The Adventures of JenMonster: May Term in Cobscook Bay, Maine. May 2012

I am trying to catch up on all of the adventures I'd been on my junior year of college, starting from my trip to Tanzania in Spring Break of 2012, to May Term which occurred for two weeks right after finals. Last summer was pretty busy, because right after May Term I had a free week before visiting my boyfriend in Colorado for a week, and after that I had a week free before I studied for a semester in Costa Rica. (That will be my next blog).

For now, I will do my best to sum up what May term was all about.

First, it's important to mention that I am a wildlife ecology major, and as a part of this major we all have to go through a rather intense but fun two week course in Cobscook Bay area, Maine.

When we had finals that week, it was still cold and chilly out. Up on the coast, it was even colder, and there was only one or two days where we weren't shivering and bundled up 24/7.

We started our term with a visit to Green Lake National Fish Hatchery. This hatchery raises and releases Atlantic salmon into the Penobscot river, Machias river, and Pleasant river.

While I was scrambling that morning I accidently hit my hand on a shark jaw that I had bought at a yard sale. I was excited because my trip started out with a shark bite. John, my boyfriend, told me that doesn't count.

Shark bite wound.

Tank room in the fish hatchery

We got to Cobscook Bay and saw the sizes of our huts. They are big enough for four people in each.

And here's the inside

After we set up our stuff in our cabins, we put on our waders and went to go explore the intertidal zone.

Our Professor is describing all of the different things we found

One of the other things we did in this class was setting up small mammal traps. We set up some transect lines in the woods and placed small traps with balls of oats and peanut butter inside.

Our transect lines

We checked the traps the next day, and we managed to catch a few rodents!

Some of the traps however, disappeared. We found one, that we are pretty sure a bear got to.

The bear wanted the peanut butter.

Some of the things we were responsible for learning was this list of plants (we had to be able to identify all of them, and knowing the scientific name got extra credit) and we had to identify by sight and sound about 50 or so birds.

Looking wicked classy in my wad-ahs, de-ah

Two of the girls had a birthday during May Term, and the staff was amazing and made them birthday cupcakes.

We got the van stuck in the mud...oops

The area we were in was gorgeous. There was a lot of things to take pictures of, and when we had to get up at 5 am to listen to bird calls there were a few opportunities to enjoy the scenery.

For May Term we each had to team up and make our own projects, While I teamed up with two girls; Kacie and Annie, to compare two sections of intertidal zones, other groups looked at things like turtle habitat, minnows in a stream, insects along a transect in the woods, and one group even used radio telemetry to find a tagged spruce grouse.

A newt!

This is a turtle trap. We put in cat food that has been opened slightly. The smell attracts turtles into the trap, and then they can't get out again.

We had to use waders to set up the turtle trap. It was wicked muddy out there. A few people almost got stuck.

Look at that face!

Another thing we got to do was electro fishing. This shocks fish, forcing them to swim upward where they can be seen and grabbed by the net.

We had to wear rubber gloves, and it was important not to fall in the water, or we'd get shocked!

To ease some of the stress of May Term, a few of us decided to have a "No Shower" Challenge.

The lodges.

Here is pictures from our intertidal zone work. We compared this spot, where we did not witness any periwinkle harvesting, to another spot where we DID see some harvesting.

We found a lot of periwinkles here.

This is a rock gunnel. Somehow we got to calling them rock gremlins.

We are dancing for science.

Our other cabin-mate was working on an insect project. We had places a bunch of pit falls (holes that insects fall into) and was sorting the different kinds of insects and amphibians that fell into it.

Rockweed.

This is a silky sea cucumber.

We threw these squares over our shoulders to make our sampling random, then wrote down everything we saw in the square.

We had a squirrel break into the dinning area.

squirrel poop on the table

It chewed through someone's bag!

We had to set a trap for it.

We also did mist netting, where we set up a net that birds can't see, and we checked it every hour.

There's a net here. Can't see it, can you?

We caught a few birds. This one is a yellow rumped warbler. We called it a Butter Butt.

My professor was telling me to blow in between the legs to see if it is a male or female.

Here we are putting up a game camera to see if we can see any otters

One day we had a radio telemetry mission. Using maps, compasses, and the radio telemetry equipment, we searched for the radio coller that the instructors had hidden somewhere in the woods.

We also had been doing American Woodcock surveys, where at night we went out and listened for the birds, and then write down how many we had heard. Later in the week, we got to go to a mist netting of these birds, where we got to hold them.

On our last day, we took a boat to Seal Island. Interestingly enough, Seal Island is claimed by both the United States and Canada. But no one seems to care about fighting over it, so it's owned by both countries.