Camera Competition

Today our morning activity was meeting with Kevin Holcum, the supervisory wildlife biologist with the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. He talked to us about what the refuge is currently planning in terms of protection and restoration projects, and also a little bit about how he got started in the biology field.

The rest of the day was all about cameras. Last week, we set up 5 remote cameras around the Brownsville Preserve. Conveniently, our class is made up of 10 students split into teams of two. So, each pair chose a location on the property to set up a camera. The professor made it into a competition. Whoever's camera captures the most species, will be treated to ice cream. Well, today we collected the cameras and analyze them. Unfortunately, my team was not one of the winners, for we only captured two species, the red fox and the northern raccoon. There was a tie however for the winners and each of those groups captured 7 species. However, if I had to choose an ultimate winner, I would have to go with the group that captured the river otter. I would make this decision for two reasons. One, otters are my all time favorite animal. Two, according to our professor, otters had not yet been documented on that property before.

Another cool thing we captured with the cameras was a mama raccoon and three of her young. I know the adults are annoying, but the babies are the cutest thing in the world.

Evening activities included running my friend to the family dollar to get a new pair of sunglasses since she broke hers. Honestly, I am surprised I haven't broken mine yet.