Last Saturday, the Hunter Education course held at Mahar Regional School was completed with a full day that involved a number of “hands on” activities that included Safe Gun Handling, Tree Stand Safety, Fundamentals of Shooting, Field Carries, Zones of Fire, Crossing Obstacles, and Hunting Opportunities in Massachusetts. The class curriculum this year, for the first time, was using the Independent Study format.
The main advantage with Independent Study is that this format offers flexibility. Students learn some of the material, at their own pace, on their own time, and only need to attend two classroom sessions. The first class is a three-hour session to introduce students to the course requirements and to receive study materials including the student manual. The second class, scheduled a week or more later, is a full day session known as the “field day” where students participate in a number of hands-on activities.
The Independent Study Basic Hunter Education Course is an alternative format to a traditional classroom course. Students enrolled in an independent study course are guided by an instructor team and take the same course as students in a traditional course but will work independently to complete some of the essential coursework on their own. Independent study courses require students to attend two class sessions, and the Mahar class began with a class on July 16 from 6 to 9:30. The students left with instructions to complete the essential coursework/homework either by completing a workbook or taking an online class. They needed to return on Saturday with either the workbook filled in completely or with a printed certificate indicating that they had successfully passed the online course. With this preparation, which required at least 6 to 8 hours of work, students should have been prepared to pass the final exam to earn a Basic Hunter Education certificate.
The Orange class typically attracts over 50 students and this year was no exception. This writer is the longest-serving volunteer instructor in the Massachusetts Hunter Education Program with over 40 years of teaching classes at Mahar. In that time span, many changes have occurred. “Back in the day,” the class would be almost entirely 15-year-old boys, eager to get their hunting license at a rite of passage. Today, 15-year old boys are a minority and generally at third of the class is female. The age of students is also skewed with it tending to have a number of students over the age of 30. This first time using the Independent study model was a success with all students who completed the course ending up passing the exam. The team of Evelyn Cunha, Tim Donovan, Tom Tourigny, Anthony Cunha and yours truly was pleased with the results. Those students will receive a certificate which is valid is all 50 states, the Canadian Provinces and Mexico.
A story about Eastern Whip-poor-will, written by MassWildlife’s State Ornithologist, Andrew Vitz, will appear in the next edition of Massachusetts Wildlife magazine. That fabulous magazine is being delivered to subscribers’ mailboxes in late July. Like me, many locals remember fondly summer evenings filled with the unique call “whip-poor-will, whip-poor–will” of the bird by that name. In recent years, these distinctive sounds are rare as these birds are disappearing. In fact, the Eastern Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus) population has experienced annual declines of 4.4% in New England and 6.6% in Massachusetts since 1966, where it is state listed as a Species of Special Concern. Whip-poor-wills appear to be heavily dependent on fire-adapted pine-oak habitats for breeding, but over the past few decades, these habitats have become scarce due to forest maturation, fire suppression, and development. This change in habitat has undoubtedly contributed to the dramatic decline. Researchers speculate that elevated mortality rates during migration or on the wintering grounds also may contribute to population declines. Because the birds are nocturnal, scientists lack basic natural history and ecological information on this species, with little known about the migratory and over-wintering periods.
To gain a better understanding of the Eastern Whip-poor-will’s annual cycle and to support bird conservation actions, MassWildlife initiated a project with Dr. Marja Bakermans at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Using GPS technology, the agency is documenting the migratory routes and over-wintering locations of whip-poor-wills nesting in Massachusetts. MassWildlife is also studying the timing and duration of their migration as well as their movements and habitat use during both migration and winter periods.
MassWildlife’s banding efforts focused on three locations across Massachusetts: Joint Base Cape Cod, Bolton Flats Wildlife Management Area (WMA), and Montague Plains WMA. These sites contain the preferred pitch pine-scrub oak woodlands that whip-poor-wills use for nesting. To lure territorial whip-poor-wills into mist nets, recordings were played their songs and calls. Once captured, morphological measurements and the sex and age of each bird were recorded and a tiny GPS tag weighing 1 gram was attached to the bird’s back using a leg-loop harness. During May and June of 2018, 27 whip-poor-wills were tagged with a GPS data logger. The recapture of these same individuals this year was the goal to attempt to retrieve the GPS tags and download the stored data.
This spring, using nets are made of a fine mesh that birds cannot see once it is dark. A total of 12 tagged birds from last year were recovered, providing a great deal of data on the birds’ migration, over-wintering locations, and habitats. An additional 19 birds were also caught and tagged for the project.
Initial review of the data indicates that most of the Massachusetts birds wintered in Mexico with one going as far south as Honduras. Interestingly, instead of taking the most direct route of flying across the Gulf of Mexico, the birds appeared to avoid that option and instead took a longer land-based route. The data collection portion of the project will be wrapped up next year.