 Rocky Mountain West |
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 June 2012 |
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 Small Mammal Research in New Mexico |
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 Denver Zoo Teen Volunteers |
June 22, 2012
Today was the first day of the first ever Teen Conservation Biology Trip! I have been hoping the zoo would start a trip like this for teens and this is exactly how I pictured the trips. Today we traveled from Denver Zoo in Colorado to Wind River Ranch in New Mexico. Wind River Ranch is beautiful.
It is textbook perfect grassland prairie habitat with pronghorn antelope and huge birds that circle above us. We arrived at the ranch and (after a few difficulties locating the traps) we began to set up traps that would hopefully capture some of the smaller mammal species of the prairie. We baited the traps with peanut butter and oatmeal. While we were setting up we found a spiny lizard called a short horned lizard. This lizard looks like a hedgehog and we learned that they are able to shoot blood out of their eyes when they are scared! So far this trip has been great and I can’t wait for tomorrow (I hope we catch something!).
June 23, 2012
Today we actually checked the traps. There were 5 mice at the first site. Most of them were grasshopper mice. The grasshopper mice have shorter tails. One of them was a western harvest mouse. There were more mice at the second
