There was no deer trapping this last week. Although my crew expressed sadness upon hearing the news, I was happy to have a change of pace. I must admit, the adrenaline rush from tackling deer has waned. In abundance, anything can lose its luster — especially long, cold hours waiting for the net to drop. Perhaps more than the cold, the idle hours are what bothered me most. I was eager to learn something new!
fleer (‘flir) — v. to grin or laugh coarsely or mockingly
For a while, I heard of something called a “fleer survey.” I don’t know. I sat upon quite a few deer by this time and I’ve heard some interesting sounds. Perhaps it was my imagination that I saw expressions on those deer faces but never did I see a deer fleer. At some point during the season, I learned that we would be using a FLIR camera to aid us in distance sampling at the end of the season. FLIR stands for forward looking infrared. The technology would allow us to identify and count deer in the darkness of night. The purpose of this task is to collect data used to estimate deer abundance and density in and around our study area.
Instead of trapping this past week, we conducted the FLIR surveys. Essentially, we drove predetermined routes at ten miles per hour, looking for deer with these thermal imaging infrared cameras. The driver chauffeured two observers while watching for deer on the road. With the FLIR cameras mounted on opposite side windows, the observers watched the camera feeds on laptops from the back seat. Everything emitting heat had a highlighted signature — deer, people, bunny rabbits, rocks that baked in the sun all day, etc. Animals and other objects were easy to identify when they were close and the view was unobstructed. However, distinguishing deer from rocks or anything else was difficult with increased distance and cover. We used a spotlight to aid the discovery. Luckily, deer eyes reflect brightly! Once deer were detected, the truck position was recorded using the GPS enabled laptop and the deer position and direction were recorded using a laser rangefinder. Additionally, we noted the time and number of deer observed. We would drive the entire survey route or until 11:30pm, whichever was soonest.
Indeed, it was a nice change of pace. I was learning something new. Slowly driving down the road while looking at a computer screen for several hours may get monotonous after a few days but I picked up a new skill and got to play with new toys!
For more information about distance sampling and FLIR surveys, check out Admiring from Afar on the Deer-Forest Study blog. The post delves into the methodology and offers some cool video!