17 December 2024. Old news from 2012 with a recent update.
Food is scarce in the arctic during winter and early spring, so arctic ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii) fatten up for hibernation and cache food for later use.
When they wake up in April they have seeds in their cache to fall back on before the arctic blooms.
32,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, a ground squirrel stored food in his midden that he never ate. If everything had remained frozen no one would have known about his cache, but climate change is melting glaciers and ancient ice. Eventually the squirrel’s cache was exposed.
After they published their findings they continued their research and cultivated more seeds, identifying them as Silene linnaeana in 2021. This is the same genus as bladder campion.
If you wanted to find a raccoon, where would you look? Hint: Don’t bother searching in rural areas.
According to the NGS video below, there are 100 times more raccoons in the city than in the country, but we rarely see them. If you live in a city or suburb …
Is there a raccoon in your neighborhood? Definitely
… in your yard? Probably
… in your attic or crawl space? You might be surprised.
p.s. Back in 2008 I watched a family of raccoons nosing around my Greenfield neighborhood. They were aiming for my backyard! Fortunately they never got in the house.
Narrow openings don’t bother cats because their free-floating collarbones are attached to muscle, allowing them to flatten vertically.
Short openings are a problem though. Young cats make mistakes.
Cats: We’d had them less than an hour when Sid went in a hole and couldn’t get out – had to break the grill off to let him out. — caption on the photo below by cormac70
On Halloween 2008 I came across a small bat roosting on a tree in Schenley Park, described in A Bat on Halloween. Every time I pass the tree, especially on Halloween, I look for a bat but the chances of finding one are slim to none.
Little Brown Bat clinging to an oak in Schenley Park on Halloween 2011 (photo by Kate St. John)
Little brown bats (Myotis lucifugus) used to be one of the most common bats in North America but their population in the Northeast has declined 90% since 2006 because of white nose syndrome (WNS), a disease caused by a European fungus that was accidentally introduced by cave explorers near Albany, NY.
The fungus spreads rapidly. It was confirmed county by county in southwestern PA in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and now it spans the continent. Little brown bats were listed as Endangered by the IUCN in 2021.
There are far fewer bats in Pennsylvania this Halloween than there were 16 years ago. It is unlikely that I will ever see a little brown bat in daylight again.
The diagram above, from Arizona State University’s Ask A Biologist, shows that beneath our skin humans, birds and bats all have the same bones in our arms/wings but the bones have evolved to match our lifestyles.
We humans use our arms to reach and our hands to grab and manipulate. Birds and bats use their “arms” for flying. You can see it in our bones.
Each bone has changed compared to humans.
Big changes start at the wrist with huge changes in the “hands” and fingers.
Birds have only two “fingers” and their “thumbs” (the alula) are used only for slow flight maneuvers.
Donkey, sheep and a horse at Parque Natural de Los Alcornocales, Spain, 13 Sept 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
29 September 2024
On our WINGS Spain in Autumn birding tour we visited Parque Natural de Los Alcornocales on 13 September to see the birds and habitats of the cork tree forest. Spain’s Natural Parks allow grazing so we often saw cattle but when we stopped at Mirador Puerto de Ojén (Ojén Pass viewpoint) we found a donkey, several sheep and a chestnut horse.
It was hot. Most of the animals huddled in the shade cast by the Natural Park sign. Those who couldn’t fit their bodies into that crowded spot hung their heads in it. But the chestnut horse stoically stood in the sun. One sheep lay beneath it.
Sheep sleeps in the shade cast by The Shade Horse, Parque Natural de Los Alcornocales, Spain, 13 Sept 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
As we walked around scanning the sky for birds, the sign-shade sheep walked over to the horse and tried to fit into its shadow. There was only enough shade for their heads.
All the sheep try to fit into the shade cast by The Shade Horse in Spain, 13 Sept 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
The Shade Horse walked away and the extra sheep were out of luck. The companion sheep moved with the horse, constantly in his shadow. “We’re going to eat?” asked the sheep. “Fine. There’s something here in your shadow.”
The Shade Horse and one of his followers, Parque Natural Los Alcornocales, Spain, 13 Sept 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Did the horse feel used? Or did he appreciate his friend? Whatever works to stay cool.
p.s. The donkey was very friendly, more interested in us than the shade.
Friendly donkey comes close while Oli Reville and Jean Bickal take photos at Mirador Puerto de Ojén, 13 Sept 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)Myrna Beards pats the donkey while our guide Oli Reville scans the sky at Mirador Puerto de Ojén, 13 Sept 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
“Take me with you?”
Donkey examines the van at Mirador Puerto de Ojén, 13 Sept 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Embarking from Tarifa we motored almost all the way to Morocco — this close to Tangier.
View of Morocco near Tangier from a boat in the Strait of Gibraltar, 12 Sept 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Along the way we saw pods of common dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, and a pilot whale which is actually a large dolphin.
In the U.S. the word dolphin is used casually as a synonym for the common bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus — i.e. “Flipper.” But common dolphins are a different species, Delphinus delphis, about half the size of bottlenose dolphins.
Several pods of common dolphins jumped high and played in the water. They came close to the boat to swim in the bow wave. Jean Bickal took a video of them through the anchor portal.
Common dolphins riding the bow wave, Strait of Gibraltar, 12 Sept 2024 (embedded video by Jean Bickal)
Almost four years ago, artist and photographer Robert E. Fuller posted this video of a baby wild stoat playing on a trampoline in his garden in the U.K.
Fuller has observed wild stoats for many years at his home in Yorkshire. The baby stoat that played on the trampoline in autumn 2020 appears to have started a trend. His video posted in July 2021 shows mother and kits at the same playground.
Yes, they are very cute, but … wild weasels are not good pets and it is illegal to keep them without a wildlife permit. If you want a pet weasel, get a ferret.
There’s a tiny bat in the eastern U.S. that’s even smaller than the little brown bat. The tricolored bat (Perimyotis subflavus), formerly called the eastern pipistrelle, weighs only 0.16 to 0.23 ounces making it 30% smaller. Tricolored bats, like so many U.S. bats, are declining rapidly due to the fungal disease white nose syndrome and are Endangered in Pennsylvania. It’s pretty amazing that two of these tiny bats showed up in Downtown Pittsburgh in the past two years. We know this because both were rescued and rehabilitated at Humane Animal Rescue of Pittsburgh’s Wildlife Center in Verona (HARP).
To give you an idea of the tricolored’s size, here’s one roosting in a bat cave in North Carolina.
Before the two bats were found in Pittsburgh, there was no known record of their occurrence here. A female and a male came separately to HARP many months apart so there are probably more of them but who knows where?
Almost a year ago the male arrived at the Wildlife Center.
On August 22nd [2023] we received a male Tricolored Bat…a bat we never would have thought to ever come through our door! Tricolored Bats are an Endangered Species here in PA. Aside from being moderately emaciated and dehydrated, he sustained no other serious injuries. Weight gain was our main goal, he was 5.2grams at intake and the goal was to get him to at least 7.0grams before release.
He was fed the tiniest mealworms, gained weight, and was soon ready for release. HARP points out that bats cannot take off from the ground. “In order for a bat to fly, first it must climb to a high place and then it launches itself by intentionally falling into the air!” Here he walks out of the sheltering blanket, up the tree, and he’s off!
(*) p.s. The bat is called tricolored because each hair on its back has three color bands, like a tabby cat hair. The bat is not striped. All the tips are reddish brown.
Do you have a “problem” raccoon that’s getting into your trash no matter what you do? Do you need ideas on how to outsmart it? A study published last week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences can help set your expectations.
From 2016 to 2017, Lauren Stanton and colleagues [at the University of Wyoming] placed six puzzle boxes in areas that locals in Laramie reported as having a lot of raccoons—a residential backyard, behind a food store, and near an abandoned barn. …
Night vision cameras captured raccoons at their most active and revealed some immediate surprises. In one instance, a raccoon shoves a skunk out of the way to fiddle with a difficult latch, then easily opens it. In another, some raccoons wait near the puzzle box until another raccoon solves it, shoving the competitor aside and reaping the reward of kibble and sardines without any of the work.
In all, about 25% of the raccoons were able to open at least three doors over the 3-month study period. That’s not as good as the 65% observed in the lab, but Stanton says animals in captivity studies have more energy, free time, and attention.
