Two more transects and a success!

It's hard to believe that it's already the third week of this program. I'm not sure whether it seems like the time has flown by or that we've been doing this much longer than we have. I think it may be a bit of both. We've been so busy and things have moved along quickly, but at the same time we've been working so closely with a small group of people that the relationships we've formed seem to be closer than one would expect after two weeks.

Today Alicia and I headed back to the BWH to set up our final two transects. We targeted the areas around the beaver pond as it serves as one of the main drinking water sources on the property. Our first transect of the day (no. 3 overall) we placed on a path that broke off the main logging road just south of the beaver pond. In that area, we found moose tracks as well as moose browse. The forest on either side of the path was rather dense and we figured that any large animals moving through that corridor would have to use that path. Our initial search of the tract did not reveal any scat, but we're hopeful we'll find some tomorrow.

There was some indecision about where to place transect #4. Initially, we were going to place it on the western edge of transect #3, but after investigating the potential areas and realizing they were heavily populated by small, scraggy hemlocks that made passage almost impossible, we decided to place #4 along the main logging road. After laying out the transect we were visibly exhausted and frustrated as our initial investigation had found no scat. As we began a more thorough search, I had a couple of false alarms. First I thought I had found scat, but it was just a shriveled mushroom. Then I thought I had found animal hair near a probable entrance to a small den, but it turned out to be an incredibly fine spider web. Needless to say we were dismayed. However, on our final pass through the east side of the transect Alicia discovered scat! We were elated. An informal investigation led us to believe that it was possible coyote scat that may contain a small mammal skull. We will conduct a more thorough investigation with a microscope in the future.

We headed home tired but upbeat. Tomorrow we will head back to transects #1 and #2 and collect the samples we found last Thursday. We will also sweep transects #3 and #4. Hopefully, we'll find more scat as we have a tentative meeting with tracking/scat expert Dan Gardoqui on Wednesday.