Things that go by in the Night

 During the days, the camera traps take lots of pictures of tortoises.  Not too surprising considering that the are set up outside tortoise burrows.  I always get the biggest kick out of the strange creatures that go walking by at night.  The photos are always black and white of course, but some of the creatures are pretty interesting.  

Racoon tail

 Opossum tail.

He came back later to explore again.

GPS Tags

I think we have most of the gopher tortoise burrows marked with GPS coordinates.  There are 249 that we were able to find.  Apparently it would cost a developer about $1,7000 per tortoise to relocate all of the animals before they could build on the site.  Anita and her GREAT group is working hard to come up with other possible uses for the land.  

ECO Classroom

ECO Classroom was the program sponsored by Northrop Grumman which sent the Space Coast Eco Geeks to Costa Rica last summer.  Applications are open for teachers who want to go next year.  Just follow this link for more information.

Team Work

I created a google form to have my students help collect data from the camera trap photos.  They had fun being my beta testers.  Then Ryan set up the form on a web site and fixed the viewing permissions on the folders so that anyone could help us out by taking a look at some of the data and filling out the form.  So, on the topic of great team work, it would be GREAT if other people would try it out too.  I'd love to hear what you think!  

Bad Aim

 I moved the camera traps from the south side of the site to the north side.  Apparently, I'm not so good at aiming though.  Mostly I got a lot of pictures of the top of tortoise shells.  There was just this one that included a face.  I tried to fix the camera placement.  Time will tell whether or not it worked.

We are officially booked to speak for the Space Coast Science Education Alliance.   They made this great flyer for the event.  Unfortunately, due to some scheduling conflicts, some of our supporters will be at state science fair, and Ryan will be presenting at NSTA.  Still, it should be a great opportunity to share our project with more people.
I think we have the google form and photo drive working now which will mean that anyone will be able to look at the pictures from the 114 acres and help us to analyze the data from them.  I'm going to have a couple of people test it for me and then share the link here when it is ready to go live.  

Camera Trap Fun

 I was doing a quick sort through the photos from the camera traps seeing what was new.  A nine banded armadillo.

 Birds.  I'm sure Ryan could tell me what kind.

So many bobcat pictures.  One at night.  

In the afternoon.

 Checking out one of the burrows.

 A nice looking buck.

Thankfully there were several of this little guy.  I wasn't sure what it was until I saw the tail.
My AP students spent some time looking at photos today and using a Google Form to identify animals and behaviors.  They really seemed to enjoy it!  They would narrate as they looked through the folders and point out interesting behaviors.  I had them do a camera trap ID activity earlier this year, and they still seem to get a kick out of it.  Because I set up a form ahead of time, all of their data was collected in real time and I could pull up a spreadsheet for data analysis.  

A Hole in the Fence

I was out on the 114 acres this weekend downloading photos and moving the cameras.  I have thousands of photos to sort through now, but I wanted to share a few from camera 5.  It was set up in the scrub along a whole in the fence.  There seem to be a lot of animals using it as a way to get in and out of the property.  This is my favorite photo so far -- bobcat!

 There were so many deer of all shapes and sizes.

Then this adorable family of raccoons.  I've got a google forms document worked up and a shareable link to the photo drives for the students to try out.  Hopefully they will be able to look at the photos and begin to pull some data from them.  More photos to come soon.  

A Few More Photos

 Ryan has been out tagging Gopher Tortoise Burrows.

We've also been catching some different animals in the burrows.  We think that this is an Eastern Spotted Skunk

This little guy is an Armadillo.  We started this project wondering whether they were living in abandoned burrows.  I guess they do.