{"id":63,"date":"2022-07-03T00:24:47","date_gmt":"2022-07-03T00:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.io\/?p=63"},"modified":"2022-07-03T00:36:45","modified_gmt":"2022-07-03T00:36:45","slug":"scouting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/2022\/07\/03\/scouting\/","title":{"rendered":"Scouting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll tell you the way I really\u00a0want<\/em> to teach my classes. \u00a0I want to go in cold into a class, to walk into a school I\u2019ve never been to before, put up cameras with students on day 1, and be confident that we\u2019re going to find animals. \u00a0In practice, it\u2019s always worked out exactly like that, but every time, some part of me still doubts that it\u2019s going to work out.<\/p>\n

So I do what every unprepared student does before a test \u2014 a couple days before my test, I cram. \u00a0In the case of this class, I obsessively scout out the school to get an idea what\u2019s out there before starting the class. \u00a0Like skimming the textbook a day before teaching it, I want to have some understanding of what we\u2019re going to see\u00a0before<\/em> we see it as a group. \u00a0Intellectually, I\u00a0know<\/em> that wild animals are everywhere, even in the middle of dense human settlements, but I always want to see it for myself before taking a look with students. So I go out, and with the help of Lumen and some other friends, take a close look at what\u2019s happening in the bit of land behind the school.<\/p>\n

\"Lumen
Lumen setting up a camera trap in Batticaloa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the moment, I\u2019m in Sri Lanka, in an Eastern coastal town called Batticaloa, and I\u2019ll be running at least two classes over the next couple weeks. \u00a0Batticaloa is a sizeable city of a couple hundred thousand people, made up of island, lagoons and peninsulas where several rivers feed into the sea. \u00a0I\u2019m working at Dreamspace, a wonderful local community organization in town. \u00a0They have a building with about an acre of half-cleared land where I\u2019ll run the classes.<\/p>\n

\"Dreamspace
Dreamspace Hive on Kallady Peninsula<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I spent about four hours today at the site, walking around, tracking, talking to folks who work there and the neighbors, and putting up a few cameras to see who shows up. \u00a0This is my first time in Sri Lanka, so I\u2019m mostly tracking species that I\u2019ve never seen before. \u00a0Some of them are familiar \u2014 house cats, lots of stray dogs, mice, and others are less so \u2014 mongoose, civet cats, gerbils. \u00a0My first attempt at tracking gets broad strokes \u2014 \u201ca turtle walked through here last night, there was a ~1.5\u2019 long snake heading this way, here\u2019s a run of a cat-sized animal that\u2019s not a cat, passing low to the ground through grass and underbrush\u201d. \u00a0I sketch the tracks I don\u2019t know, come back, puzzle through a field guide, and make my guesses. \u00a0I photograph and poke at lots of poop, bones, and animal bits that are lying around. \u00a0Poop tells you more about who\u2019s walking around and what they\u2019ve eating. \u00a0I put up several cameras along the trails to see who\u2019s making them, and to see if any of my guesses are correct.<\/p>\n

Scouting the area isn’t just cramming for a test, though. \u00a0This first scouting helps me stay informed and makes the class better all-around, but it\u2019s also the time when I get to explore and figure things out for myself. \u00a0The rest of the class will be helping other people understand animals, but this first part is when I get to learn. \u00a0I get to check the first traps in the morning, and I\u2019m looking forward to learning about our nighttime visitors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll tell you the way I really\u00a0want to teach my classes. \u00a0I want to go in cold into a class, to walk into a school I\u2019ve never been to before, put up cameras with students on day 1, and be confident that we\u2019re going to find animals. \u00a0In practice, it\u2019s always worked out exactly like… Continue reading Scouting<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[7,8],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching","category-tracking","tag-classes","tag-tracking","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wildlives.world\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}