HATFIELD — Back on a February morning, around 6 and with the temperature hovering near 29 degrees, a trail camera snapped a photo of a coyote passing by a wooded area outside the Hatfield Elementary School.
Its image, and pictures of other wildlife in the vicinity of the school, captured by the camera whenever movement is detected, are sent via Bluetooth, or stored on SD cards, for upload to a laptop set up in fifth-grade teacher John Higuera’s classroom.
For students, getting a sense of what exists near the school during the overnight hours is one aspect of the MassMammals Watch program, which for a third year is part of the fifth-grade curriculum in Higuera and Ted Prajzner’s classes.
Known as citizen science, or participatory science, MassMammals, a partnership with Amherst College, collects data for a database, showing trends in population of various animals and the sightings by the public. Volunteers across the state contribute information to track the mammals.
Walking them through the first stage of the project on a recent afternoon were Amherst College students and MassMammals volunteers, junior Marie Wheeler and senior Dylan Vrins.
To get the students into the program, Wheeler asks the students about the wildlife they observe in their daily lives, illustrating this with a map of Massachusetts with dots that represent sightings of porcupines.
“I see bears, coyotes and bunnies and squirrels, sometimes I do see a porcupine,” one student says. Another chimes in, “I usually see squirrels, birds and dogs.”
The program isn’t just about identifying the quantity of animals, but also what the landscapes are like for the animals and why certain animals would be attracted to certain parts of the state. These patterns are then mapped out.
Vrins said that the trail cameras are another way to track movement. They are camouflaged with green and brown so the animals are not scared. “It’s a way to monitor the animals without disturbing them,” Vrins said.
Placed at hip length, the cameras can photograph the animals and even get pictures during the middle of the night.
“A lot of animals are nocturnal, so you want to get these animals as well,” Vrins said.
Cameras will record the date and time and temperature.
For hands-on activities, the students were presented maps and asked to show where, if they were a bear in the woods, they might venture, and choose where a camera should be set up.
Paisley Beck, 11, explained that her bear would wander from a stream and through the forest, and then get access to more water after getting lost in the woods twice.
Sawyer Dawson, 10, said his bear would walk around the woods a bit, before killing a squirrel.
Despite the focus on bears, Higuera said that none have yet approached the school to be photographed.
“We’ve never gotten a bear on the camera,” Higuera said.
The students also were given photos taken by the trail camera and made a graph of what was depicted, indicating that the bulk of animals that trigger the cameras are deer and squirrels.
Vrins explained that the MassMammals volunteers all share a love for science and that he hopes the Hatfield students will, as well.
“We hope that sometime down the line you can enjoy science as much as we do,” Vrins said.
For the first of several visits by the college students, fifth graders seemed to appreciate the work they will be doing.
“I liked it,” Sawyer said, adding that he enjoys the focus on animals.
“It was really fun,” Paisley said. “I liked the activities and what we learned.”
