Sunny Sunday: Turkeys, Ticks and Trampolines

The word of the day is "sunshine". It never got very warm due to the wind but that didn't dampen my enthusiasm for the day. Laura and I checked the cameras and got some nice photos today:

Male turkey strutting (Seneca Falls, 3/11)

1. Turkey: What a great pic! The rising sun cast some amazing rays in this photo of a young male turkey strutting his stuff. I know this is a young bird (or jake) because the two central tail feathers are longer than the rest. In an older bird, the entire tail fan is the same length. Opening day of turkey hunting season is May 1st. The birds will still be strutting then, but the difference will be that the females will be paying attention!

White tailed deer with tick (Seneca Falls, 3/11)

2. Ticks: I have one of the camera traps set low on the dike of our backyard pond. The muskrat photo in my last post came from that camera. It is set so low, that this passing deer was cropped at the top of the legs. Look closely at the front leg and check out what looks like a tick. Any other guesses? I had a deer a few years back with a similar circle on rear leg...

3. Trampoline: Sorry, no amazing camera trap photos of a critter doing a back flip. I guess I just needed a third "T" for the title. But today on the way home from basketball Danika said "Wouldn't it be amazing if we had an ingound trampoline?" It would be...

Muskrat Love....

This has been a busy week! It was hard to find time to blog. In the past two weeks, I acquired the following three photos of muskrats:

Muskrat (Seneca Falls, 3/11)

First up is a trail camera photo of a muskrat in our backyard. This is my very first muskrat on the camera trap. We have several ponds on the property and the 'rats are tunneling into the dikes more and more each year.  I guess I don't mind. I enjoy seeing the muskrats.

Muskrat tracks (Savannah, NY 3/11)

This next photo was taken last Thursday on Howland Island Wildlife Management Area. The weather was unseasonably warm and I hiked for several hours and got some nice photos. This was one of my favorite. Muskrats will follow any little trickle of water when they disperse and these muskrat tracks were in a small muddy rut. HIWMA has no shortage of muskrats! Note how long the nails are on the rear foot (track in the top left corner of the photo).

Muskrat hind foot (3/11)

The final photo is of a muskrat hind foot. At one of the den visits last week, one of the DEC biologists had this muskrat in his truck and showed it to my students and I. He is nuisance trapping on some State land.  Note the "fringe" on each toe making the foot more efficient for swimming.

Friday's Black Bear Den

As I wrote in yesterday's post, I visited a bear den on Friday with some students. Our main responsibility at a visit is to gather data on the den. We describe the den itself (some are dug into the ground, others are under brush piles), measure its volume, take temperature readings inside and out of the den, record the direction of the opening, rate the level of human disturbance, etc. It took us nearly as long to take our measurements as it took the DEC to work up the adult.

Black bear den
(Dansville, NY 3/11)

This particular den was dug by the female. In this photo, look carefully to the top right of the den entrance and see an old woodchuck hole. PERHAPS the bear started her den where a similar opening already existed.

The den was on a steep slope so we didn't get too many curious visitors while we were working. Some of the measurements require a person to actually go into the den. Here, Katie's legs are visible while Bethany takes notes.

Researchers collecting bear den data
(Dansville, NY 3/11)

When it was my turn to take a look in the den, I grabbed a photo of the wall. Katie had pointed out that the individual claw marks were visible from the

excavation. Note how sandy the soil is, making the digging relatively easy. Friday was unseasonably warm. We took an outside temperature reading of 64 degrees F while it was a cooler 58F inside the den. Remember, there were four bears inside this hole. Granted, three of them are little and one of them is pretty inactive, but mom weighed 190 pounds and her three growing boys were about six pounds each. That is a lot of heat being generated! See if you can pick out any tiny scratch marks on the wall of the den from the cubs...

Wall of black bear den showing claw marks
(Dansville, NY 3/11)

My final photo of the day is perhaps my favorite. The den got measured, the sow was weighed and fitted with a new GPS telemetry collar and the cubs were weighed, measured and fitted with PIT tags (more than one person has pointed out that what we call a "den visit" is more like an "alien abduction" from the prospective of the bear). Mom was returned to her den while still under the influence of the tranquilizer and the cubs were safely tucked in behind her. As we walked away from the den, I stuck the camera in and blindly snapped a few photos. One came out very well, giving us an idea of what the first few months of life look like for a black bear.

Black bears in den
(Dansville, NY 3/11)

Another Black Bear Den Visit

Bear den near road
(Dansville, NY 3/11)

What a day for a den visit! With temperatures over 60 degrees and no rain in sight, this was a fantastic day for a den visit. Today we joined the DEC south of Dansville to change the collar on an 11-year-old female bear.  First, let's talk about the den. She dug her winter home into the sandy soil on a bank literally on the edge of a road (a sleepy little country road, but a road none the less)! This first photo shows the DEC staff beginning to take the adult from the den. I only caught a tiny bit of the road in the lower left of the photo, but I can assure you that I was standing on the road when I took the photo.

Besides the female, there were three cubs in the den, all males. As I mentioned in previous posts, the cubs are weighed, given PIT tag implants and the ears and hair are measured to estimate their age. All cubs today weighed about six pounds, which is expected for cubs that are about 2 months old.

JVN and FLCC students
(Dansville, NY 3/11)

Before the cubs are returned to the den, about a million photos are taken! Here is a picture of me and the four students that attended the den with me today. I spent very little time with the cubs today as I was focused mostly on the den measurements. As you saw in the first photo, the den was on a steep slope making the data collection interesting. Tomorrow, I will post some photos of the den itself.

Two-month old black bear cub
(Dansville, NY 3/11)

 I will leave you with one final photo of one of the triplets. Check out those sharp claws. As he gets older and becomes more mobile, the claws will become worn and duller, more appropriate for climbing trees and finding grubs instead of taking a brotherly swipe at a sibling...

Login to Critter Scat

Today I will take a break from black bears to talk about scat. I took advantage of the warm weather (Spring Break = no classes) today to take a hike at Howland Island Wildlife Management Area in Savanna, NY. It was a good day for critter sign! I got some nice track and scat photos.

Today we are going to look at an array of animal scat found on logs:

Male Ruffed Grouse scat (Campbell, NY 3/11)

Ruffed Grouse: In the spring of the year, male grouse use logs as drumming platforms. They drum by beating the air with their wings. This is the "song" of the ruffed grouse and is used to attract females. We found this scat on the way to our second black bear den this past Tuesday.

The white in the scat is uric acid. Birds do not urinate, but instead get rid of their nitrogenous waste in their scat.

Raccoon scat (Howland Island WMA, 3/11)

Raccoon: Raccoons use logs to travel and often leave scat behind to mark their passing. The first photo is relatively fresh. Raccoons are opportunistic feeders, so their scat can contain plant and animal components. And when a fruit or mast crop becomes ripe, a scat may be almost completely made up of the one food source. That is the case with our next photo...

Here is an extremely old scat. I assume this is raccoon based on the volume and the location. In fact, the scat is so old, all that is left is a pile of indigestible skins from some small fruit.

Old raccoon scat, indigestible fruit skins
(Howland Island WMA, 3/11)

 I learned to look for these "ancient" scats after finding a pile of seeds this summer in Massachusetts. I just couldn't figure out what animal would have left so many cherry seeds piled in the open on the forest floor. Val walked up, looked down and solved the mystery by saying: "Huh, old bear scat." and walked away.




Muskrat: The last scat for today is muskrat. Beaver normally defecate in the water but 'rats usually scat on some object. Today, I found muskrat scat (muskscat?) on rocks, logs and and piece of ground that rose above the water.

Muskrat scat (Howland Island NWR, 3/11)

Bear Den Visits Continued...

For several years, FLCC has been a partner with Region 8 DEC in their black bear studies. In today's post, I will focus on the data collected on cubs. 

Bears have an interesting reproductive strategy called delayed implantation. In NY, bears mate in June and July, but the fertilized egg does not develop in the female right away. In the fall, if the female has sufficient fat reserves, a chemical triggers the fertilized egg to attach to the uterus and begin to grow. Cubs are born only a few months later and are relatively small because their development time is so short.

Black bear cub, Wayland NY (3/10)

When we go to a den with cubs, they are kept in fleece sacks to keep them warm. They are weighed and sexed. The weight, however, doesn't tell much about the cubs' health unless one knows their ages as well. A study done some years ago in Virginia showed that you can tell the age of a cub by measuring its ear and hair length and plugging that info into an equation. The hair is measured on the top of the skull and is pretty straight forward. However, measuring the ear is a little more difficult. You know that little nub of flesh that sticks out of your ear close to the opening? It is called a tragus and bears have it too. Imagine taking a squirming cub and carefully lining up the ruler from the tragus to the tip of his ear. Now read the ruler to the nearest millimeter. Easier said than done...

FLCC students measure a cub's ear length (Wayland, NY 3/10)

A final photo of the tragus is below. Note also that this cub has some real blonde hairs. Most likely, he will grow out of them, but they make an interesting pattern now!

Black bear cub tragus (Canisteo, NY 3/11)

Black Bear Den Visits

Of all the cool things I get to do in my job, the bear den visits inspire the most envy. Today, my Black Bear Management II class visited not one, but two black bear dens. Both were females with cubs and each was exciting in its own way.

Holding a black bear cub (Canisteo, NY 3/11)
Photo by Patty Wakefield

DEN #1: Our first den visit was near Canisteo, NY on a great family farm. As we waited to go into the den, we watched deer and turkey foraging in the cut corn field and investigated the tracks left by about half a dozen wild animal species in the area around the barn. The NYS DEC staff is the advance crew. They go in first and immobilize the adult. Then we come in (along with any other guests) and assist in the processing and data collection. The female weighed about 215 pounds and has been collared for several years. She is about seven years old. She had three cubs, two females and a male. One of my students took this photo of me holding a cub. The sacks help keep the bears warm as well as reduce the chances of humans or bears being injured. The cubs are not aggressive, but their claws are very sharp because they haven't been worn down at all.

The cubs are given a PIT tag and weighed. We also measure the hair and ear length to help estimate their age within a few week period. The female had dug a nice den into the side of a hill with a southern exposure. The soil was nice and sandy making the digging easier. This den visit went smooth as silk and everyone had the chance to see the adult and hold a cub.

Collared black bear in tree
(Campbell, NY 3/11)

Collared black bear in tree
(Campbell, NY 3/11)

DEN #2: Our second den visit was near the town of Campbell, NY. This visit was rained out last week, so we were all encouraged to see the blue skies. It was a vigorous hike to the den! My students and a few other folks were left about 150 yards from the den while the shooters went in to tranquilize the female. About 25 minutes later, we received a call that she had been darted but exited the den and started up a tree. They asked for several of us to bring the net, which we would hold under the tree to help break her fall. Well, as it turned out she just went higher and higher in the tree, despite being darted. The dart may have hit fat instead of muscle, making the drug ineffective. The dosage may have been light for her weight. Or.... who knows? There are no guarantees when it comes to immobilizing wild animals. I was able to snap a few shots and when it became apparent that she was not going to succumb to the drug, the decision was made to back off and let her return to her den (and cub). We were about 75 yards away when we saw her shimmy down the tree and go back to her den. 

How high was she? Well, I didn't measure and I am sure my guess would not be accurate. But here is a photo that will let you decide....

Treed black bear (Campbell, NY 3/11)