Survey Assistant and Habitat Restoration Helpers

I like to say that while I can't do everything with kids that I could do without them, I can still do everything I need to in order to excel at many field jobs.  One of my favorite field activities with my children is checking wildlife cameras.  It is exciting for me to see which wildlife came by, and the children are as excited or more.  There are also many parts of the activity that they can help with, even from a young age.  The following photos are from some work we did on the River Otter Ecology Project.

At the time, this project was just starting to document the return of this species to the region.  The work involved driving to beautiful locations in Marin County, California, hiking into a survey site, and setting up cameras or downloading images.

Here are some photos taken by the Executive Director of the organization, Megan Isadore, of me and my youngest son setting and checking cameras.

Setting up a camera station

Reviewing images in the field

Most of the sites involved short hikes, which the kids are great at and enjoy.  This photo was taken at a beachside field site.  The children just played nearby in the sand while I set the camera.  My older boy was fabulous at pretending to be an otter, to check if we had set up the camera properly.

The logistics of doing the camera trapping work were fairly easy.  I was able to get a child carrier backpack with space for gear in a lower compartment.  If I needed more space, I used a large hip pack, worn in the front.  Plenty of the child carriers are now made for people doing backpacking trips with their children, and doing a lot of fieldwork is really not all that different.  I found bringing a sarong was very useful for multitasking as a field changing table, sun shade, and wiping sand off of the camera lenses.  

  
I have also had the boys with me during habitat restoration work.  Thank you to Jude Stalker at the Invasive Limonium Removal project for this photo of my assistant during invasive species removal.

Removing Invasive Plants

And Jude also took the photo below of my older son helping with oak tree plantings at a restoration site.  He eventually got a shovel and started digging the holes in the soft dirt to put the acorns in.  Kids are great at digging in the dirt.  We need to go and check on those oaks.  This little boy is 10 years old now, and I bet the oaks may have outgrown the both of us.

Planting Oaks

Here is that same little boy 10 years later, taking a chorus frog from a pitfall trap 

I have found participating in citizen science field days is a great way to introduce kids to field work and get them experience with data collection in a low stress (for me!) situation.  We helped out in a Bioblitz, which was documented for a PBS special, shown here.

And this now budding wildlife biologist assisting with roosting bat surveys, part of the Great Causeway Bat Count, at nearly 12 years old.

And doing cast net surveys at 13 years old. 

and, at 16yo, starting to launch on his own beyond working with Mom - here he is participating in a Field Research Course, his first college credits.  

Working with Dr. Rosemary Smith, dye marking rodents as part of a study. 
Photo Credit: Kierstin Thompson