Montana, Sunday 08/11/24

 Hello my name is Mathew Virgen. I am a fourth year biology major at the University of La Verne.

This was our last day at Magpie ranch as we were leaving first thing the next morning. This meant today was the day to wrap up on all research station activities including the cure project between Mario, Gustavo and I. We were finished with all of the trail camera footage that we were assigned to analyze. Although the six cameras collected thousands of videos for us three to divide and go through, we were able to complete the work by the end of Saturday the 10th. The focus of this Sunday morning was to work on the actual organization of the slides to present later that evening. We were purposeful with the order of our slides as we were also implementing our chosen animal species onto the presentation. Since we saw all the animals we chose on the trail camera footage, we asked professor Pablo if we could combine these assignments. Gustavo was first as he introduced the black bear with facts and details on where the species lives. Then he showed a video of a bear attacking camera 2 and knocking it down from the position on the tree. Another video of cubs was shown as well as footage of a bear sleeping by a river. My animal was the mountain lion (cougar) so I gave facts on the species as well as the specific region in Montana it resides in. I talked about the differences in male and female behavior as well as how they hunt. Mario was next with a moose that was too tall to be fully captured by the camera. The video did show its massive antlers once it walked further away. He then gave facts of its aquatic diet and how it can swim. The rest of the presentation was the other species we saw from reviewing the footage. White tailed deers and gray squirrels were the more commonly seen species. We did statistical analysis on all the species with multiple sightings but these two animals in particular provided the most sufficient date to see patterns regarding season and daylight. We found that mule deers were more common during the winter whereas white tailed deer were seen more frequently during the summer. Furthermore, we noticed the pattern that flying squirrels came out more during the night than the gray squirrels. More notably, we saw a moose, American badger, weasel and a wolf pack. However, my personal favorite footage to see was the bobcat as it would sit down like a house cat. 

All of these animals were fascinating to look at and I especially enjoyed sharing our findings with the professors. Whenever one of us found something notable, we would all get excited. I enjoyed having this experience with Mario and Gustavo as we all worked extremely smoothly together like butter.