June 3-7 Research recap
Started out the week visiting out American Chestnut plantings. We first visited our deer-free urban site and 9/9 were still good and growing. Then we visited our deer+urban site and, well, 0/9 chestnuts survived after one week. Only two oaks were recovered. Now here's the interesting thing - the two that were found showed no evidence of herbivory. They were just snipped off at the base. One looked chewed. I have a few chestnuts left over and I think I'll put some out and put a game camera on them to see what's happening to them. There are squirrels at both sites so I suspect it might be some other critter.
We ended the week at the food web site. Captured a few mice, which is very important to our research. Not only are they omnivores (so flexible diets will tell us what's out there) but we also captured them in our original study. We also captured a Field Sparrow and Indigo Bunting (below). Many many other birds are on the site so more work to do! One of the more interesting things I found was a morning dove nest on the ground!
This coming week, we're checking on our chestnut plantings, setting out some Audiomoths and game cameras. Should do some shrub and plant inventories as well. The point of all this is to figure out what drives plant diversity in urban woodlots. We need to look at what birds are there (to bring in seeds) and what mammals are there (to consume seeds.. and bring seeds in too).
