If you’re a pet owner, then you’ll understand when I say that I take more pet photos than I know what to do with. A little like being a parent (I assume, not being one myself), whenever your pet is doing something cute, you feel this irrepressible need to document it. Awww, look at that cute way Fido is sleeping, I need to take a picture.
Okay, so Fido was pretty cute. And now you have a photo. What to do with it? Well, you post it to your blog, of course! This is my purging of the cute and fuzzy that has collected on my hard drive over the last couple of months. And who doesn’t like a bit of cute and fuzzy now and then…
That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in weeks!
Arms and legs entwined. Brotherly love, I hope.
Raven sitting patiently for me while I photograph a mushroom. I usually have to command her to sit if there’s something particular I want a photo of, because she has a knack for dashing right through the middle of whatever it is and either ruining or disturbing it.
For whatever reason, it’s mushrooms that she most likes running through my photos of. She’s been doing this since she was a puppy. Fortunately, she’s very good about sitting and waiting until I release her.
“Okay!“
Sitting at the window watching me set up my moth trap.
This is the largest bit of water Raven now has access to. It’s less than a foot deep, not quite the lake Raven had to swim in at the last house, but she likes to splash in it nonetheless. At this time of year the water is pretty vacant, but we’ll need to keep her out of it come spring.
Like all dogs, Raven has a propensity for rolling in all things stinky. Last week I noticed her out in the long grass rolling in something in that way she only does when it delights her nose so. I figured at first she must have found a pile of scat, but eventually my curiosity got the better of me and I went over to investigate. When I got there I couldn’t see anything, but she kept looking at the ground. Eventually she reached out and pawed at the grass… and exposed a garter snake, sluggish in the cold, not even trying to bite. Presumably she picked up on the musk the snake releases as a defense – which is incredibly smelly, I must admit.
Glaring at me for photographing her in such a compromising position.
She sleeps on the loveseat in my study at night, but for whatever reason feels the need to rearrange the blankets I use as a slipcover before she goes to bed. Most mornings I just find one blanket on the floor, but last week I came in to a total dismantling of the couch. Merlin, who likes to sick his paws between things and feel around, was playing in the cracks between the seat cushions.
Ollie likes to climb in things. Like my art portfolio. Fortunately I only keep hard canvases in there and not anything on paper.
Or my overnight bag. I must’ve had a comfy sweater packed into this one.
Helping with the Thanksgiving decorations.
I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend! We had an enjoyable, relaxed Thanksgiving, a small event with basically just the immediate family. Although most years we’ve had our get-together at my parents’ place, this year I offered to host it, as I was the most central location and it would mean my youngest sister, who had an ill cat requiring regular care, wouldn’t have to be gone for as long. It also only seemed fair for us daughters to start taking over the hosting duties, my mom having done it for the last 30 years. Thirty years from now, I hope my children start taking over hosting, too…
The other, slightly more selfish, reason for offering to host is it meant I didn’t have to drive anywhere. This worked out pretty well, despite having to spend some time tidying the house prior to the arrival of the guests. Prior to dinner, my younger sister stepped outside to grab something from her car. Half a second later she was inside again. There was a deer out in the yard! Surprisingly, it hadn’t bolted when she’d bustled out the door, and so we all got up and went to the windows to watch it for a little while.
I’m fairly certain that this is the same young buck that Raven and I startled in the back fields a week or two ago. We had been following the trail, both of us distracted, watching the path or the grass or something. As we came around a corner, there was a deer, not fifteen feet away. I just caught the briefest glimpse of him before he bolted, enough to note the thin, prong-less antlers. Raven, though likewise startled initially, gave chase before I could grab her or halt her with a command. She followed him off into the forest, where I gather the deer lost her, or she gave up the chase. She was back a moment later, apparently satisfied and ready to carry on down the trail.
Clearly she was channeling her inner wolf. Grown male deer usually range in weight from about 130 to 300 lbs (60-130 kg), though larger individuals have been recorded. Given the lankiness of this youngster, and his apparent age, I would guess him to be on the lower end of that scale, maybe 150 lbs. Raven, at just 45 lbs (21 kg), is less than a third his size. However, this isn’t the imbalance it might seem at first. Historically, the only canid to prey on deer was the wolf; the rest lacked the size and strength to bring down these large mammals. More recently, northern coyotes, including those in Ontario, have begun to fill in this niche. Coyotes used to be only a western species, but started to spread east through Manitoba and Minnesota, and around the Great Lakes. Those that expanded south of the lakes retained their coyote characteristics, but those that spread through the north met and hybridized with wolves, thus acquiring some of their traits. (See this post at my mom’s blog for more about the research examining the two populations.) Larger bodies and bigger, stronger skulls and jaws, meant that they could exploit the abundant food source found in deer. These coy-wolves can be 30-45 lbs (14-21 kg), with the males growing larger than the females. I doubt Raven would’ve had any idea what to do with the deer if she’d caught up to it, however; it was probably just instinct, and perhaps some of the border collie in her, that made her chase a fleeing animal.
The deer grazed for a bit beside the driveway, then wandered around the cars and over to the little apple orchard the landlord planted many years ago. There’s only a few trees inside the fenced-off enclosure; they look like they haven’t been pruned in a few years, but they’re still producing nice-looking apples. Where the branches overhang the path the apples are in easy reach. He snagged one and pulled it off.
Deer are opportunistic feeders. They are ruminants, like cows and other ungulates, and have a four-chambered stomach that allows them to eat a variety of foods and forage. The young buck was grazing on the grass by the driveway before moving over to the apple trees. Their diet varies according to season. In the fall, particularly in bumper crop years, acorns can make up a large part of their diet. In the winter, when snow cover is thick, they will often feed on bark. They have the ability to digest some foods, such as certain mushrooms, that would make us sick. Even though we think of them as vegetarians, a deer will eat baby birds from a nest if it finds one. When I was working in British Columbia as a bird bander, I even had a deer eat a captured adult bird out of one of my nets, leaving just an empty hole gummy with saliva (after that discovery, the deer were not welcome in the banding area).
Yum, apple!
We’d be just coming into the fall rut about now, but it’s unlikely that this youngster will be participating. Though males are sexually mature at a year old, they must compete against mature males with full racks of antlers for the privilege to mate with available females. Even when there are many females in the population, usually only a handful of males will get to father the fawns. Sexual maturation of females varies and is dependent on population levels. In healthy populations, a female will usually breed in her second or possibly third autumn. Where populations are severely depressed, females may reach sexual maturity and mate in their first autumn, though this is unusual.
Juicy apple!
I had to laugh at the following statement on Wikipedia: “Though human encounters are rare there are only an average of four cases of human casualties each year in the highly populated areas such as Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Usually, white-tailed deer will not approach a human unless it smells a bucks urine on the person.” Only four? I was astounded that there were even four! I don’t typically think of deer as aggressive animals. However, the second sentence is perhaps a clue to the circumstances – hunters carrying deer urine for the purpose of attracting bucks during rutting season might be injured in a case of mistaken identity. Hey, when your brain’s flooded with hormones, how clearly are you thinking?
A couple of days ago we had some nice sunny weather, so for a break I took Raven down the road to the 100-acre woods. Raven was feeling her oats and all over the place. I decided to strike off off-trail to wander around and see what I could turn up. So often you encounter things that you either wouldn’t have noticed from the trail, or don’t happen to be near enough to the trail to be seen. This happened to be one of them. Raven had hurried up into a swath of deciduous trees, mostly maples, not far ahead in the forest. I thought I could hear the sounds of something climbing up a tree, and thought perhaps she’d cornered a raccoon. As I drew nearer, I just caught a glimpse of a prickly porcupine butt disappearing into a hollow in the huge maple. Despite trying to tell Raven that she wouldn’t have a lot of fun playing with a porcupine, and the porcupine didn’t want to play with her, besides, she continued to stand at the edge of the tree and whine (which is how I know it’s a “I want to meet you!” and not “What the heck is that scary thing??”, which elicits some barking, or “Omigod something evil is coming this way!”, which causes her to puff up her hackles and growl; she doesn’t seem to have a setting for “I don’t want you here, go away or I’ll chase you!”, at least that we’ve ever noticed).
Back in the spring Dan and I encountered a porcupine in Frontenac Provincial Park that scurried up a tree and sat, allowing me to get a few shots. Comparing those photos to this individual, it looks like this guy may have had a run-in with something else recently, perhaps a coyote or somebody’s dog. Its rump and upper tail are missing all the pale-coloured quills that are its primary defense, leaving a dark brown patch. After a few moments waiting in the tree cavity hoping we’d go away (we weren’t, I was trying to find a better vantage point where I could get a photo of the fuzzy bit of quills poking out of the cavity, since I’d missed getting a photo of him going in), he decided perhaps he would be a bit safer higher up in the tree, and hauled himself out again to climb up a bit farther. We left him alone after snapping this photo, much to Raven’s disappointment. If you’re interested in more of the life history of porcupines, visit my spring post.
The same day that I found the fairy ring, I also came across a caterpillar highway. At first, I only noticed one Wooly Bear crossing the path, and as I stooped to look at it, another caught my eye. I picked them both up and put them on my hand for a photo. Then when I leaned down to put them back on the ground, I found a third. Well, a photo of three in the hand is better than a photo of two in the hand, so I picked it up, too, and took another photo. Then I spotted a fourth caterpillar. And then a fifth. I wandered back and forth along about three meters/yards of trail and turned up these ten caterpillars all on or right beside the path. The brown-and-black ones are Wooly Bears, of course (my mom just did a great post about them). They were most likely wandering in search of a cozy place to hole up for the winter.
The white one is a Hickory Tussock Moth caterpillar. I think the little yellowish-black one is a younger Hickory Tussock (many caterpillars change colour/pattern with each successive moult). The tussock moths are a group whose caterpillars all share the characterisitc of having these great tufts of “fur” poking out around their head and tail ends. If the hairs prick the skin they can cause discomfort and rashes, particularly in people with sensitive skin. This is also true of Wooly Bears and all other fuzzy caterpillars. Presumably the fuzz would act as a defense mechanism since if a predator eats one and ends up with an itchy/sore palate and tongue as a result, they’re unlikely to eat another. This may be why they curl into balls when disturbed, protecting their hairless belly (all of the individuals on my hand started out balled up, but as they realized I wasn’t going to eat them, they started wandering and didn’t re-curl even when I picked them up to adjust their position). Another reason for all the hair is that these caterpillars hibernate as caterpillars, not in cocoons, and the fuzz may act as insulation. It is also often used in the cocoon when they’re building it.
Oh, and see those little green balls in the middle of all the critters? Caterpillar poop!
On Saturday, as I was gathering up my gear to head over to the 100-acre woods, Dan called me over to the window well at the side of the house. Perched on the windowsill, looking not too happy about her confinement, was this giant toad. Between the muskrat and now the toad, I’m starting to think perhaps we should put some window screening over the wells. Or at the very least a board or stick so the animals can crawl out again. I scooped the toad out and placed her on our walk for photos, with a penny for scale. This was a particularly colourful individual, with pale yellow underparts and a beautiful reddish tinge to the brown sides. It was also a lot blotchier than the one I profiled last year. There seems to be considerable variation in the colour and patterning of American Toads, and I’ve been thrown off on occasion when the individual just looks so unusual to me that I think it must be a different species. The only other species that might occur in Ontario to be confused with it, though, is Fowler’s Toad, and the latter always has three warts in the large black spots on its back, while Americans only have one or two.
Dan had been on a roll. The day before, he found this owl pellet, which he carefully saved for me. It was underneath one of the big maple trees in our yard. Most likely it was the product of a Great Horned Owl that had stopped by one evening. So far, the Great Horn’ds are the only species of owl that I’ve heard around the new place. They’re generalists as far as breeding habitat goes, able to happily make a living in even smaller wooded areas. You’ll even sometimes find them nesting in urban woodlots or naturalized parks. At the lake house we had virtually no Great Horn’ds around, but did have several Barred Owls in the vicinity, which prefer larger tracts of mature forest. It was neat to think of the owl having been in our yard, and spent long enough in the tree to produce this. If it hadn’t left the pellet, we would never have known it had been there.
Dan had saved the pellet thinking I might be interested in dissecting it and looking at the bones inside. Probably ordinarily I would have, but I happened to be distracted by this beetle. I found the beetle not far from the pellet, but placed it on the pellet myself. I know, I know, that’s cheating. Oh well. Makes a good shot, doesn’t it? The beetle actually stayed there where I’d put it, so I don’t know if it was interested in the regurgitated material, or was simply waiting for me to leave. The beetle is a carrion beetle, perhaps Nicrophorus orbicollis, one of many species that can detect rotting carcasses from long distances, up to 1.5 miles (4 km) away. Perhaps even more remarkable, the beetles can detect the dead animals often within an hour of death. And probably even more amazing, these beetles exhibit parental care, the parents staying with the eggs, and then the young once they’ve hatched, and feeding them regurgitated food.
Speaking of bones, I encountered these buried in the grass at the back of the property last week. They’re obviously quite old and weathered, and have been there a long time. It’s most likely that they’re deer bones, perhaps a kill made by coyotes many winters ago, but not being an expert in bone identification I couldn’t say for sure. I found one or two more a short distance away. Given that there’s only a few bones and not a whole skeleton, I wonder if the animal had removed a leg or section of the prey and brought it here to consume in peace.
A number of weeks ago I posted about a strange growth I found sitting on the trunk of a toppled hemlock in the 100-acre woods. At the time I thought it was an epiphyte, like a bromeliad, only some temperate woody species. I was corrected by a couple of my fabulous readers who pointed out that it was actually a deformity of the tree caused by a fungal infection, and was usually called a witch’s broom. While out this weekend I came across another one sporting these growths. However, these ones looked more like deformities than a separate plant perched atop a fallen trunk. I might have been able to figure out what they were if I’d seen these ones first.
All the milkweed pods are starting to split open and release their seeds to the wind. The meadows are dotted with fluffy white puffs, both attached to the plant still and ones that have already drifted off.
I haven’t decided what message I should send off to Santa yet, though.
Lowland Tapir by Jyrki Hokkanen on Picasa
In addition to the macaw clay lick, one of the stops on the Manu tour is near a mammalian clay lick, also called a colpa, that is often frequented by tapirs. These colpas are understandably less busy than those of the avian sort, but are often the best chance one has of seeing tapirs and many other mammals in their natural habitat, since mammals, even the large ones, can be incredibly secretive. Many tour companies and lodges will take their visitors to a hide at dusk, and the tapirs visit in the early hours of the night. Like the parrots, the mammals are looking for minerals and salts to help with their digestion and boost blood electrolytes.
I’m going to Peru with Kolibri Expeditions as part of their blogger promotional series. Want to come? I’d love to have you along! My departure leaves November 13, 2010 and returns the 21st, well before the US Thanksgiving. You can get more information about the trip, including itinerary and, of course, cost, at this page. Don’t forget that if you’re also a blogger you get $100 off. In addition to having a great time, meeting some great bloggers, and seeing some fabulous birds, you’ll also be supporting the local communities as they work toward developing a sustainable ecotourism industry for their area. It’s a win-win!
It’s hard to believe such a cute creature can harbour such a killer instinct. (The cat, not the teddy bear.) Both dogs and cats are naturally predatory animals, but domesticated cats retain much more of that instinct than most dogs do. If you’ve ever seen a cat perk up its ears at the sound of a fly buzzing in a window pane or jump up from where it’s curled up on the couch upon spotting a moth fluttering at a lamp, you’ll know what I mean. That hunting instinct is always present, even in the fattest, laziest of cats. Never take a cat for granted. If it doesn’t chase that fly, it’s not because it’s not a hunter, but rather that it simply chooses not to expend the energy at that moment (a cat’s urge to sleep is about on par with its urge to hunt).
I am a firm believer of an indoor-cat philosophy. Keep cats indoors. The outdoors is a dangerous place for cats. There is the risk of being hit by cars, or being caught by a predator bigger than it (coyotes and fishers are particularly fond of cat). There is the risk of it getting into fights, with racoons or wild animals, or other neighbourhood cats, and developing infection or suffering more serious injuries. The cat is also dangerous to the outdoors. If it’s smaller than the cat, it’s a target. Chipmunks, mice, birds, all favourites. Even a well-fed cat cannot resist the allure of a scurrying mouse.
Oliver looooves the outdoors. It’s fascinating, so many places to roam, so many things to see. He’d taken to scooting out through our feet as we came in the door, and had even learned how to open the door itself (it was one of those sorts without a latch), as he’s doing in the photo above. Finally, we gave in, and decided he would be okay on supervised walks where we were always outside with him.
He quickly asserted himself as a hunter. He would chase the crickets and meadowhawks in the lawn, with a fairly good success rate. Since meadowhawks are a dime a dozen around here, and the cat was just being a cat, we let him tackle those. When he startled up a snake and then pounced on its tail end (I was surprised it didn’t turn around and bite him), I took him inside. But aside from the meadowhawks, the arrangement seemed to be working fine.
Then yesterday Ollie disappeared on us while I was distracted setting up my moth sheet at one side of the lawn. Into the garden? The long grass beyond? I wasn’t sure. He hadn’t been far away while I was working, but then when I turned around next he was gone. I searched for him initially, but couldn’t find him. I needed to get started on dinner, so sent Dan out to resume the search. He found Ollie – perched on this guy, a Chipping Sparrow that Dan at first thought was dead. It wasn’t, although the poor thing didn’t make it, bruised and probably scared to death.
That’s it for Ollie. No more outdoors, supervised or otherwise. We’d let our guard down, lulled into thinking (consciously or not) that his focus was on the meadowhawks and he’d be no problem. I feel terrible for the little sparrow. It’s so easy to forget that every cat is a hunter at heart.
Last fall I wrote a post on keeping cats indoors. I strongly encourage cat owners to keep your cat indoors, no matter how pitifully he looks at you with those big, round eyes. It’s for his own good as much as it is the birds outside that you keep him indoors. If you just can’t resist, buy him a harness and tie-out lead to keep him away from problem areas where small animals or birds might frequent (eg., gardens, bird baths) and to keep him from wandering off. We learned our lesson the hard way.
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