, we helped with more SD card reading from cameras. This is when the low elevation viewers got lots of animals (look at that wild boar family! OMG, a red Deer) whereas we high elevation viewers got a small bird flying 500 feet away 😩
Then after the SD card reading, Uri gave us a presentation of his research on small mammals (so the plots are his thing), I had no idea that 75% of mammals are considered small mammals: rodents, bats, shrews, moles, etc etc
And then the sites we were surveyed!
Tomorrow is our last day of data collection 😢. We will do day 3 of small mammal trap collections, and then hike to site 1.
Bon nit!
If 75% of mammals are the small ones, there must be billions of them. I am amazed that the bird just let you handle it. Didn’t it try to fly away?
Jana was the one who handled the bird – she is doing her PhD. dissertation on birds, so she is actually certified to be a bird handler – lots of training, and she she had to practice banding I think 1000 birds with a certified handler before being certified herself (or something like this)