What does a woodchuck sound like?

Have you ever wondered what noises a woodchuck can make? I know I have.

Last weekend I was dog-sitting for my landlords. They live next to me, and are the owners of my puppy's parents. So it's a nice agreement, and our dogs get to play. Sometimes I get a kick back in rent, this time though they're building me a picnic table for my yard! :)

Anyway, last Saturday I let the dogs out of their kennel outdoors, and they both immediately bee-lined for this stack of cinder blocks. At first I thought they were just being stupid dogs, snarfling around. But then I heard something.

So I locked up the two big dogs, and Addie and I investigated.

 

 

Addie was interested and scared. She did not seem like she wanted to eat it (unlike poor Jumping Mouse and Baby Rabbit from a few entries ago...) so I was interested to know...who was in there?

 

A woodchuck!

 

I have a great fondness for New York's largest squirrel. Marmota monax -is that a cool scientific name or what?!- often gets a bad rap. Many people dislike them for the damage to yards and crops that they are so good at doing. I like them because although they are a squirrel, they are a formidable beast. They are capable of doing amazing metabolic things to make it through the winter months, they are excellent diggers, and they are cute. Come on, they are!

 

 

This woodchuck was displeased with his or her situation. I believe this guy was obviously old enough to be away from his mother. He looked totally developed and capable, just small. That hole in the cinder blocks was maybe 6 inches? And he wasn't stuffed in there. I tried to poke him out with a stick, but he opened his mouth and started yelling at me.

 

So before I left him alone and to his own devices, I took this video. It looks like I was blocking him in, which I guess I was. But he was not interested in moving out of his "den". I was just outside of the cinder blocks and took this video with my smart phone.

 

 

 

He was NOT budging with me peering in at him, and the dogs whining. So I left him. The next morning he was gone, so I can only hope he wandered away and found a more appropriate hole to live in!

 

No profound biological discoveries here, just some fun pictures and videos of an under appreciated rodent!





Coyote steals the cat

My last blog entry included tons of pics of recent visitors to my camera trap site which was baited with the carcass of a Wild Turkey and a road-kill stray cat. They both were in frame, right next to each other, and many critters visited, primarily Virginia opossum(s). But all the attention was on the Turkey! There really wasn't much meat left on it either, since it had been harvested during NY's spring Turkey season, and my friend Tyler took the breast and legs. The cat appeared untouched, and I didn't really understand. KB (Romping and Rolling in the Rockies) left me a comment stating that she's seen bobcat carcasses where she lives (CO) untouched. Did other scavengers dislike cat meat?

Well, of course, no sooner did I post that, I returned to the site and immediately noticed both carcasses were gone. I knew the Turkey had been removed by a Coyote previously, but now the cat carcass was gone too. Whodunit? Well, duh my entry title tells you....I'm not good at the element of surprise...

Here's the series of photos that shows the thievery...

 

Below is the actual taking....too quick for the camera to get a crisp image.

 

The black spot on the ground appeared to be soil that had been disturbed by insects (Dermestids) underneath the cat's body.

Pawing the spot where the Turkey was. I don't think much was left though...

 

After a quick sniff to the air, when I was pulling the SD card, I was able to locate the remains of the cat about 15 feet into the brush just to the right of the frame. I think it just dissolved...it was REALLY gushy and we've had torrential rains lately that probably further softened it. I'm not sure if this 'yote ate any of it, but there wasn't much left but vertebrae and fur.

Well, so I had a Turkey leg in the freezer, from the Turkey that Tyler shot. He said it "didn't look right" when he cleaned the bird, so he gave it to me to use for my camera instead of for eating. I tied it up on a branch in the frame at this same spot with a thick electrical underground-type cable and Gorilla Tape. HOPEFULLY nothing steals it too easily!

I love camera-trapping!

Camera trap visitors and a new job!

I haven’t posted any camera trap pics in awhile! The end of the semester kept me busy, and then the past couple of weeks seem to have been just as busy! I also started a new job this week, which I will share later in the post. Going back a month ago, my friend Tyler went out the first week of May to go Turkey hunting. The spring Turkey season opened on May 1st, and he was successful in getting a Jake (young male!). He was excited to bag a bird, but I was excited because I was going to get the carcass once he got the meat he wanted from it. I know, it’s a morbid thing to be excited about. But, if you’ve been following along with my blog, you know there’s no shortage of “gross” in my life :)

A few weeks before Tyler gave me his Turkey carcass, I had found a road-killed stray cat at the end of my driveway. I had seen this cat around, flea bitten with ticks. Sad, but it happens. So when I found the dead cat, I removed it from my driveway, and brought it into the woods. I didn’t have anything to bury it with, so I figured I’d just let nature take it’s course. And I set up my Bushnell Trophy Cam HD on the site. So when Turkey was ready, he joined Stray Cat. It’s been an active site, here are a few of the pictures!

A couple of scavengers: American Crows

A usual visitor, the Virginia opossum checking out the dead cat before Turkey came on the scene.

That’s Tyler! Setting out Mr. Turkey

A pair of raccoons stopped by the buffet…

Possum is back…he was definitely the most common visitor. I like this picture because I think he’s eating some of the Turkey carcass. Sitting up like a squirrel!

Stray cat #1.

 

Stray cat #2

And the first real predator! A coyote is checking the scene out.

Stray cat #3

Another predator: Red fox

A cottontail hops by in the background…

And FINALLY I get my porcupine! I know they’re around, I just have not yet seen one in my yard! I love them.

The Turkey Thief! I walked up the check the camera recently, and the Turkey was gone. Well, I have photographic evidence of the thief. COYOTE.

So I guess that was more photos than a few, but I’ve been getting some good stuff lately! I am wondering where the fisher and bobcat and bears are though. I’m hoping they show themselves sometime this summer!
I might mention also that the cat is pretty much untouched. Nothing seems to really be feeding on it, it’s just decomposing. I wonder why…?

 I’m spending the majority of my summer in the Capitol Region of NY, in Albany. I live in Cobleskill for school (I attend SUNY Cobleskill), but I got a great internship this summer at the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation main office on Broadway! It’s really a great opportunity for a budding biologist like myself, and I’m working under Jeremy Hurst, big game biologist. Big game in NY consists of white-tailed deer, black bears, and moose. Moose really aren’t on the radar much yet though, because they are so few. This position is an office position, no running around outside this summer. But I am going to be getting the chance to learn a lot about how black bears are managed for in NY. I’m hoping that my future career will include work with black bears. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been very interested in them. At first when I was a kid, they were “cute”. Now, they just mystify me with their incredibly adaptive habits and behaviors. They literally stop eating, drinking, and moving for 4-5 months, give birth, and then come out on the other side of winter a little lighter but generally ok! I wish I could do that!

Anyway, this position will be interesting and a great learning experience. I will be posting periodically about what I’m up to on the job. Stay tuned!

A short story about untimely demises

I'd rather not get into the "dos and don'ts" of pet ownership, specifically of whether or not the house cat should in fact be kept in the house. Growing up, our cats (always spayed/neutered and vaccinated) were indoor/outdoor pets. We always had this feeling that it would be "mean" to keep them cooped up in the house. In the winter when the snow got too deep to maneuver, they'd be stuck indoors and would whine, cry, and spontaneously take out their anger on us and eachother. So come spring melt, out they went!

I personally do not own a cat, but when I do, it will likely be a strictly indoor cat. I know the damage that house cats can do to small mammal and song bird populations. I know how QUICKLY cats can reproduce and also spread disease. But for now, my parents cats roam free outdoors.

The way I'm setting this story up, I'm leading you to believe that the cats are the evil do-ers of this tale. This is not the case.

Ziggy and Addie "helping" clear brush from the yard...

Last week, after I finished my semester, I traveled back across the state to visit my parent's home. They've lived there since 1992, and it's where I spent the majority of my childhood. 10 acres of lawn and horse pasture, lots of room for dogs to run, and quietness. I had some chores to do around the house, that I've been meaning to do, but couldn't since I was in school.

I've been storing all of my camping gear in the garage, and since I'm staying in NY this summer, I wanted to take it back to my house with me to make sure all was in working order for a trip this summer! As I'm puttering around in the garage and walking to and from the car, the dogs were loose in the yard. I have an almost 8 month old golden retriever (Addie), and my parents have 2 dogs: 16 year old border collie Hannah, and 3 year old black lab Ziggy. Ziggy and Addie are the best of friends. Ziggy is (and probably forever will be) a puppy in his mind. Loyal and sweet, he just wants to please. Addie on the other hand, is going through "a stage". She is sweet, obedient (most of the time...), and mild-mannered. But when she gets something PARTICULARLY disgusting like horse crap, Goose crap, deer crap, any crap will do- she plays keep away from me. Bounding, frolicking, tossing the poop high in the air and catching it- she is anything but obedient. I try to remain calm while I firmly instruct "Drop it! Leave it!" and then try and lure her to me with sweetness and compliments "Pretty Addie...come here baby...want a cookie? Ride? Walk? ADDIE!!!!!!" ...meanwhile she's scarfing the poop down.

So while I was  in the driveway, I noticed Addie just off the side of the driveway in the brush snarfling around. Ziggy was in attendance too, but as soon as he saw me watching them, he was guilty and slunk over to me. Good boy. I slowly walked over, at a diagonal (never approach straight on, she knows), without making eye contact, to see what was going on. One of the cats had a mouse. And Addie, I don't think knew of the mouse's existence at that point, she was just trying to love on the cat. I scared the cat away, and scooped up the mouse.

Poor mouse. He was alive, and seemed well...except for being tossed like a hacky-sack by the cat. This was my favorite species of mouse too- a woodland jumping mouse (Napaeozapus insignis). Not many people have a favorite species of what some consider "vermin". But these guys are very cool. Their pelage is beautiful- a ruddy/reddish color, buff on the stomach. Long, long tails, and HUGE back feet similar to kangaroos!

Woodland jumping mouse rescued from one of our pet cats.

I only held him for a few moments to look at his external anatomy, and to allow him to catch his breath. The cat, p-o'ed by my nerve of interrupting his game, was gone. Ziggy was hiding in his dog house, but Addie...Addie was just waiting. It did not cross my mind that I would have to protect this poor mouse from my DOG...but within moments of setting him down in the bushed. Addie pounced. And peeked out of the bushes at me as she scarfed the mouse down. Alive.

What? What is this? My precious, pampered, princess dog...eating LIVE rodents? I was disgusted with her. I screamed at her immediately, and that just set her off running like a crazed animal through the understory, crashing around, fueled by mouse blood. Not a proud moment.

At least I got a few pictures of him, so that his untimely demise was not in vain. Right?
I returned to doing whatever I was doing in the garage. Ziggy was still hiding. And Addie, once I started ignoring her, was back between my feet. I couldn't be mad at her, she didn't know any better- but my God, gross!

Hannah, by the way, this whole time was lazing in the grass like a good geriatric dog. Staying out of trouble and out of the way. GOOD dog!

A short while later, I hear another commotion in the bushes again. This time, Addie wise to my game, beat me to the cat. THIS time the cat (a different one from before) had a young Eastern cottontail rabbit! Probably just born within the week. And it was alive. And Addie pounced...and what I will forever remember of this moment, was watching big rabbit feet disappear down her throat. No chewing. No shredding. No messing around. The Small Mammal Glutton struck again! I didn't get pictures this time, it all happened so fast.

The cat came up empty-pawed, and Addie? Well, she did not get her dinner that night. But nor did she go to bed hungry!

River otters on the Funny River, Alaska

This posting has been a LONG time coming. I finally got my hands on the video clips from the underwater video recording system that I've been waiting for for 10 months :) Better late than never! And what a nice way to remember my truly amazing summer in Alaska, than to post a year later.

On May 27th, 2012 I took a long flight to Anchorage, and then a short one to the Kenai Peninsula. I won't go into all the details of my work and life up there, but please visit my Alaska entries to catch up.

If you don't want to read through all 35ish entries, you should at least check out my River otter caught on underwater camera entry, which will greatly fill you in on what I'm about to share.

I will briefly set it up:

I was hired through the Student Conservation Association (SCA) to work in the Kenai Fish and Wildlife Field Office for 3 months during summer 2012. I was considered a volunteer for the USFWS, but the SCA funded my travel, and I was provided a place to live for free. Which was a beautiful cabin on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge... #winning. But I worked 40 hours a week and did everything a traditional seasonal tech would do.

One of my tasks as a Fisheries Technician last summer, was to monitor a fish weir location on the Funny River. We had this weir set up, so that fish were funneled through a central spot in the river, and were forced in front of a video camera. This way we could see who, what, and when certain species were migrating.

I am a mammal-lover firstly, probably because I am one. I DO like fish now, especially the mighty Chinooks. But on this certain day, I was checking recorded video at the weir by myself. In our "office away from office", a weather port with a computer, I sat counting fish and reviewing video from days before. I finished what I was doing, and clicked back to the "live feed" just in time to see a river otter (Lontra canadensis) zip past the camera! My jaw dropped and I started muttering under my breath a mantra of "ohmigodohmigodohmigodohmigod" over and over. And back zipped the otter upstream! I was torn between sitting there and watching this otter on the screen -LIVE- or running 300 yards upstream to the weir to try and watch it with my eye balls! Curiosity won, and I ran. Apparently not fast enough though, because there was no otter to be seen.

This is my home-video I made...please note: I am NOT a videographer.

 

So, I gave up the hunt and went back to the Weatherport in hopes of watching the otter on the video. He left though, and just had this great memory left. But I remembered that the video was RECORDING! There was a digital copy of the otter!

 

I begged and pleaded with my boss to let me have the clips, and he very graciously agreed. I bought a jump drive for him to put them on, and I just got it in the mail. Better late than never, thanks Ken!



 

A couple of things to keep in mind while watching:

 

-This camera is very similar to a traditional camera trap. You can't buy this set up though in a store- you should consider it a "home brew" set up. The camera is a motion-sensing security camera you might hang from your garage.

 

-The box is a welded box with glass panels.

 

-The camera is submerged in filtered water, and stream water is allowed to pass through the channel, which from glass panel to the white wall in the back is ~6-7" wide. Just wide enough for large salmon or...an otter...to get through.

 

-The sandbag is blocking a gap at the bottom so no fish can sneak through unnoticed by the camera.

 

-Watch as the otter periodically goes up for air!

 

-A few times you can see him kick off the glass, which gives a great view of his cool feet.

 

Enjoy the antics of the river otter (which by the way, is the same species we have in New York!)...

Watching this video brings me right back to my summer on the Kenai Peninsula, and makes me very wistful to be back in my Alaskan home away from home...

Barred Owl taxidermy: part III

This is my final installment of the Barred Owl taxidermy project I’ve been blogging about. Yesterday I left off with the Owl being wrapped in damp paper towels and being left in the refrigerator in the Taxidermy Lab until I could return to finish it.

Here are the links for Part I and Part II.

Taxidermy is a very TIME CONSUMING thing to under take. I’ve had very little experience with taxidermy, but I can say with authority that it is an art form, and a good taxidermist requires talent! Now, I’m not sure where I fall into this as a “taxidermist”, but I don’t think I did too badly.

Owl skin, foam body form, and fake

skull with painted beak and glass eyes attached.

Once I was able to get back into the lab, I had to deal with the Owl….seen at right. The wings and legs were all twisted so I had to sort of orient all the body parts being careful not to pull on feathers or poke holes in the skin. The body is just a foam piece, but even though I purchased it and it was listed as a “Barred Owl” it was WAY too big. Not all Owls are of the same size, but this was for a gargantuan Owl. I had to shave it down a bit and put it in the skin to get an idea of what size it needed to be. If I do this again, I’ll be SURE to take measurements of chest width and body length before I even make the first cut.

Barred Owl legs ready to be wired.

Before I inserted the body and head though, I had to attach wires to the legs and wings, so that I could position them.

An interesting find: the legs as seen above, I had to sever them right at the hip area. As you can see, they are not the same. One appears to be deformed, right? Here’s the scenario I came up with. This leg had been broken, but was not the cause of death. This break likely happened early in the Owl’s life, maybe even in the nest, and it appeared to heal. I don’t believe this deformity really affected the Owl’s quality of life, and grew to adulthood. Until it’s untimely unknown death.
Interesting to see though!

Also, the little bits of “stuff” stuck to the legs is sawdust. It’s probably left over from the tumbler, and didn’t get all blown off with the compressed air. But that’s ok, it soaks up moisture, which is a good thing!

Legs ready to be tied…”broken” leg on the right.

To wire the legs, I took a sharp pointy tool in my dissection kit (yep, technical terms here in this blog!) and poked a hole in the bottom of the foot, kind of on the heel. Sorry, I thought I had a picture of that! I then took a length of thin, but sturdy wire, and threaded it through the hole and up the back of the leg, careful to stay inside the skin.

Once it was threaded all the way in, and the tip of the wire JUST disappeared inside the foot, I began wrapping the wire to the bone to hold it all in place. I mounted my Owl in a flying position. BUT, if I was going to mount it on a branch, where it was standing, I’d leave several inches of wire sticking out of the foot, to use as a way to secure the bird to the stand.

Owl leg being reinforced with wire.

I did this for both legs, and similarly for both wings. The Owl then looked like this: Edward Scissorhands/roadkill.

 



Fake Owl skull and neck
made out of wire and foam

Next, I took a bit larger gauge length of wire, and used a different piece of foam to create the neck. I had to drill a hole into the skull to attach it.

A few drops of super glue in the hole helped keep it all together!

 

I positioned the fake skull in the space where it should be, and CAREFULLY threaded the wire down the neck. The skin is so delicate, and I had to keep wetting it to keep in pliable. With all the fat removed, it gets very papery when dry. Easy to rip.

I took the body piece next, and positioned the neck wire to insert into the foam.

Before I even began this project, I had to find an image of what I wanted my final product to resemble. I chose to do a flying Owl. So, the positioning of the neck was very important. If I had drilled the hole in the bottom of the skull, the bird would have been upright. But I needed to drill it in the back, so the “spine” would be straight. Below is the image I chose to mimic.

Photo credit: Ricka.org

The next three images are a progression of placing the foam body piece, wrapping the skin around it (like you might dress a doll…I know…morbid comparison), and then securing the wire ends.



Excess wire was trimmed, then bent over using pliers. I pounded them flush with the foam with a hammer, and then laid a THICK layer of hot glue over it all. This created a nice padding/buffer between the wire and the skin.

I was in the home stretch now…I just had to stitch my Owl up! Then I had a ton of positioning and preening to do. But the major WORK was almost done!

I must mention a very important step that I didn’t photo document. I DUMPED Borax in the bird before I stitched it up. And I mean dumped. Borax, for whatever reason, is really good at preserving the skin. And I dumped in probably a full cup of it, and shook it around in there, trying to coat all surfaces. The excess just stayed in there!

On the left I just began stitching the Owl, and on the right I’m almost done!

 

Ta-da!!!

Once that bird was sewn up, I was out of there! I was able to take it home with me to put the finishing touches on it. Altogether I think I worked on it for 12 solid hours. I think that was fairly quick though. I skinned and cleaned it very quickly, and worked very efficiently. Just be aware, if you were to take on a project like this, it’s quite time consuming. It’s totally do-able though, for an at-home project! As long as you are legally allowed to possess the animal, taxidermy is a really fun hobby.

Blow drying a dead Owl…yet another thing I never thought I’d ever be doing!

When I first brought the Owl home, it was looking pret-ty bedraggled. Birds are not meant to get wet…and we should all be glad haha! This majestic bird looked ANYTHING but! Blow drying really helped bring life back to the feathers.

Fully preened, hung, fluffy, and looking majestic: my final project!

Here’s my Barred Owl finished! I hope you enjoyed my semi “step by step” taxidermy tutorial. I never EVER though I’d enjoy skinning out and manipulating a dead animal. But it was very cool. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think I did this bird justice. He or she will now “live” out the rest of his days on display in the SUNY Cobleskill museum of specimens. Hopefully I did a good enough job of preserving it, so that it doesn’t deteriorate!

Thanks for following along!

 

Barred Owl taxidermy: part II

I’ve been such a blogging slacker over the past month or so. But, as of last Thursday, I finished my junior year at SUNY Cobleskill! It’s a lovely feeling to work hard and then be rewarded with good grades and a summer off!

In my last entry, My SECOND experience with taxidermy: part I, I began explaining how I came to prepare a dead Barred Owl (Strix varia) for a taxidermy project in the ornithology class I was in this semester. In this entry, I will walk step-by-step through the process.

Just a warning though, this is a little messy. Please stop reading if you’re squeamish!

The first cut! A classmate of mine (who didn’t wish to be shown) was giving advice on where to make the cut.

The Owl is laid on it’s back, and feathers are smoothed away from it’s belly area, which is difficult with all of the Owl’s feathers! Then with a scalpel (the sharper the better), I made the first incision from the base of the breast bone straight down to the vent.

In the picture above, the meat you see removed is tissue from the legs.

During and after the skinning process.

To get better leverage while skinning, I hung the Owl. Gravity worked in my favor, and also kept the feathers mostly clean of blood. The picture on the right is the entire “innards” removed. As you can see, it’s not much different looking than your Thanksgiving Turkey! The little bits stuck to it is sawdust, which helps soak up any moisture. But really, it wasn’t a gruesome process. Trust me when I say that too- I’m NOT into blood and guts what-so-ever.

I started removing the skull from the skin by pealing back the skin and rictal bristles around the beak.

With this Owl mount, it was really important to remove as much as possible of the gushy stuff to prevent rotting. Even the skull gets removed! I had to buy a fake Owl skull, eyes, and body form. I used Van Dyke’s Taxidermy Supply for the eyes and the body, and McKenzie Taxidermy Supply for the skull.


Owl’s are WAY less attractive when their faces are removed!

Size comparison between a real Barred Owl skull, and a false skull used for taxidermy.

 

I had to paint the beak with similar colors, and I attached the eyes with super glue in the sockets of the fake skull.

 

Once all of the innards were removed, and the skull…I was left with cleaned bones in the legs/wings, and basically just a floppy skin with feathers. At this point, it looked NOTHING like an Owl, and I was having a hard time imagining my end product.

So, into the sink it went. I gave the skin a bath with warm water and soap to remove any grease from the feathers that may have gotten on the feathers when I was skinning it.

An interesting find while bathing the skin. This part of the anatomy is called the uropygial or oil gland. This little nub is found on the bird’s back, just above the tail. It’s a sebaceous gland full of the oil that birds use to preen with. It is required to keep their feathers in working order and waterproof. It was neat to see, but gross when I accidentally squeezed it….

 

Into the paint thinner bath it went! Just a few minutes of swishing around and thoroughly saturating it. The paint thinner, I believe, is to remove any of the grease/fats that may have been missed in the water.

NEXT: The Owl skin went into the tumbler. This is a plastic drum that turns, and it’s filled with sawdust and corn meal. This is to soak up as much moisture as possible.

Post tumbler. This Owl does not look pretty.

The last step, before beginning to rebuild the Owl’s structure, was to use compressed air and blow out the feathers and much of the sawdust.

At this point, I had to stop for the day. I had been at it for about 5 hours, which really wasn’t bad I was told. Other students had taken much longer than I had to get this far, but I was on a tight schedule and I was very focused on getting this bird skinned on the first day of the week. Because there was probably 40-50 of us using the Taxidermy Lab, we were scheduled over 4 weeks. We each picked 1 week to work in the lab. We had to skin it out and get it re-stuffed in the lab, then we could take it home to preen it and finally mount it. But we HAD to be in the lab for the first part.

So, after that first day, I stopped after I blew the sawdust out of the feathers. I wrapped it in a damp paper towel, and left him in the refrigerator in the lab that night, to return the next day. In my next entry, I’ll outline the restructuring and stuffing process. And I’ll reveal the final project!!!

Thanks for following along this journey!