Adirondacks Field Station
This week I toured Cornell’s Little Moose Field Station located just outside of Old Forge with some other CBFS interns. The station is named after its nearest lake, Little Moose Lake, although it conducts research on over 20 lakes in the area. Take a look at some of the trip’s highlights.
The Little Moose Station has a culture facility to raise fish in. The fish in the picture are Brook Trout– New York’s state fish. Brook Trout do not live in Oneida Lake, so it was great to get a chance to see them. Little Moose scientists are researching what effect habitat has on trout feeding behavior. We learned that it can be challenging to teach wild fish to eat fish food.
The Adirondacks have a lot of naturally growing wintergreen. Its leaves smell especially sweet if you cut them.
Many of the lakes the Little Moose Station studies have ordinances banning motorboats in the summer, so scientists use canoes when conducting field work.
As you can see, there are some differences between the Shackelton Point and Little Moose Stations, but both conduct valuable research that scientists around the state and beyond recognize. It is important for the two to continue to collaborate so that their research can reach as many as possible.
Re-tern of the Terns
I also made a trip back to the two islands on Oneida Lake where Common Terns live. In addition to checking nests for eggs and chicks, I helped conduct watches for a couple of projects CBFS is doing on tern feeding patterns.
Each watch takes one hour, with the goal of observing normal behavior during that time. We had to be very still so the birds would not get scared. My job was to take pictures of terns with fish in their mouths so that we could figure out what kinds of fish terns tend to hunt. Other watchers were measuring total fish catch rate and chick feed rate.
Watch data like this will be compiled from the past month to give scientists a qualitative and quantitative understanding of feeding behavior.
Week 8 brings me into the final quarter of my time at Shackelton Point this summer. In the coming weeks I will show you some of the long-term projects I’ve been working on over the past two months. You won’t want to miss next week when I host the CBFS youth open house!