On Tuesday, May 15, 2007, Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge biologists Maurry Mills and Andy Weik, and biological aide Brian Allen welcomed University of Maine wildlife ecology instructor Lindsay Seward and 18 sophomore wildlife ecology majors in the Wildlife Field Survey class to the refuge.  Refuge staff gave an introduction to the refuge and National Wildlife Refuge System at the YCC building.  Mills led the class on a field tour of the Baring Division to introduce the refuge's habitats and management programs. 

Later in the week, Weik and members of the woodcock crew demonstrated survey, capture, and marking techniques of American woodcock for the class at the Edmunds Division.  We located two singing male woodcock and in the evening set mistnets at their singing grounds.  We were successful in capturing a male woodcock at each singing ground, plus a visiting female, and nearly caught a subdominant male woodcock that invaded the singing ground while the dominant male was in a holding bag.  We also caught several "bonus" birds: two American robins, two hermit thrushes, and an Empidonax flycatcher.  The crew demonstrated how to remove the birds from mistnets, proper handling of a bird, how to apply a leg band, and how to determine sex and age of a woodcock.  This was a hands-on learning opportunity, so students assisted in removing birds from nets, handled the birds and examined their plumage and morphology.  A northern saw-whet owl provided background vocals.

The class assisted refuge staff by completing 5 woodcock singing ground survey routes at the Edmunds Division, conducting 2 call-back surveys for spruce grouse, and surveying land birds by song and call on two refuge islands in Cobscook Bay.  The Wildlife Field Survey May Term class annually spends two weeks based on the shore of Cobscook Bay in Edmunds near the refuge, where they are able to use refuge habitats, Cobscook Bay, and the surrounding area as an outdoor lab to complete the two-week field course which stresses the use and application of wildlife research and management techniques, collection and analysis of biological data and the recognition of wildlife species and their habitats.