Neature is neat!

Have you ever seen Lenny Peppercorn videos? It’s hysterical. A satire on all nature show hosts, and a poke at all nature nerds. I love it! Check him out below…

I couldn’t help but laugh at myself this weekend as I was hiking with my dog and a friend. We kept coming across all sorts of *neat* things, and I kept exclaiming, “This is so neat!”… Am I a Lenny Peppercorn?

Shared via: http://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/48283.html

Tyler and I have spring fever. It’s now March, and STILL bitter cold with a lot of snow on the ground. Our spring break from courses at SUNY Cobleskill is in 12 days (who’s counting?) and we are tired of being cooped up in the house. He and decided to take my VERY energetic and young golden retriever out for an adventure. The temps here in Schoharie County on Saturday were mid-30s, a heat wave by all accounts of recent ambient temperatures, and it was sunny… perfect day for some outside time.

We have a few state forests around us within easy driving distance (Mallet Pond, Patria, and Petersburg State Forests) that we’ve explored for field labs during various courses, and we decided to try and get as far into the state land as possible. This was a challenge though, because many of the roads within are seasonally maintained, and this is not the season they are maintained.

We first tried to get to Rossman-Fly Pond (which is within Mallet Pond State Forest), a beautiful pond with access to launch a motorless boat. I like to think it’s a hidden gem, but I know others have to know about it. I really want to get up and check the ice out, but unfortunately the plow had stopped a mile or two from the turn off to the pond. We got out and hiked a bit with the dog in the snow, but I’ve been experiencing a flare up from an old ankle injury, and didn’t want to push it.

LUCKILY though, we observed something really neat from the side of the unplowed road. Lots of field sign that a porcupine or several, had been foraging in the hemlocks!

Have you ever seen this? I know it looks kind of unassuming, just some twigs on the ground, but with all the snow we’ve had, it’s not dead stuff that’s fallen over time. All of that would be covered over with snow. THESE twigs, are the sloppy leftovers of our largest arborial rodent.

Here’s the proximal end of a hemlock twig 

that’s been neatly nipped off by the sharp

 incisors of a porcupine.

Porcupines eat soft vegetation like leaves, shoots, and needles. And in the winter they have the advantage over others with similar diets, to be able to climb up trees, and nibble twigs and branches.

Porcupines are a solid critter, not as chunky as a beaver (but close), and not as light as a squirrel. So, they’ll eat their way along a sturdy branch, moving farther and farther from the tree. They are sloppy, and often drop as much as they eat. They nip a twig off, and it falls to the forest floor.

I’ve read (somewhere) that porcupines are often relied on by other forest-dwelling herbivores who can’t reach up into the canopy to eat. Deer, rabbits, hares, moose have all been documented eating porcupine “nip twigs” from the forest floor.

Here’s a porcupine I got to observe quite up close while living in Alaska. You can see her orange inciscors poking out. That orange color is enamel that covers the teeth of many rodents, especially those who eat or gnaw hard woody materials.

We wandered around the feeding grounds for a few minutes, checking out the carnage, when we noticed a well-packed trail in the snow. Porcupines, due to their short stubby legs, don’t often leave a very well defined set of tracks, but more of a trench where they’ve plowed through the snow. It’s hard to see in this picture below, but what I want to share is that we noticed it leading right to the mouth of a drainage culvert pipe alongside the roadway.

Porcupine trail through the snow, to a den in a culvert pipe.

We were intrigued. Could we possibly actually catch a glimpse of the porcupine?

Addie and Tyler trying to decided whether or not sticking your face into a hole in the ground, which might contain a porcupine, is such a good idea…

I did NOT want my dog to get a face full of quills. Tyler, well he was on his own, but I didn’t want Addie to get quilled. So we pulled her back, and I sacrificed myself to get down in there and investigate.
 
My first observation, was the overwhelming stench of ammonia. It reminded me of my pet rabbits cage. Porcupines are nasty animals, in the way that they defecate when and where they want. Many animals attempt to keep their dens clean of fecal matter, but not the porcupine. Check out this entry from last winter when I found a den, and the amount of built up porky poop outside: http://blog.timesunion.com/nywildlife/porcupine-sign/887/

A look inside the “den”. What a cozy place to live, right? Hemlocks in your front yard, and totally protected from the elements. You can see on the left side of the picture, the fecal matter scattered along. Just out of view above this picture, along the top rim of the pipe, were ice crystals. This led me to believe that the porcupine(s) were generating enough heat to melt ice and snow around the entrance which had frozen back over. Unfortunately, or fortunately, no one was visible. I have no idea how far back this tunnel went, but it was freaking cool!

So that’s one of my *neat* finds from this past Saturday. I have another really cool story, but I’m saving that for another entry. I’ve been reading for hours, and just thought I’d take a break to share this cool story. Hae a great Monday!

Porcupine sign

I. Love. Porcupines.

They are unique, mild mannered, CUTE, and one of my favorite mammals to observe.

Porcupine caught on camera trap in Soldotna, Alaska

I became enamored with them a year or so ago. I had a fairly large writing assignment ecology course that I was taking at the time. We had to pick a plot of land, and do a complete survey of it. All species of plants, animals, fungus, soil types, climate, elevation, aspect, slope, values, etc. I think that paper was 18 pages long. Then we had to write another paper selecting just one facet of our plot, and expound upon that. I chose the North American porcupine. They are found in the Finger Lakes of NY. Just apparently not as frequently in the Northern half, where I lived. I received teasing and jabbing about how I was chasing down a locally "mythical" animal. Whatever! I then began my quest to find the "elusive porcupine".

Porcupine climbing a tree in Soldotna, AK

And actually- porcupines are anything BUT elusive. They are conspicuous, slow-moving, and have an attitude. My very first porcupine sighting was in Montana over 10 years ago. Ok, so that doesn't count. My next several sightings were all in Alaska this past summer. Nope, they don't count either.

Then I've seen 2 dead porcupines this past fall. One less than a mile from my house, and the other on the side of the road in NE Massachusetts.

Each time I spot one, dead or alive, I think to myself "HA! I told you they were he....oh. Wait. I'm not in Ontario County. Or even in NY."

I've not given up on seeing them in the Finger Lakes, just set it on the back burner for now since I don't live in the area.

Porcupine in Soldotna, AK

My past two blog entries have been about the Wildlife Techniques course I'm taking this semester. The most recent of the two entries explains wildlife sampling techniques. At the end of our lab session, our teacher took us on a short walk to see something "really cool", as he put it. I'm down to learn about anything "really cool" wildlife related, especially on a gorgeous morning in the snowy woods.

Where did he bring us? To a porcupine denning and feeding site!

Porcupine den in a hole in a dead conifer tree. He may or may not have been home when we were there!
It was too high for us to see in his front door.

Ahhhh! Porcupine scat! I love scat. It's usually easily found, or more easily than the animal itself.
And porky poop was on my bucket list...check!
Porcupines are one mammal that has no regard for a clean den. Many other animals, including our domestic pet dogs, don't like to "mess" where they sleep. Not porcupines. There was scat spilling out of that hole, littering the forest floor. If this den happened to be on the ground, allowing for no place for scat to fall...the den would have been full of scat.

At first glance, this looks like a pretty snowy forest picture.
But to someone who yearns for porcupines...this is gold. All of this twigs and debris you see on the ground, are hemlock twigs, "nip twigs" is what I call them (I think I read that somewhere). Porcupines will hang out in a tree, and gnaw off the bark of a branch or twig to get at the cambium below. The keep moving out and out the branch until it can't support it's weight anymore. Then, they sometimes nip it off. This is a really important favor that porcupines unknowingly pay to other animals. Other herbivores (deer, rabbits) who can't reach vegetation in the tree tops, have been known to visit porcupine trees and browse the off castings.

A "nip twig" with obvious signs of cambium feeding.

I was so excited, and no one else seemed to even care! I think I even smacked the arm of the guy standing next to me when he handed me that twig above and exclaimed "NO WAY!". He looked startled and let it go.

I'm not sorry that porcupines and their sign excite me. I do apologize for hitting you though :)

Maybe I should set up a camera on this site???

Winter Wildlife Tracking with Nick and Valerie Wisniewski

Another fantastic wildlife adventure: complete!

Through the club I am President of, The Wildlife Society Student Chapter at FLCC, I was able to arrange a tracking weekend workshop, and hire 2 lovely people from Walnut Hill Tracking and Nature Center (Orange, MA). I met the Wisniewski's last summer when I traveled to them with my Black Bear Management class that I was enrolled in last summer. We were studying this interesting type of marking behavior that black bears do, and these people are some of the only experts that I've been able to find.

For more info on this bear behavior: Back to bloggin'...for now.
Anyway, I loved learning from them last summer, so I decided to see if they could come visit us at our Muller Field Station for the weekend. I invited club members and other conservation department students, and some staff members for the experience.

Friday afternoon, Sasha (our advisor and my friend) met Nick and Val at the field station to give them the tour and get them settled in. We left them to explore for the night, and returned the next morning. We had a GREAT group of people that all came together for the weekend, and who were all very enthusiastic. I was thankful for this because I didn't want people showing up for a free 'weekend away' and to not take it seriously! This was far from the case. Students involved were: Myself, Kelly, Kasey, Leslie, Judi, Petra, Deanna, Sean, Marshall, Tyler, Dakota - - and staff members: Sasha (advisor, conservation technician), and Nadia (Muller K12 outreach coordinator).

We learned about track patterns, stride, straddle, track shapes, pads, negative space, other things to look for like nails/fur on the track, gait names, and how to measure all of those wonderful things! Nick and Val were teaching to us on a basic level, because although we had differing degrees of knowledge/experience about wildlife, we were still ALL basic trackers. It's a huge, wide field of knowledge and takes a long time to learn!

Unfortunately I don't have pictures of all the species tracks we identified, but I will list them off:

• Red fox
• Canadian Goose
• Short-tailed weasel
• Long-tailed weasel
• Vole sp.
• Mice sp.
• Red squirrel
• Gray squirrel
• Possibly flying squirrel sp.
• Mink
• White-tailed deer
• Raccoon

Other types of sign ID'd:

• Deer bed
• Deer rub
• Red fox scenting
• Bird nests
• Vole tunnels
• Mink slide
• Coyote scat
• Deer scat
• Deer browse
• Chewed walnuts
• Squirrel bites
• Woodpecker holes
• Woodchuck hole
• Dreys
• Otter latrine site

Live sightings:

• Canadian Geese
• Mallards
• Red squirrel
• Gray squirrel
• Blue Jay
• Downy/Hairy Woodpecker

Our field station, was beautiful this weekend. On Friday night, it started snowing. Here in the NE and in NY, we've had little snow this season. But, it started likely flurrying as we were getting Nick and Val settled in. By Saturday morning it was a beautiful, snowy landscape.

Photo credit: Leslie Crane

Myself, taking in WINTER!

The following are pictures taken over the weekend, I'll try to ID everything. It's difficult now a day or two later, and I don't have items for scale in hardly any of the pictures or labels. We were really moving on the fly! And I didn't want to get in anyone else's way. I will try to include at least one fun fact I learned about each species mentioned.

Meet and greet outside the house!

Photo credit: Sasha Mackenzie

First find of the day! Deer scat.

Frosty little jelly beans. Deer scat morphs with the season or even daily with what the deer are feeding on. Currently, in the winter, deer are browsing on tough, woody vegetation. Their scats are hard, compact little pellets, as you can see in this picture.

Next find: short-tail weasel tracks. Weasels are bounders!

As you can see, there are only 2 holes in the snow. That's because the back feet land where the front feet were previously.

Checking out some mink tracks! You can't see them in this picture, but they are running right along the line of ice and snow, on the snow.

Photo credit: Sasha Mackenzie

Bounding along!

Activity around a plunge hole. Mink are semi-aquatic Mustelids, and they are well insulated against the cold air temps AND water temps.

Travel between docks. You can see one in the picture, and I'm standing on the other.

Behind me, on the other side of the dock, was a bank covered in long grasses and weeds, all bent over from the snow. This makes the PERFECT cover for small critters. In this picture is a hole in the snow that the mink created. Perhaps going after prey? Or just to go somewhere else...?

Beaver chewed speckled alder.

Nick using calipers on some Canid scat. Unable to identify it, but narrowed it down between red fox and coyote. Both have scat diameter ranges that overlap eachother, so it's hard to tell. But definetely a wild dog left this scat behind. What's interesting about this, is that those stalks of milkweed you see, I left out back in January as a marker for a live trap I had set out during my Winter Ecology course. About a week and a half-2 weeks after, I went back to the spot while on a walk, and found this scat on top. It's common for dogs, especially wild ones, to scent, urinate, scat on top of something (a hummock, downed limb, plants sticking up, trash). Does it help lift the scent? Is a visual marker? What are they trying to tell me? Get out? Or here I am?

Nick!

Canadian Goose tracks

Learning to measure straddle, or trail width.

Learning to measure stride, or length between tracks.

Valerie sniffing out some red fox urine. If you haven't smelled it before, and you live in red fox country- go outside. They're in mating mode right now, and the musk was almost thick on the air. We could smell it everywhere we went, and in my opinion, it's not an altogether unpleasant smell!

Everyone belly-down and sniffing for the scent spot on the red fox trail!

Dakota getting a sniff!

Leslie taking a turn...and...

Photo credit: Leslie Crane

Myself!

Here we found a squirrel midden in a rotted out black walnut.

Squirrels, particularly reds I think, are very territorial. They will create caches and middens at the center or core of their territory. As a part of that territorial behavior, they will often bite along a tree or branch. This is a visual marker as well as a chemical (they have scent glands in their mouths) marker that warns off other squirrels. The redder or fresher looking wood in this picture is the bite area.

A midden of walnut husks.

My beautiful roommate, Kasey, and I! Bundled up against the snow :)

Tons of little mice tracks. Not sure of species: Peromyscus or Mus.

Photo credit: Sasha Mackenzie

Judi, our resident Brit, loving the snow!



And the last track picture I'll include are parallel track patterns of a white-tailed deer. I believe these are WTD because of the width of the trails. The deer on the left was dragging, most likely HIS, hooves. And the other, was picking them up out of the snow. If you look to the top of the picture, you can see the deer on the right begins to drag as well.

Photo credit: Sasha Mackenzie

Winter Eco Day #1

Well folks, I have a few minutes of downtime today on my first day of my Winter Ecology course. We are located in the BEAUTIFUL South Honeoye Valley in the Finger Lakes. This morning when I started my field journal this morning the temperature was 29F and it was SUNNY!

The picture on the right I took last night, and the other picture I took this morning. This is a small pond in front of the house at the field station.

Today's activities included everyone arriving this morning, introductions, a brief lecture on tracking and then we went out for a nature walk! In the essence of time, I'm leaving out much of what we talked about. I do have a ton of neat pictures though!

 Unidentified bird nest with bits of rope or a maybe shredded tarp?

Looking for sign at the channel boat launch.

 2x2 side trot of a red fox

Walking along the channel path. What. A. Day!

Gray squirrel bounding...

Red fox

 The track line above belongs to a mink. Notice the 2x2 bounding and the drag. Also, the location- on the water! The track below belongs to our red fox. We followed his trail a long ways today.

Close up of a coyote print.

 Racoon front tracks.

The ambling walk of the racoon.

Instructor of the course, Clinton Krager, pointing out some tracks.

Unidentified bird tracks.

Gray squirrel tracks.

We followed the mink tracks to this den! Some of my classmates set a camera trap near this site to hopefully confirm our suspicions of it belonging to the mink!

Little red squirrel chipping away at us!

We had a great walk. Even though we STILL don't have much (ANY) snow in Upstate NY, we enjoyed to warm temps and sunshine.

After our walk we came back to the house and split up into groups. Over the next 5 days we will be conducting mini field studies using small mammal traps to collect whatever we can catch. I will write more in depth after the class is over.

We also deployed 6 camera traps (my new one that I'm using my for research this spring) for fun to see what we get! My personal hopes are river otter. Just over a year ago, I took another course at the field station "Wetland Mammals" and one group of students caught this picture!

3 river otter! Once almost completely extirpated from NY, they are now back due to some heavy rehabilitation and restoration. There was another sighting just 3 days ago here of another (or perhaps the same?) 3 otters. We shall see.

Until next time!