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Finally!
After waiting several long months to get our transmitters and receiver along with countless hours of research as to how to carry out our telemetry study, we finally managed to attach a transmitter to our first eastern box turtle yesterday! Wooh! CHO, a beautiful 21-23 year old first time capture female was our first recipient of a transmitter. (Refer to my earlier post “Box Turtle Survey!” to learn how we name our turtles!)
Telemetry is the science of acquiring transmitted data for analysis and study. By attaching transmitters to several turtles, we can release them and then rediscover them by picking up the unique signal emitted from their transmitter with a receiver. When we find the turtle again, we record information about the turtle including behavior, GPS coordinates, ambient temperature, sky index, and several other variables. With this information, we can make note of patterns in the data that could help us better understand these native reptiles. For instance, there may be a correlation between the temperature and how far a turtle moves between one day and the next. Maybe we’ll find that turtles move greater distances when it’s cooler or when it’s warmer.
We started by actively searching for a turtle to be our first study subject. I found her loudly rustling through the leaves near the start of the disc golf course found here at Leigh Farm Park. She has got to be one of the prettiest box turtles I’ve ever seen. She has strikingly bright colors on her head and legs for a female turtle (this is normally a male turtle trait but the rest of her morphology leads us to believe she’s a girl; high dome, dull eye color, flat plastron, and short nails and tail. This is also covered in my previous “Box Turtle Survey!” post.)
After bringing her to an eagerly waiting Gail, we decided where to place the transmitter. Our research helped us in this decision. We found that, because box turtle scutes expand in size as they age, the transmitter could not overlap scutes or it would inhibit the growth of her shell. Because female box turtles are mounted during mating, it was also important to make sure the transmitter wouldn’t interfere with a male turtle. 
This led us to place the transmitter on a side scute rather than in the middle or on the back. We also learned that it was crucial to paint the transmitter in an effort to camouflage the quarter size grey device. This would keep her safe from discovery by would-be predators and curious people. Many other factors had to be acknowledged before we could carry out the attachment of the transmitter such as what material to use as a glue and what type of paint would withstand the elements. Because we didn’t yet have paint for CHO, we released her yesterday with an unpainted transmitter until we could get camouflage colored acrylic paints which we now have.
And it’s a good thing that we now have those paints because camp counsellor Andrew brought us another turtle today! He is a BIG 25+ year old male and also a first time capture. He was found right near the cabin, close to a patch of wild blackberries. We decided to name him BIN. BIN did get his camouflage paint on his transmitter which I tried very hard to match as closely to the natural pattern and color of his shell as I could. My fellow conservation interns should be posting a new blog entry some time in the next few days demonstrating CHO’s camouflage painting process, maybe even as a video!
The hardest part of this entire study is trying to find the turtle with the receiver. Each transmitter emits a different frequency that can be picked up in the form of beeps on our receiver. The receiver looks like some weather vane/tv antenna hybrid. After tuning the receiver to the right channel (which I think could be much easier), we have to slowly sweep the receiver in a circle, listening for when the beeps are the loudest. Whatever direction the receiver is pointing when the beeps are the loudest is the direction that the turtle is in. We found that it’s easiest to find the direction, walk about 20-30 feet, and check for the direction again and repeat.
The first thing that my fellow wildlife conservation interns Laura and Matt and I did this morning (after releasing the female summer tanager with the campers which you can read about in the blog before this one) was to search for CHO. The receiver led us in almost exactly the same direction as where I found and released her yesterday. Laura is very good with the receiver and has a knack at pinpointing almost the exact location of the turtle. We picked through these terrible thorny vines and met up with an impenetrable tangle of spiky, dangerous looking plants.
While I stood at the closest point we could get to where Laura thought CHO was, Laura and Matt tried to get on the other side of the tangle to see if they could spot her from there. Just after Laura had an uncomfortable encounter with a rather large spider, I saw her. She was just a few feet into the tangle so I decided to swat away the spider webs and crawl over the spiky vines to get to her. I didn’t expect to actually find her again on our first try so all three of us felt very accomplished and proud of ourselves. And CHO seemed happy and safe which is the most important thing. She moved about 15 feet back away from the trail which is less than I thought she would move. It will be very interesting to see where she and BIN go over the time that we plan on studying them. Thanks for reading! (And thank you Laura and Gail for the pictures 😀 )
And the answer is….
You don’t!
Fo' Shizzle Looking Pretty
Last week, our chickens seemed to think that flying up into the large cedar near their coop was a good method of escape from curious campers. They might have been right but when it was time for them to come down and get in the chicken tractor for the night, they seemed to think it was a better idea to stay up in the tree. Colin, one of our wonderful counselors in training and a long time volunteer, attempted to climb into the tree and coax them down to minor success. Fo’ Shizzle came down first, joining John who was the only chicken that didn’t fly up into the tree. After leaving them alone for a bit and offering them bribes of chicken treats, Mocha finally flew down. When I left that evening, Snowball was still in the tree but the other three were waiting patiently in the chicken tractor for the night.
From left to right: Fo' Shizzle, Mocha, John, Snowball
Hungry predators would love to get their paw or talons on stubborn chickens that don’tend up in their coop at night. If the chickens were to stay in the tree all night, they would be less accessible to predators but we lost our chickens last year to a fox and a cooper’s hawk. The more we can do to help keep our feathered friends safe, the better their chances of surviving to be able to lay eggs in the next couple of months.
This will mark my last week as a Wildlife Conservation Intern at the Piedmont Wildlife Center. My time here can best be described by classifying my accomplishments and work as they relate to the knowledge and appreciation of the natural world and its conservation. In my mind, the position has been dedicated to the acquisition, application, and proliferation of this knowledge and appreciation.
My work has helped to develop an understanding of the importance of wildlife conservation through research, interviews, and observation. These activities have made me more aware of the consequences of environmental neglect and given me an education concerning the significance of conservancy of the natural world. My literature reviews and research on the rehabilitation and release of native species such as the Eastern Box Turtle and Black Rat Snake have led to interviews with partners in organizations that both hinder and help the support of these species and the PWC’s rehabilitation efforts. The Nature Walks have provided a direct means of observing and learning about the wildlife the PWC strives to protect; they have also supported my abilities to observe events of the natural world and thus appreciate them. The Wildlife Conservation Internship focused on the acquisition of such knowledge, but it also promotes its application.
My acquired appreciation of wildlife conservation has induced me to take steps to apply such knowledge in order to encourage preservation and alleviate harm caused by neglect or ignorance. My interviews with organizations that share or lack the rehabilitation goals of the PWC were prompted by my new-found education and resulted in preliminary steps to quantify the influences of humans and isolated landscapes on Eastern Box Turtle population health. I was also able to estimate the feasibility of rehabilitating captive snakes (in particular, Black Rat Snakes). My landscaping and grounds development projects resulted in the mending and improvement of an aquatic habitat, raptor enclosures, and garden partitions. I further applied my appreciation of conservation during every Nature Walk, better observing and noting the surrounding ecosystems. The Wildlife Conservation Internship position empowers the individual to become educated, passionate, and active in matters of wildlife conservancy and protection; it also strives to spread this understanding.
A large part of my activities as a Wildlife Conservation Intern supported the expansion of environmental awareness in the local community. I collaborated to create an educational notebook for use in North Carolina classrooms designed to give students the tools to appreciate the diversity, importance, and beauty of indigenous birds – especially birds of prey. I also updated the labels on the enclosures of the educational wildlife in the PWC’s building to better reflect the goals of the center and to provide more accurate and comprehensive education for interested visitors.
The Wildlife Conservation Internship focused on obtaining, using, and spreading an appreciation of nature conservation and advocacy. The most important characteristic of the position was the variability of the work. The underlying goal was always to promote the protection of indigenous flora and fauna, but the activities evolved and changed based on the project at hand and the input of the intern. I earnestly recommend the experiences as a Wildlife Conservation Intern at the Piedmont Wildlife Center to anyone with an interest in the natural world and especially to those with a passion for preservation.
Sunday, at Duke Garden’s Family Fun Day, I road-tested one of the outreach opportunities I’ve been posting, and I can now personally confirm that it’s a fun and easy way for new volunteers to help educate our community about wildlife conservation. Many new volunteers have expressed trepidation about trying this volunteer role, wondering if they will be asked questions about wildlife they can’t answer. On Sunday, besides one woman who held up her camera for me to identify the moths she’d photographed, all the questions were very simple:
“What kind of snake is that?”
“Black Rat Snake.”
“Does Walter [the bearded dragon] breathe fire?”
“We haven’t yet witnessed that, but we were surprised when he laid eggs!”
We also have an outreach packet, linked on the event page, that gives more detailed instruction for outreach volunteers, and you are always welcome to visit our animal educators at the center and learn more of their stories. The center is open Monday-Friday 10:00 am- 6 pm.
If you have wanted to help with animal care at Piedmont Wildlife Center, now is the time to get started. On Saturday, September 11th, we will hold our autumn 2010 animal care training session. Only one training session is required to begin volunteering with our non-raptor weekday and weekend animal care and outreach programs. New volunteers or current ones who want to refresh their training can sign up by completing this brief form.
To facilitate animal care, outreach and other volunteer activities, we are creating new pages with links to tools, forms and documentation. Our first page is for Raptor Care.
We are also building a new blog that streams our newest photos. We’ll link all of these sites to this one, so you can easily access them from the sidebar.
For more information about volunteering at Piedmont Wildlife Center, visit our volunteer page or email volunteer@piedmontwildlifecenter.org.
Piedmont Wildlife Center Volunteer Services 