The true New York hibernators

Yesterday I wrote the entry Who actually hibernates? in which I started talking about special winter adaptations that wild animals must possess 1 or more of, to survive our cold winter months. I love learning about winter adaptations, because it amazes me how wild animals have no “creature comforts” like we do, and yet they survive and prevail.

Muller Field Station, 1/14/2012

 I took a course last winter in January 2012 called Unique Winter Ecological Adaptations, or Winter Ecology for short. It was a week-long residential class held and Finger Lakes Community College’s Muller Field Station, on the South end of Honeoye Lake (in the Finger Lakes). Clinton Krager, associate professor of biology, was the instructor, and he did a great job that week. I had such a great time with it, I was obviously inspired enough to write about it almost a year later. To read about the class, check out my entries from January 2012: Winter Ecology!

So I said that I would reveal the TRUE HIBERNATORS, and I will.

To briefly refresh, the loose definition of hibernation that I use is: A significant drop in body temperature over a long period of time. This is important, because other animals do similar things (torpor, dormancy), but their temperature MUST significantly drop, and for an extended amount of time.

So the three groups are:

1) Woodchucks! (Marmota monax)

2) Jumping mice: Meadow jumping mice (Zapus hudsonius) and Woodland jumping mice (Napaeozapus insignis)

 

 

3) Cave bats: Northern bat (Myotis septentrionalis), Little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus), Indiana bat (Myotis sodalis), Eastern pipistrelle bat (Perimyotis subflavus) (*there IS a difference between cave bats and tree bats. I encourage you to look this up if you’re interested: Bats of New York)

I know that’s technically more than 3, but we can group and say that woodchucks (there’s only one species in NY), jumping mice, and some bats hiberbate. TRULY hibernate.

When animals head into their dens or hibernacula for the winter, and leave the outside world for the next X number of months, they enter this state where they are completely unable to be roused from their coma-like state. When I’ve talked about this before, I’ve said that if you dig down into a woodchuck hole, and was able to reach it- you could literally pick it up by it’s tail, swing it over your head, then tuck it back in and it would be none the wiser. It takes hours for the animal’s body temperature to raise to a normal level. Their temp drops so that their metabolism slows way down, and they aren’t burning through all their fat stores that they’ve been putting on in the previous months.

Everyone, including myself at first, is so surprised to learn that bears do not hibernate! It’s true, they don’t! They enter this state called “torpor”. Like hibernation, their temps drop, they hole up somewhere cozy and safe, and they are inactive. But, their temperature drops just enough to conserve energy. Bears can get up and run if they’re spooked out of their den (I’ve witnessed this, first hand in the month of January). They even give birth while they’re in there! If weather is permitting, they may peek out, sniff the air, forage for a snack, and then return to the den. I would say that while “in the den” they’re generally very groggy, sedate, and lethargic…but they are able to move if they need.

Woodchucks, jumping mice, and the listed bats are down and out for the count until something internal, or perhaps external (length of day? but wait…they’re in holes underground and in dark caves) tells them it’s time to come out. It’s not temperature, because if there was a freak hot day in December, which is becoming more and more likely as the global climate changes, that lasts for one day- the woodchucks, mice, and bats aren’t all going to snap out of it and be out and about. How they actually begin the process of coming out of it is widely studied, and I don’t think any conclusive statements have been made. But please, if someone knows different…please share!

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