The January Photo of the Month features a beautiful gray fox catching sight of a trail camera! Gray foxes have been known to range as far as southern Canada to northern Venezuela, being a territorial species with a home range of about 500 acres. Evidence indicates that these foxes are the oldest ancestor of the Canidae family, approximately 3.6 million years old, and are the only members of this family able to climb trees in North America! Thank you to our volunteer, Douglas Dawson, for sharing your magnificent trail camera photos with us! (source: https://www.wildlifesciencecenter.org/gray-fox)

For any more mammal sightings, submit any photos to the form here!

Reminder to anyone with a Ring camera or similar security system installed; these systems help us collect important data on the presence and absence of mammals in your area. We welcome you to join our team of registered volunteers who submit photos once a month. Having regular reports from a fixed location allows us to learn even more about mammals in your area than individual sightings.  New volunteers can register here 

Picture of Camilla presenting her slides at the event!

Over the January break, we met over Zoom to have a journal club meeting! Last year, the group focused on patterns in participatory data reporting, outreach efforts, and the implementation of trail camera studies. This year, we each selected a journal article focused on volunteer engagement, interaction, and retention strategies from other participatory science projects. Our main takeaways consisted of using online learning modules and setting intentional roles for volunteers. In our project, our amazing volunteers submit questions through email and photos through Google Forms and have the opportunity to interact with our social media and website! Another way to assist in recruitment, especially for younger participants, would be through competition incentives such as a bioblitz, which is a fun challenge that uses applications such as iNaturalist to compile a list of organisms in a particular area. 

MassMammals aims to support our community in Massachusetts by asking questions about and coexisting with wildlife. We have tremendous support from our community in Pioneer Valley. Moving forward, we will aim to continue to reach all across Massachusetts and build a positive and educational relationship with our communities and our mammalian neighbors who share them. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to email us at citiscima@amherst.edu or DM us on Instagram @MassMammalsWatch

The groundhog, or woodchuck (Marmot monax), is not only the namesake of an important tradition in February and everyone’s favorite Bill Murray movie, but is the most widespread North American member of the genus Marmot. The most famous groundhog saw his shadow and predicted six more weeks of winter on Groundhog Day! What role do groundhogs play in their environments? The groundhog lives primarily in low-lying forests and pastures and can be found across the Eastern United States, Canada, and Alaska. Their preferred diet consists of alfalfa, clover, and dandelion, but they also eat bark, leaves, insects, and bird eggs. Other than eating, their favorite activity is sunning themselves. Groundhogs store fat throughout the year for their annual winter hibernation. They dig their own dens both for hibernation and the warmer months, when they are more active, for raising their young and sleeping. Abandoned groundhog dens provide homes for many other species, including foxes, river otters, and other smaller animals.  February and March are the perfect time to see groundhogs as they start to emerge from their dens, so keep your eyes peeled for a groundhog warming itself in a clearing near you!

The member spotlight for January is Camilla Lash!

"I am a sophomore and a Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought (LJST) major!"

"A fun fact about me is that I am Brazilian, and on one occasion when I was visiting my family, I got to meet Usain Bolt in Brazil right before the 2016 Olympics! I also love desserts! "

"I joined the MassMammals Outreach and Data team because it helps me learn about data collection and has given me so many wonderful engagement opportunities with the local Amherst community and with all of the lab members!