Turtles, Oak Trees and Christmas

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G'day

Firstly, Merry Christmas to everyone and all the best for 2008. Thank you to all those that have housed, fed and entertained me during 2007 - you guys are awesome 😊 Especially to Elisa and her family, who have been kind enough to adopt me this Christmas and to the Ruske family and to Chris and Pam back in Masterton for putting up with me for a couple of months.

The past few weeks have been spent at the Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute (http://www.merseytobeatic.ca/), just outside Kejimkujik National Park. I have been helping out with the radio tracking of juvenile hatchling Blanding's turtles and a study into the distribution and recruitment of red oaks. Although I think I have spent more time playing and walking in the snow.

The Nova Scotian Blanding's turtle has been listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act and this is partly due to the low recruitment of juvenile and young adult turtles into the population. As little is known about the early life stages of the turtles, the use of telemetry to track the hatchlings from emergence from the nest will give an idea of juvenile behaviour and habitat use. The goal of this project is to gain a better understanding of the behaviour and ecology of juvenile Blanding's turtle to help identify risks to the turtle and determine critical habitat for protection. As I arrived in late November, I was only involved with the very tail end of this project. They've now all stopped moving for the winter. The juveniles are very cute and so tiny (about the half the size of my palm). We had to break through ice and later dig through the snow to get to some of them!

Red oak provides food and shelter to a wide variety of species (including the southern flying squirrel) and is an integral component of the Acadian Forest. Forestry and the suppression of fires have fundamentally changed the forest structure and there has been a proportionately significant decline in red oak stands. So the aim of the project is to map the distribution of red oaks both within and outside the park and to determine the age structure, health of the trees and the recruitment of red oaks within the stands. Potential stands were identified by GIS and aerial surveys and then ground truthed. At each site we identified (well, Amanda identified and I wrote it down - I'm still trying to learn all the Canadian trees and the job has got a bit harder now that all the deciduous trees have dropped their leaves) and measured the DBH and total height of each tree. We also randomly placed five subplots in each stands to measure the number and size class of any regeneration. A core sample was taken from one oak tree in each of the subplots. The core sampler is basically one big hollow screw, which you manually twisted until it's about midway through the tree, and I can tell you that it's quite hard work! Anyway, as there is bit of snow on the ground, some of the spots have become hard to drive too and there's some talk about using cross country skis or skiddos to access the sites!

Aside from the above, I have spent a bit of time walking and playing in the snow, making snow angels and snowmen. I have also had a few very vigorous and fun games of soccer. I have no sense of direction at the best of times and there's no way my head can coordinate my legs, a ball and any directional activity. But the racing around was fun - I was even wearing a t-shirt (I can barely remember the last time I was comfortable in just a t-shirt). Everyone else has been playing all year - so they're a little better than me!!! (or at least that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it!).

HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR 😱

Cheerio
Cielle

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