Recap of Monday--scat day

I had planned to post last night but was up until 10:30 or so trying to go through all of the comments from my school blog. Those kids really know how to follow direction. They're so cute--so many good comments (I had threatened them).
Hopefully I can recapture yesterday so that I can share it with you.
My fellow teachers and housemates are: Breann (Bre), Erin, Kathy, and Roslyn. The first three are teachers who were awarded the fellowship like me. Roslyn is an Aussie who has been traveling everywhere for the past several months. She is not a teacher; she is just traveling for a while. Everyone seems to get a long fantastically. We are sharing a house--an 80 year old, two story house. There are three bedrooms. I am rooming with Kathy. Since Roslyn is not a teacher, we agreed that it is fair to let her have her own room.
The research scientists leading this assignment are a couple--Chris (British) and Christina (German). They are hysterical. They really do have a wealth of knowledge up in those heads of theirs. They share their knowledge well and do a very thorough job instructing us or educating us on procedures.
Sunday was a very long day. Every one's flight arrived with exception of Kathy's. Her flight was delayed and then she missed her connecting flight from Toronto. The delayed flight was to arrive at 4pm. When she missed it, the next flight wasn't to arrive until 7:45pm.
At 5pm we agreed to drive 20-30 minutes for some food (they called it a snack, I called it dinner). We found a pub that smelled delicious so why pass it up? The fist things on the menu caught my eye: fried pepperoni and chips and curry. Mmmmm...at the table, the rest of the group agreed that both sounded really good. In the end half of us ordered the pepperoni and the others ordered the fries with curry. Both were delicious. After our fine dining experience...err, I mean snack...we traveled back to the airport.Kathy's flight finally arrived and we found her--minus her baggage. It had not arrived with her (along with about 10 other people) so we left the airport w/out the luggage.Our drive was over 2 hours of hilly, dark driving. The van was quiet so it felt like an eternity.We arrived at our house after 10pm. Whew. I really did not know what the accommodations would be like so I was pleasantly surprised that we were staying in a real house.
Christina showed us the upstairs and explained that the house had two bathrooms--one up and one down. The upstairs bathroom worked just fine but did not flush well. After that, she explained that the heater (which was not on) worked just fine--downstairs. There was no heat upstairs.
We lugged our stuff upstairs to our rooms and started to unpack. We had about 20 minutes until 'dinner' was served. We were called down for pizza about 10:30 or 10:45pm. Since I'm not a cheese eater I did not partake in dinner. Luckily I was still full from the snack we had at dinnertime.
I was excited for Monday because I wanted to explore the area. Before everyone else got up, Bre and I got up and went for a run. We ran approximately 3 miles to Henry something road. It leads down to a public beach. The beach was beautiful; there were river rocks everywhere and on the other side of the grassy dunes there was a freshwater oasis. We saw lots of sea urchins on the shore (I'm guessing the birds had eaten them). It was a great run.
after breakfast we had a power point introduction to field research. Scat and learning to recognize it was the topic of the day.
We traveled down to Broad Cove and walked along the boundaries of the beach for 15k. The beaches here are nothing that I've seen before. Apparently the winter wind and storms blow the beach away and only leave rocks--it is hard to imagine bringing the family to the beach. During the spring and summer, the sand returns and there is a beach again.
Our goal was to identify signs of mammals (mostly scat) and boy did we have some samples! Knowing what was in the woods around us was amazing--coyotes, bobcat, fox, otter, seal, beaver, muskrat, porcupine, and bear (that is all I can remember right now).
We saw a cute little muskrat swimming in a freshwater pond. He was a fair distance away so the pictures aren't that detailed.
My favorite part of the day was when the dog (Lycos--belongs to the scientists) found a porcupine!!!!! It was a yearling so he wasn't huge. He scurried up a tree and we surrounded him trying to take pictures.
While attempting to get a better angle, I found the remains of a porcupine and bear poo. Christina said that the porcupine was probably either dead or dying since bear usually don't hunt porcupine.
My pictures aren't great--it was hard to see him--but you can sort of see him if you know you're looking for him.
We returned to the house, exhausted, ready for dinner. I was able to get online and update my things.
I am able to receive emails but currently can't send them. It is so very frustrating. :(

Well....the scientists just arrived for breakfast (it is 8:30am). Until later, enjoy the slide show.