10 Jan Nature’s Fanny Pack: My Main Projects
Frog eggs!
For this month’s blog post I’ll be going through some of my main projects I’ve been involved with so far. Currently, we’ve been out surveying multiple areas for California Red-Legged frog eggs as the rainy season has commenced. A few weeks ago I got to see my first batch of eggs from two species one being the CRLF and the other was the Sierran tree frog. Both species’ egg masses are differentiable by tree frogs having smaller gelatinous-looking eggs with a light pale brown embryo and CRLF have larger sized clumps of eggs with black embryo color.
Coyote sampling
This internship has allowed me to experience the first time I collected samples on a recently deceased coyote. Having done CWD thyroid gland extractions on deer and elk as a student, I braced myself for the smell. Things collected from the specimen included whiskers, fur, and clippings of its ear as well as information like the sex and age of the individual. To identify the age, images were taken of its back molars and to sex the individual we lifted the back left leg to discover it was a… MAGGOTS? A different detritivore helping to clean up the coyote were some large black beetles that initiated a different feeding frenzy! A mix of California and rough-skinned newts were found all around the coyote’s body.
office work as a wildlife intern!
The fieldwork component of this internship apart from surveying has been camera trap maintenance. The images captured in these cameras are a sight to see and are a fun surprise to come across from puma cubs to startled Western Gray squirrels. This is my favorite type of office work just scrolling through images and cataloging them!
PUMA! PUMA! PUMAS!
This puma was one of my favorites to catalog. Luckily for us, it lounged right in front of the camera for hours exhibiting behaviors like napping, grooming, and rolling around showing their solitary playful nature. Looking at the time stamps it relaxed from 1:50 AM to 5:51 AM, so about 4 hours!
Puma MAMAs & kittens :3
These mom and kitten images were captured on a different camera. I was not able to tell if these two moms and kittens are the same as the images are 3 days apart and the second kitten image is blurry as it must’ve been prancing around behind mom!
Bartholomew!!!
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