Students turn classroom lessons into field experience

This is part of a course called Wildlife Field Techniques, and we teach this class in two components. One is lecture and lab, until we come here for what we call the ten day intensive. We start off with learning about orienteering and not getting lost in the woods, and then also we put up remote cameras for large animals. After that, we do some radio telemetry, some small mammal trapping, some herp surveys, some bird surveys, and end up with some bat surveys. And then they all pick a project that they work on and work up the data that the class collects as a whole. So this afternoon, we'll be doing point counts for birds. They go to a point and they listen and look for birds and estimate how far away the birds are from them, which then ultimately helps us estimate density; how many birds are in a place. Then we want to relate that to the habitat features. So for the point sampling, we would sit there for five minutes. We would do visual and audio surveying for any birds that we see or hear, and we would also identify the species. I think the most important thing about field techniques is really experiencing being in the field. And so using that and applying that into future job opportunities is going to be really important. I think one of the best things about it is that because I've been doing this so long, it doesn't seem new sometimes to me, but then when I take a new group of students out and they get so excited about an animal that they've caught, it kind of makes me excited all over again. This ten day intensive field course is unique to our program and is a really special part about doing a wildlife degree here at Virginia Tech. And I think it's a wonderful way for them to build relationships that will take them through the rest of their careers.