Mrs.  Rheault's Expedition Journal

April 21, 2006

T-minus 26 days and counting!

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May 2, 2006

Sixteen days remain until I board my flight to Heathrow Airport !

I know Mr. Tshudy and I are busy preparing for our departure…so much to do in so little time!  My Grade 5 science classes are currently studying adaptations, ecosystems, food chains and food webs, energy pyramids, populations, communities, and biodiversity.  I know that many Mullica Township students are looking forward to using me as their eyes, ears, hands, etc. in order to “do” science for them!

Please feel free to post any questions you have for Mr. Tshudy and me via the weblog link (for students and staff members of Great Meadows Middle School and Mullica Township Schools if you have been given the appropriate username and password).  For community members please contact us (yep…you are more than welcome to send us questions…after all, Earthwatch missions are all about “citizen science”) via the “email us” link on this page!

Your questions are welcome…we’ll even be answering questions prior to our departure so fire away!

Mrs. Rheault

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May 14, 2006

I can't believe I have only four nights sleeping in my own bed before I'll find myself on British Airways Flight #68 jetting from Philadelphia to London (Heathrow - Terminal #4) aboard a 767!

I spent Mother's Day planting flowers and my herbs...and hoping that my family will water them while I'm away. My last two trips (New Zealand and Vietnam) were 21-day trips in the middle of the summer and my plants died of thirst while I was gone. Hopefully they'll survive ...along with the quail my class will release later in June. The quail are outside in a brooding hutch getting old enough for the release. I thought about the trip and the mission while planting my flowers. I listened to the birds singing and the squirrels chattering and 
realized I'd be doing pretty much of the same exactly a week from then!

My passport is ready, but my bags aren't packed yet! Only three school days remain (on Thursday my students go on their class trip) for actual teaching...I have much to do to prep my students for the adventure! 

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May 19, 2006

WOW! Finally arrived at the Oxford Youth Hostel around 2:30 PM Friday afternoon. I’ve spent the time since then getting situated, unpacking, and organizing my gear for the week.

The journey got off to a disconcerting start – my British Airways Flight #68 was delayed one hour.  Despite the late start (we were in the air by 10 PM Thursday night) I arrived safely at Heathrow Airport and met Mr.Tshudy at the arrivals hall.  Pretty cool to see someone waiting for you with your last name written on a sign!!  For those of you wanting to know what the flight was like I’ll tell you this…it was much shorter than my previous trips to New Zealand and Vietnam !  For those students eager to know what I ate, I was served: mini-bread sticks with tomato juice, a dinner that consisted of a beef lasagna, roll, salad, and tiramisu-like cake.  I enjoyed a small glass of wine, a cup of coffee (YUCK! I miss Dunkin’ Donuts all ready!), and a bottle of water.  I almost fell asleep while the plane was taking off, but I stayed awake long enough to watch about 45 minutes of the movie “Casanova” and eat my dinner.  I got up once to let the lady sitting next to me go to the lavatory.  Then I inflated my neck pillow, put in my ear plugs, covered my eyes with my night shades…and promptly slept until a boxed “continental breakfast” was being served!  We landed about one hour later!

Mr. Tshudy and I had a great adventure traveling to Oxford .  We first took the London Heathrow Express Train to Paddington Station. AND YES, there was a small store there that sold Paddington Bear stuff!  Prior to switching to the Great Western Train to Oxford Mr. Tshudy realized that he LOST HIS PASSPORT and his BRITISH RAIL PASS (a special train ticket)!  Losing your passport is bad…it is a very important travel document and HARD to replace when you are in another country.  For about an hour Mr. Tshudy looked for the passport, reported it missing, and was going through a lot of paperwork when (drum roll please!) a supervisor with the Heathrow Express reported that the passport was found on the train – along with his rail ticket!  Once it was returned, we left Paddington Station and took the train to Oxford .  The Youth Hostel…where we are staying with our group…is next to the train station.

My impressions of England so far:

Traveling from the airport to Paddington Station the train passed through a very urban area.  The houses all seem to be attached.  They are built mostly of red brick and remind me of the townhouses in Boston a bit…just that the roofs are a bit square-ish.  Since the train travels behind the houses it seemed a bit funny that there were all sorts of graffiti spray painted all over – yet there was no trash around…just lots of green weeds and grass growing a bit high.

In Paddington Station, I noticed that there were absolutely NO trashcans or trashbins around.  We felt funny putting our cups and trash down on the ground next to a pillar.  I managed to find a custodians cleaning cart with a trash bin when I dumped my coffee cup

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May 20, 2006

Well, after our tour of Wytham Woods this morning I feel as if I’m a bit of a badger expert!  We’ve seen badger latrines, badger trails, badger burrows (setts), and badger bedding – but no badgers yet – but we will watch for badgers tonight!

The weather dawned sunny and bright, with a bright blue cloudless sky.  There was “enough blue to mend a Dutchman’s trousers”, according to one of the British volunteers on the mission. After a quick breakfast we were transported to the field station in Chris’s big white bus. We took a walking tour of the woods…it was a bit muddy and the sky clouded over…and it started to drizzle …but the morning was very informative. This is where you are supposed to pay attention and read about the Wytham Woods plants,  habitats, and small mammals!

Well, Wytham Woods is definitely a deciduous (leafy) woods forest.  There are the hardwood trees that make up the canopy and there are lower shrubs that make up the understory.  Directly on the ground you will find stinging nettles (and yes, I’ve been “stung” by a nettle plant – the thorns are like tiny, tiny splinters in your skin that make you feel as if you were stung by a bee! - while setting Longworth – the “humane” - traps you wanted to know all about!), bluebells, and all sorts of grasses.  It is the perfect ecosystem for the small mammals that reside in the woods.  The trees found here in Wytham include: oak, ash, sycamore, hawthorne , hornbeam, blackthorn, hazelnut, beech, birch, red cedar, and a few spruce. The understory plants include: hazelnut, hawthorne , bramble.  Shrubs and plants include: elderberry, nettles, dog’s mercury, bluebells, wild garlic, and wood spurge. 

One interesting thing we saw on our walk was a scaffolding tower erected about 15 years ago to make observations of white oak moth caterpillars easier for scientists. The caterpillars eat the leaves and then fall to the ground to pupate and eventually metamorphasize into moths.  Now the tower is used to study climate change due to global warming.  Apparently the upper leaves of the sycamore trees get too hot to conduct photosynthesis.  The stomata (holes under the leaves that let water/oxygen out) close up in hot weather to save water.  The sun heats the leaves and bleaches out the chlorophyll.  The chlorophyll literally “burns out” and the upper leaves of the tree actually die!  This stresses the trees (that the caterpillars need to carry out their life processes!

We saw protective deer fencing and the damage that deer do to the understory of the forest.  The smallest deer are muntjac deer, the middle-sized deer are roe deer, and the largest deer are called fallow deer.  They love to eat up all the understory plants and  grasses – this then eliminates the seed plants and brush that the voles and moles love to eat.  The voles and moles have a hard time finding shelter and food….so another food chain is effected.

The small mammals of Wytham are: red fox, deer, badgers, bats, voles, moles, gray squirrels, and shrews.  More about them later. 

We had a great afternoon setting the Longworth “humane” traps to catch mice!  See the picture to see how we set the traps by: filling the nesting box with straw and food (seeds/peanuts/etc.), covering the shrew hole (lets the shrew out but keeps the mouse in!), attaching the tunnel and trap door mechanism, and setting the tunnel level to the ground with the nesting box up on a 45 degree angle (keeps the mouse dry if it rains as the water runs down through the tunnel).  We will check the traps in the morning on Sunday.

10:32 PM

Mr. Tshudy and I are rushing to get this information posted on the Internet BEFORE the Internet café closes at 11PM.  We just arrived back to the Youth Hostel where we are staying and then ran about five blocks to get here.  This evening, after dinner, we went BADGER WATCHING!  Our group was broken up into teams of three people.  I was partnered with Reiko (from Japan ) and Judith (an older lady from England …the one who raises caterpillars that spin silk.  WHAT AN EXCITING NIGHT! We arrived in our viewing  spot above the badger sett at 7:30 PM.  Over an hour passed before we heard incredible yelping and barking…and suddenly a red fox ran across our view (from left to right) through the gully below!  The barking and yelping continued (to our left) and suddenly another red fox appeared below us on the left!  Soon, it was joined by the fox who returned. They sniffed each other and ran off.  Bats were swooping overhead, and two hoot owls started calling to each other to scare up some game/food.  About another 45 minutes passed and suddenly two large badgers appeared out of the sett and moved off to our left.  They were followed closely by a third large badger…that waddled off to our right.  Shortly after, Dr. Chris Newman came to bring us back to his house in the woods, called The Chalet, and we returned to Oxford .  What an exciting day!

Check out Mr. Tshudy’s journal to read more about our day and to see some awesome pictures.  Then check out the photo page! More later!!!!

Mrs. Rheault

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May 21, 2006

THE MORNING’S ACTIVITIES

1:04 PM

Success!  Dr. Newman transported us to the deer enclosure where we set the Longworth traps early this morning.  It was pouring down rain…it has rained every day that I have been in England so far!  Needless to say, the five teams (A-E) went tramping through some pretty thick underbrush to find the traps we set out yesterday.  It was sort of like an Easter Egg Hunt gone wet and soggy!  Judith and I were team E.  Four of our twenty traps were sprung, two in section 1 and two in section 5.  After all the teams were back from hunting traps, Dr. Buesching taught us how to check the traps for mice and voles.

First, allow me to answer someone’s question – “What is a vole?”.  Well, a vole is somewhat mouse-like. It differs from a mouse in that it’s eyes are smaller, it’s ears are smaller, and the tail length is about half of it’s body size.  The field or wood mouse is about the same size, more active (hops around) when captured, has large eyes and large ears.  Voles tend to be found in very dense underbrush, and their bodies require lotsof energy.  They are constantly “running for their lives” as they are at the bottom of the food chain here in Wytham.  A vole’s ears and eyes are smaller then a mouse’s because they generally live in more dense underbrush and need to conserve their body heat mor than the mouse.  The mouse occupies more open areas and needs to hear and see better then the vole.

THE LONGWORTH TRAP

Dr. Christina Buesching explains how a Longworth trap works. The tunnel is the smaller “box” that has a trap door. The nesting box is the larger box that is connected on to the tunnel at about a 35 degree angle. In the photo to the right, Dr. Christina shows the team members how the trap should be placed on the ground in order to allow any rainwater to run down through the nest box and then out through the tunnel.

SETTING THE TRAPS

First the tunnel trap door and mechanisms are checked to make sure they are in working order.  It is important that the trapdoors spring closed when a mole/vole passes over a tiny bar in the tunnel. Next the nesting box is filled with straw to allow a trapped vole or mouse to make a nest to keep warm and sleep until the researcher returns to check the trap.  There is a tiny hole in the nesting box that allows shrews (smaller than mice/voles) to escape because shrews aren’t being studied. Seeds and food that mice and voles like are added to the trap to allow a small mammal to survive several hours until the traps are set.  Enough food is added to allow a mole or vole to eat about three stomach fills. The tunnel is then attached to the nesting box and the trap is ready to be placed in the study area.

CHECKING THE TRAP

Now how to check a trap…first the trap is placed in a large, clear plastic bag.  One arm (usually your writing hand arm) goes into the bag with your sleeve rolled up.  That way the mouse or vole won’t try to cling to it and try to escape. First the tunnel section is removed and checked for an occupant.  Next, the straw and seeds are gently removed from the nesting box.  If the box is empty, it is re-stuffed with straw and seed and set back in the survey zone they were originally placed.  If a vole/mouse was captured, the straw is removed from the bag with the nesting box. The mouse is then grabbed between the skull and the shoulder blades (like pinching the back of its neck between your thumb and forefinger. This doesn’t hurt the mouse because the mouse has a lot of skin.  Data is collected about the mouse – weight, sex, and where we clip the fur on the mouse’s rump. A tiny bit of fur is clipped with a small scissors in order to identify if the mouse was trapped from the previous night or morning.\

After the trapped mouse is examined and observations are made, the trap is re-baited and replaced in the same section it was set.  The mouse is also released back into the same section it was captured.  Of our four sprung traps, two had wood mice in them!  Judith and I were quite pleased…only three wood mice and three bank voles were captured out of 100 traps!  Apparently the winter was quite hard on the mice and voles, so it was quite an accomplishment that so many were trapped.  One of the voles was a pregnant female…a very positive sign according to Dr. Christina.

LOOKING FOR DEER POOP

Following our drenching, we went out on a deer dropping survey.  There is an actual scientific method to studying deer droppings in order to calculate the density and population of deer.  We had been trained yesterday to identify the droppings (yep, that’s deer poop!) of the roe, fallow, and muntjac deer.  Roe and fallow deer leave droppings with little tail-hooks on them. Roe deer (the middle-sized deer) have rounder poos.  Fallow deer (the big deer) leave more torpedo/sausage –shaped poo.  Muntjac deer leave poo that looks like small black peas with a tiny hook on it.  We marked out and surveyed 10 quadrats that were 5 meters square.  We used these red/white poles that were five meters long to measure out the 5 meter sides of the squares and then mark the corners.  Then the volunteers stood shoulder-to-shoulder to walk through and check a one meter wide path from one side of the box to the other.  It was pretty neat doing the survey…but we got completely soaked.  I’m damp and chilly and have just eaten my sandwiches.  Thank goodness that I had a good cup of hot coffee.! 

We are headed out to do transects looking for field signs of animal life. At least it appears to have stopped raining as hard as it was.  We will also check our Longworth traps again this afternoon.  Cheers!

5:15 PM

Torrential rain kept us from going out for the field sign survey.  We headed back to the Field Station to view a videotape on Wytham Woods…but the tape broke.  Then, when Dr. Newman went out to get another videotape, the gearshift lever/stick broke on the bus that takes us around!  We all settled in with a hot cup of coffee and heard Dr. Bruesching’s talk on badgers.  We’ve just finished her talk…it was very informative!  We will go back out into the field to check our Longworth traps and then off to dinner, to the Internet Café to upload this entry, and then a hot shower and bed!

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May 22, 2006

Wet, Wetter, Wettest!

11:23 PM

It was an eventful, wet, and busy day checking up on the mammals of Wytham. We left the hostel in Oxford at 9 AM in a driving rain and arrived in the woods – where it continued to rain quite heavily while we checked our Longworth traps.  Judith and I had two traps sprung and only one had a mouse in it (a young male).  All together the group captured only 5 small mammals in the morning.

Dr. Newman then assigned us (the ten volunteers) to threes to conduct Field Sign Surveys.  He instructed us on what signs animals leave behind or make when they are in the woods.  We learned how to identify tracks made by the three deer, badgers, and fox.  We learned to distinguish bark stripping made by deer and gray squirrels.  We learned how to identify their poop (though we knew what deer poop and badger poop looks like), and we learned to identify burrow holes (badger, fox, rabbit).  We even learned how different animals eat hazelnuts (and what the shells look like when left behind), and we learned how the larger animals and birds leave behind the remains of their prey and what this carrion looks like.  We were dropped off at different locations and were assigned specific transects (routes) through the woods.  Each transect was about 2 miles long and would take us about 2 hours to complete. True to English form the skies completely opened and he rain came down in torrential buckets!  The rain ended up letting up about one hour into our survey.  We found tracks, poop, shells, burrows, and even two recently killed crows (probably by a fox).  Quite exciting stuff for the morning!

We then had lunch at the Chalet.  Mmmmm…cornbeef and margarine sandwich, a bag of crispies (potato chips), a banana, and a hot cup of coffee.  We were thoroughly soaked and chilled – and the coffee boosted my spirits.

In the afternoon we went on another deer droppings survey.  During lunch the sky cleared and the temperature actually reached 60 degrees.  The moment we went out into the field for the deer poop survey, the skies opened again.  It was about midway through when I was wading through the swamp/marsh to place a pole marker that I just about lost it! I was cold, tired, miserable, and extremely cranky.  Thankfully I didn’t go crazy…spoke in one of my crazy British accents (“It’s a mad, mad, world!”) and gathered up my Jersey Girl attitude and started thinking happy, warm thoughts (sitting on the Brigantine Beach, walking the Boardwalk in Ocean City, etc.).  I made it through the remaining transects without going crazy and walked back to the Chalet.  From there we drove to the Field Station and watched a really cool BBC TV movie called “The Natural World – The World Found in a Wood” that describes the plants and animals of Wytham. (Dr. Newman is in the movie!)  Afterwards we ate dinner and I tried calling my Mullica Township students…but really heavy, gray, dark rain clouds rolled in and interrupted the satellite phone signal.  Sorry not to have made a third call to all my students back home, but I couldn’t get through the heavy rain clouds.

Following the call home, we checked our Longworth traps (only two mice caught tonight, one was the pregnant female again).  Dr. Buesching explained that with the heavy rain the mice and voles would be trying to stay warm and dry and not go out into the woods.

We then were broken up into our badger watching groups.  Reiko, Judith and I went to the “Red Bank” badger sett (so named because it sits midway up the side of a “bank” and the soil is reddish in color).  We spotted 13 badgers (WAY COOL) though we think four were “repeat” badgers that came out of the sett and went back in their burrow hole, then surfaced again.  Extremely exciting night! 

The night ended with us cold and soaked to the bone.  My boots had gotten so wet that my toes were stiff and icy after badger watching!  We had a quick demonstration of a bat detector (a small device that converts  a bat’s squeaking (at a frequency we can’t detect) into a sound frequency that we can detect.  Not many bats flying in the cold, wet conditions…we’ll try again tomorrow night after our farewell BBQ dinner and time spent at the local pub in Wytham.

Enough for tonight, I’m going to bed!

Mrs. R

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May 23, 2006

A Day of Surprises

1:10 PM

Just back from a Field Sign Transect survey…it was absolutely fantastic being able to look for signs of animals in the woods with the SUN SHINING!  Saw stunning sets of badger and deer tracks, found a bone and a pile of feathers, even managed to find a massive badger latrine (STINKY!). The sun was shining quite brilliantly when we arrived in the woods this morning. Five of our traps had closed doors…trap E1A had a recaptured male mouse in it.  Three of the others had nothing trapped.  The fifth trap, E5A, was tripped…and I had the pleasure of opening the trap to check on it.  Inside, NOT to our surprise was the pregnant female mouse we had previously captured.  EXTREMELY SURPRISING was that she had delivered a baby mouse (pinkie) in the nest box! According to Dr. Buesching, this has happened only one other time on an Earthwatch Mission.  We rescued the pinkie, placed it back into the trap box with fresh straw and food, and placed the mother inside.  We replaced the trap exactly where we found it so the mother mouse could go out to find the rest of her litter of babies.  Judith and I watched the mother mouse leap from the box, go down a mouse hole, and run in a linear path under a fallen branch of the tree where the trap had originally been set.  We will check on the mother this afternoon.

On the field sign survey we found an assortment of nibbled-nuts (accord and hazelnut), tracks of badgers and deer, rabbit poo, feathers and a bone, a squirrel nest, and a large badger sett.  No fox prints, no live animals, no skulls!  It was easier to spot the tracks in the mud, but looking for poop after such heavy rain yesterday was near to impossible.

This afternoon we are off to Tubney to do a rabbit dropping survey.  Apparently there is a large population of rabbit in that area that is easy to study.   We have a BBQ planned after the rabbit survey and the checking of our traps. Must eat….more later.

MORE POOP AND SOME BBQ FUN

9:30 PM

We traveled about 8 miles from the woods to Tubney.  Tubney is the town where Dr. Newman and Dr. Buesching keep their office space through Oxford University .  Their office is located at The Cottage, an old English country estate with a small manor house.  The estate was recently taken over by Oxford University (the Zoology Department) and has been refurbished. The only problem is that the estate went unoccupied for such a long time that the building and grounds went into a severe state of disrepair.  The estate grounds have been completely overrun by rabbits and hares.  There are rabbit droppings everywhere!  We traveled to Tubney to do a rabbit dropping survey similar to the deer dropping survey.  Rather that use a 5 meter square survey box, we used a one meter survey box (made out of heavy wire) as our survey plot.  This one meter “square” is placed randomly over a patch of the lawn and then all the rabbit poop is collected from that square, placed in a plastic bag, and weighed and measured.  OF COURSE WE WORE LATEX GLOVES TO DO THIS!!!!  We were broken up into three groups, and together we surveyed about 60-70 square meters of lawn.  I worked with Fiona, Robert, and Christine.  There is some sort of mathematical equation these numbers are plugged into to figure out how many rabbits and hares are on the property.  Currently the number is extremely high and the populations of these two species must be determined before some sort of conservation of these animals is undertaken.  The green lawns are literally covered with poop!  One bag we collected had over 120 grams of rabbit pellets (they look like Raisinetts (the candy) but are darker in color.  Actually, despite a passing rain shower (the day was actually quite bright and sunny for a change!) the afternoon was quite pleasant. 

We checked our Longworth traps after our visit and survey was completed in Tubney.  Only four voles were trapped, and three were recaptures.  Judith and I had no animals trapped this afternoon.  We weren’t allowed to disturb the nest box with the baby mouse and mother in it.  We will check them in the morning.

Our dinner tonight was BBQ, and then the team went out to badger watch. I remained behind to help the PI’s clean up. We had a great chat about science and teaching.  They enjoyed looking at pictures of my students, family, and my Vietnam Earthwatch trip from last year.  The group will arrive back from badger watching soon and we will go into Wytham Village (population 100) to the local pub for some refreshments and food.  Tomorrow my adventure ends…I will start to think about my experiences and recap my thoughts and feelings tomorrow.

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May 24, 2006

An Adventure Ends

3:23 PM

I’m sitting in the Mices Internet Café writing this journal entry and finally realizing that my Earthwatch Expedition has finally ended.  I never thought it would have ended so quickly…and as I write I’m now looking back and thinking that I had a great time, feel like I’ve done some really important scientific work, and look forward to returning to my classroom to share what I have learned here from my trip into Wytham Woods.

Our final day was composed of two activities…first we had to go into the deer exclosure to check and remove our Longworth traps.  All together the group caught 4 mice and three voles – all recaptures from the previous days.  After completing the survey we then went back into the exclosure and retrieved the 93 other traps we had placed there on Saturday afternoon.  We returned to the Chalet to drop off the equipment and found that the new English Minister of the Environment (David Millebrand) was touring the woods as one of his first official duties.  The parking strip around the Chalet was crowded with cars belonging to photographers, TV crews, and Ministry officials.  We didn’t see Mr. Millebrand, but Wytham Woods must be a very important place when it comes to the environment because it was quite busy.

We returned to the field station, and Dr. Newman had all of our data sheets with the information we collected during the Deer Droppings Survey, the Field Signs Survey, and the Rabbit Dropping Survey.  Dr. Newman explained that ecology is the study of the factors that determine the distribution and abundance of a species.  Factors like climate, available food, predation, habitat degradation, and competition within food webs (to name a few) all effect population and the number of any given species. Careful monitoring and conservation will continue to allow scientists to help us keep the animal and plant species that we all ready have – and keep them with us through the future.

We examined our data, and Dr. Newman was very satisfied with the results.  Apparently our deer dropping survey yielded data that reflected the projected numbers of deer in the woods.  Our Field Sign Survey worked very well with the larger mammals of Wytham.  Our Longworth trap survey of voles and mice was extremely positive.  Our numbers showed that after a very harsh winter and irregular spring season, the mice and voles were beginning to make a strong comeback.

We returned to the Chalet to have our lunch, exchange email addresses, and have a final chat.  We returned to the Youth Hostel around 2:00 PM and said our final goodbyes.  Currently, Mr. T and I are hurrying to complete these journal entries now so that we may enjoy our final evening here in Oxford.  It will be the first (and only chance) we’ll have to see the city.

I’ll be reflecting upon lessons I’ve learned over the next several days and hopefully will be able to post them here for my final words on my trip “Into the Woods”.

Mrs. Rheault

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