Maggie's Farm

The Eastern Grey Squirrel is a familiar rodent across the eastern US. They are far more abundant in parks and suburbia than in their native woodlands where, I suspect, there is less food and more predation.

I watched a pair mating yesterday morning on a branch next to my driveway. It was a sweet, if brief, physical encounter preceded by some tender play. I felt like a voyeur.  

We have a few of the melanistic variant around here. Yes, black.

Common as they are, there are things you don't know about them. 

Sounds like a fine nickname for a beloved female. Not to mention that this bird's loud springtime call is "Peter,Peter,Peter."

These chickadee-like non-migratory birds of the eastern US are mostly invisible most of the year except around winter bird-feeders when they welcome handouts of sunflower seeds.

Tufted Titmouse

Mother and chicks on a cool breezy day

Sublimation is the process by which a solid goes directly to a vapor. Snow does that, even when it's below freezing. It evaporates. It's finally above freezing during the daytime here, at least for a day or two.

Somewhat related: Do you know the old expression Snow is the Poor Man's Fertilizer?

I have gotten a kick out of winter bird-feeding since I was a kid. It helps you find out what is around. The birds don't need it, but when it is frigid and there is snow cover, they certainly appreciate it.

Once you begin, though, you should continue the freebies until March because, in your generosity, you have created dependents.

If you have bears around, forget bird feeding. 

I do it on the cheap and in a squirrel-wise way. I buy 50 lb. bags of cracked corn or chicken feed and throw a few handfuls around every morning. Ground feeding birds go for it. They might prefer something else, but they go for it when it's cold. It keeps the squirrels busy too.  In my squirrel-proof feeder, I just put the more costly whole sunflower seed that I mix with a small amount of niger seed.

If I bothered to put out suet, I would attract more interesting birds but would have Starlings too.

Around here, most of what we see around the food in January are Juncoes, BC Chickadees, WT Sparrows, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Red Bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, Titmouse, Carolina Wren, Mourning Dove, Goldfinch, Fox Sparrow, an occasional Song Sparrow. The occasional Sharpie or Red Tail trying to catch the feeder birds. Sometimes House Sparrows and House Finches, but they don't like this food - which is a good thing. Nothing exciting most of the time. I rarely see Purple Finch, Crossbills, Redpolls, Pine Siskins, or a flock of Evening Grosbeaks. I wish they would visit sometime but I am not on the edge of piney woods. In April, blackbirds arrive.

Mine is like the one in the photo with a collapsible plastic perch thing on the bottom.  I got the largest I could find so it only has to be refilled every ten days or two weeks.

If you feed birds, what species are attracted?

Few birds store much fat. Fat adds weight which makes flying inefficient. Generally (with exceptions like ducks), birds burn what they eat during the day for energy and heat.

They certainly have meaningful relationships.

... in modern Western science, the whole concept of life is so mechanical that, if you look closely, not even people are supposed to be anthropomorphized. Emotional, holistic terms such as love, sorrow, and concern have no place in an impoverished language of chemical transactions at the micro level and selection pressures at the macro. Not that chemical transactions and selection pressures are not essential influences, because of course they are — but from our current knowledge of them, they are acutely inadequate to describing the subtleties of lived experience.

This framework goes back to Descartes, whose dualistic universe of absolute mind at one end and absolute matter at the other admitted nothing in between. Indeed, Descartes reasoned that since animals are not rational, they are not conscious, and since they are not conscious, they cannot even be aware of pain; their piteous howls during the horrible experiments he conducted on them were to him mere reflex, the unfelt expression of material reactions akin to the shrieking of a teakettle.

It's still raptor migration time here. Seen overhead in the past three days: Bald Eagle, Red Tail, Rough Legged, and a couple of Sharpies. One of the Sharpies was eating a pigeon on my front lawn. This guy yesterday seemed to be enjoying the smell of my grilling turkey (OK, it's probably a Cooper's Hawk. We ararely see, much less get to photo, a Cooper's):

Well, they do get lost. Animals with home territories tend not to get lost because they learn their area from childhood. However, animals that range widely as they mature often end up in wrong places and pay the price (eg bears, mountain lions, etc).

Long-distance migration remains a mystery, at least partly, in birds.

For all of the stories of dogs and cats arriving home after months, such stories are newsworthy because they are so rare. The vast majority of lost or abandoned pets never return home.

The Amazing Science Behind Pets That Find Their Way Home

How Do Animals Keep from Getting Lost?

In Greenland

No, I am not discussing Mrs. Bill Clinton or any other human female.It's just that I have encountered a few shrews this weekend while doing gardening jobs. (Shrubs, grasses, and flowers, not food although I did pick some sweet figs for breakfast from my new fig tree. Perfect breakfast: slice of cold chicken, a tomato, some mouse melons from the garden, and a fresh fig).

Our common shrew is the Northern Long Tailed. I think that is what these guys are that I see but if they are Northern Short-tailed I would not be surprised. I did not try to catch one to measure its tail, and their bites are painful anyway. Shrews are said to taste bad, but I never tried one.

The ones I see like leaf litter and mulch, ground cover like Pachysandra, thick weed patches, and the like. You mainly see a flash of grey fur zooming past your feet. They are almost blind, it is said.

Seen any shrews lately?

Common Loon. After a day chasing grouse and woodcock, and after dinner, it's nice to step out of the cabin by the lake with the pup, a ceegar, and a glass of whiskey to listen to the Loons calling.

In winter, they migrate to salt water, and have their drab non-breeding plumage. Some of these pics show winter plumage.

The Common Snapping Turtle of the Eastern and Central US is indeed common wherever there is mud and water.

Their eyes are like jewels.

Unless you do a lot of pond fishing, these large turtles are most often seen on land, searching for egg sites or seeking a new habitat. Leave them alone.

Leave them alone, that is, unless you want to do some cooking: Catching, Cleaning and Cooking the Common Snapper

There are about 2400 mantid species. Around here, it's the Praying Mantis. Reader sent in this one from the garden last week:

This has been a great year for rodents in Yankeeland. I've never seen so many bunnies (Cottontail Rabbits) or Chipmunks around. Maybe somebody shot the Coyotes?

Like other ground squirrels, these cheerful little fellows don't climb often, and live in tunnels.

Mine have some burrows under my garden shed, and some live in a rock pile. They are rather tame, but the dog doesn't seem to be able to catch them. They like the free lunch of seed that falls off my bird feeder tray, so I can watch them poking around two feet from my window.

At Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills (short video of that wonderful place here), they have always had a number of little Victorian-style chipmunk houses around the place. Like doll houses, but sturdy and shingled. They seem to like those houses.

When I was a kid I caught one in a Havahart trap and tried to tame it, but that plan did not work and I finally let it go. Sharp teeth, and loves freedom and independence.

You can read more about these fine critters here.

Do not kill these fine snakes when you find them. They are not Copperheads and they certainly are not Coral Snakes.

They come in many different color morphs, sometimes rings and sometimes splotches so they can be confusing. 

They seem to like forest edges and will hang out in old barns, garages, and buildings. The last two I've seen in Massachusetts had been hiding under old piles of boards outside the barn abd the garage. They are mainly nocturnal hunters.

I always wonder how snakes find their mates in the Spring.

A fellow turtle-lover send me this discouraging article about the overharvesting of wild turtles in Asia.

Controlled harvesting of eastern America's Diamondback Terrapin continues today. It's a wonder to me, because I know nobody who eats them. This handsome turtle of salt marshes and brackish estuaries lives from MA to Texas, but is endangered in some states.

They eat snails, small mollusks, and crustaceans like crabs and fiddler crabs that they crush with their beaks. Fish, if they can catch 'em. They only leave the water to lay eggs. They sometimes get ensnared in crab pots and drown.

Whenever we went to Chinatown when I was young, I would always bring a box and some money to buy as many of the terrapins that I could afford from the big crates full of them on the sidewalk. I think they were $5 apiece. I would release them in a couple of good salt marshes in CT. My Dad would chip in a bit for the cause.

Some good folks are farming them to restore populations from which they had been harvested to extinction. That is a wonderful mission.

Readers know we love our turtles at Maggie's, except we do not love Snapping Turtles. I once stepped on the back of one in a marsh, thinking it was a mossy rock. Big surprise when it moved and a long neck with an open, hissing mouth shot out. It's time I did a post on them, though, unloveable as they are.

Terrapins in Massachusetts

This is a rattler of the central US, ranging from Ontario to Mexico and generally preferring grasslands and marshes. I have never seen one, but I have never searched for snakes in the central US. However, I once came across a DeKay's Snake in central Ohio on a hike. Took a photo. The field biologist said they had never been recorded in central Ohio so I guess I made history in a small way.

Have you ever seen a Massasauga?  This guy is well-camouflaged in the grasses. It is good not to be a mouse.

Re-linking E.O. Wilson's wonderful essay Trailhead. He begins:

The Trailhead Queen was dead. At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed. Her stillness alone failed to give warning to her daughters that a catastrophe had occurred for all of them. She lay there, in fact, as though nothing had happened. She had become a perfect statue of herself. While humans and other vertebrates have an internal skeleton surrounded by soft tissue that quickly rots away, ants are encased in an external skeleton; their soft tissues shrivel into dry threads and lumps, but their exoskeletons remain, a knight’s armor fully intact long after the knight is gone. Hence the workers were at first unaware of their mother’s death. Her quietude said nothing, and the odors of her life, still rising from her, signalled, I remain among you. She smelled alive.

A friend told me yesterday the amusing story of the Ring-Neck Snakes which have been invading their house in upstate New York. His Mrs. is so uneasy about snakes that she has been stuffing towels under her bedroom door.

They can't find their entry point. My friend smashed one with a book. The guy knows nothing about snakes. I advised him that Ring-Necks are pleasant harmless critters and you should just pick them up and put them in the woods out back. They won't even snap at you.

Snakes rarely enter buildings except for Yellow Rat Snakes which like barns with rats and mice.  However, I googled Ring-Necked Snake + houses and found a professional snake remover who seems to deal with that fairly often.

I suspect they just like to explore tight spaces, and then find themselves in your living room with no way out.

By early August the Yellow Legs and the Sanderlings have left their northern breeding grounds and are migrating south, towards home which is often as far as South America.

Both species are fairly common along the coast during migration, Yellow Legs in marshes mostly, and Sanderlings on sandy shores. Lots of both on Cape Cod and the Islands.

Not easy to tell a common Garter from a Ribbon. I've seen lots of the former, a few of the latter. The Ribbon Snakes I have seen were long and skinny, and either near small weedy ponds or sunning on brush piles.

Telling Garter Snakes and Ribbon Snakes Apart

If you leave out the Indigo Snake of the southern US, which can appear black under some lighting conditions, we are down to two species: The Blacksnake (aka Black Rat Snake, aka Western Rat Snake,aka Pilot Black Snake, etc, as in photo) and the skinny Black Racer.

During my years tramping and working outdoors, I have seen plenty of both. I have seen 6' Blacksnakes sunning on ledges on a warm April day on Cape Cod. It is a bit startling to encounter one, at first, because of their daunting size. The fat Blacksnakes like to be near water, and climb trees sometimes. You are more likely to see a Racer racing away on a grassy woodland edge if you have sharp Indian Eyes.

I love to see and identify snakes in the wild.  I do not pick them up anymore to say hello as I did when younger. It just annoys the heck out of a snake and they snap at you and pee on you. You cannot catch a Black Racer. Like greased lightning.

Are you old enough to remember when articles were written about whether a critter was "beneficial" or a "pest"?  Nobody writes like that anymore in an era where humans are considered the greatest pest in nature.

Seen any black snakes lately?

The topic came up: What sorts of critters move using the least energy per unit distance and per unit weight? Fish swimming, birds flying, or animals walking?

You can guess first - answer below the fold -