Fallible wild animals

More photos by Zac. Penny included for scale

What: On our tracking adventure at Bread and Butter Farm, we were also impressed at the density of coyote sign - they must be snacking on all them li'l rabs. We decided to trail one of the paths for a ways. Pretty quickly, we started noticing blood spots in quite a few places along the trail. Female coyotes are monoestrous (having only one period of "heat" per year). It's relatively short, about 3-5 days and happens sometime between late January and early March, so we got lucky in our timing. The females will scent mark with their urine (which has blood in it). It shows up as small reddish yellow drops on the snow. The female we followed seemed to be on a hunting foray, traveling in mostly straight lines with occasional detours to investigate something that caught her attention (for as long as we followed her, she was unsuccessful in her hunt).

Zac and I both wound up post-holing while trailing her along a small brook that was frozen over. I tend to take clumsiness in humans as a given, but never expect it from wild animals. It's always jarring to see a squirrel miss a branch it's jumping to and fall to the ground, or watch a beaver trip as it's stepping over a rock, or catch a cottontail running into a fence. In this case, not more than 30 yards from where both Zac and I broke through the ice, we saw the tracks in the image above.

It appears like the coyote postholed, then slipped with her right front foot. The track just below the dark circle (the posthole) is her rear foot swinging out wide to steady herself. That 3' provided us with a hundred little stories and questions that we only began to answer as we made our way along the trail over the next half mile or so. It's always refreshing to remember that every now and again wild animal show their fallibility.

Ecological notes: In Centennial Woods there's an abundance of fox (red and gray) and deer, but no coyotes and only a very few rabbits. It made me wonder if there was a correlation between the presence/absence of those species. I found some interesting studies that look into the relationships between these species (as well as bobcats and even Lyme disease). Here's a summary of what I found:

• Coyotes eat gray foxes (not sure I believe this, or at least that this has a significant impact on gray fox populations)
• There's an inverse correlation between fox and rabbit populations. Where cottontails are in great abundance, red foxes, an obligate generalist, will shift and specialize in hunting them (study)
• Bobcats prefer rabbits and rodents and will eat deer second (study)
• There's an inverse relationship between fox and coyote populations (coyotes apparently bully foxes out of their territories, called interference competition study, another study found that a third of kit foxes radio collared had been killed by coyotes, study)
• As a result, foxes can be found on the edge of a coyote's territory, but rarely within it
• Foxes out-compete coyotes in areas where human densities are higher
• Many predators will kill other predators (canids, it turns out are the most likely predators to kill other species of predators: study)
• More foxes=less Lyme disease, more coyotes=more Lyme disease (study)
• Red foxes have a significant impact on the European Roe deer, but those are much smaller than our native deer and it's likely that no such correlation exists
• Coyotes have a significant impact on deer populations (study)
• Coyotes are more successful in hunting deer in harsh winters (study)
• There's no hunting allowed in Burlington, so deer populations may be higher here as a result
• Deer seek refuge under conifers during winter for warmth, both habitats provide an abundance of hemlock cover, however

A gaggle of nouns

A deer stopping for water in the 90 degree heat

Where: Winooski River (still). Zac and I just got back from another paddling adventure to complete my last trip from Bolton to Salmon Hole, this week from Salmon to Skinny Pancake. Another perfect day of paddling!

An outburst of water striders

Other notes: This time of year has the most overlap across life stages for animals. You may have noticed not just one crow perusing the lawn for food, but a mini-flock of 4 or 5, or a sudden flush of 30 robins sweeping through a honey suckle thicket. As nesting season winds its way down (com on goldfinches, hurry up and finish nesting already), lots of family groups are out and about feeding, the males are less territorial trading the stress of land disputes for the comfort of extra sets of eyes to be vigilant. It was hard enough on the trip to identify the many different species of birds, flowers, and trees I was passing by. Throw into the mix the different names for males, females, juveniles, and even collective nouns, and I was a bit over my head trying to keep it all straight. I got curious about what the different names for groups of different animals might be (and is there a term for a herd of cottonwoods? a "stand" is so boring, "grove" gets better, but there's a whole world of opportunity here).

  

A scuttling of mergansers

A motoring of ducklings

  

A ring of ring-bills

A dastardly of F-16s

I've long been fascinated by names and the naming of things. I was first introduced to the quirks of latin names by my love of gray squirrels, and indeed Sciurus carolinensis was the first scientific name I learned. Turns out Sciurus derives from the Greek words skia (shade) and uros (tail). The Greeks must have thought that squirrels their tails much like one might find respite from summer heat under the cover of a parasol. They were wrong, but thanks to the convention of naming things, their error is preserved in our scientific lexicon.

A flapping of kingfishers

Contemporary naturalists seem to have a certain fondness for collective nouns used to describe groups of animals. Being able to call a flock of crows a murder, starlings a murmuration, or vultures a committee is a sure sign of esoteric adeptness when it comes to being naturalist. It's like the painfully obvious difference (to those in the know) between a tourist ("Bar" for Barre, "Shar-let" for Charlotte) from a Vermonter ("Bare-ee", "Shar-lot"). There is delight, beyond proving ones worth in the often ridiculous and colorful phrases. Some are probably grounded in some sense of the animal's natural history, while others, it appears, are from the fanciful imagination of the 15th century British author Dame Juliana Berners, or at least were first recorded by her. She was the prioress of a nunnery, where she kept up her passion and dedication to fishing, hunting, and other outdoor pursuits. Her book, The Boke of St Albans, is damn near impossible to read (much like Canterbury Tales). It includes three sections - on falconry, hunting, and heraldry. In her section on hunting she publishes a lengthy list (3 pages worth!!) of collective nouns. The most famous to make it from her pen to our vernacular is murder of crows, but the rest are just as inventive.

A lonesome of bald eagle

It might be easy to chalk the lengthy list up to the poetic musings of one more skilled in writing than shooting, but I think Berners, like other hunters, had stories that got bigger and bigger with time: "I once caught a fish th-------------------------is big." I imagine that sport hunting was a hobby for the finer and fancier of folks, a well-educated bunch that would lounge around the hearth in their parlors recounting hunting tales from days of yore. "If you think today was good, you should've been here yesterday, we caught a suit of mallards, a muster of peacocks, a covey of partridges, and a bevy of girls."

A hawking of kingbirds

Language reflects what's important to the culture that uses it. Thus, the Yup'ik Eskimos, for example, use the word kanevvluk for fine snow particles, natquik for drifting snow, aniu for snow on the ground, and have other distinct lexemes (like a root word) for variations of snow. So if your culture values hunting and the pride that comes with it you might expect a distinct lexicon to accompany it, much like any subculture develops its own language to describe shredding the gnar, sick pow-pow, etc.

An awkwardness of herons

Since her writing, many more collective nouns have sprung up, some useful and serious, others amusing and useless (a clutch of auto mechanics). In the captions for each picture, I've thrown my hat into the ring, vying for a few new collective nouns.

A flotsam of jetsam

As a side note, the publishing of Boke of St Albans made Berner the first published woman in England.

Berner's list of collective nouns in its original format

Game cam in Centennial Woods

What: When we heard about the proposed development near the section of Centennial Woods next to the Sheraton we thought it would be a great idea to go set up a game cam on one of the nearby deer trails.  We  wanted to capture some of the wildlife traveling through this corridor so that we can show the importance of this area to the development council and the public.  This is a really remote part of Centennial Woods in that no human trails run very close to it.  When we were out exploring it for the first time we found parts of a deer skeleton and we were struck by the unique feeling that this section of the woods has.

Three species crossed the game cam's path during the three weeks we left it out there.  We saw a pair of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), an eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus), and the rare Homo sapiens :).  We were surprised that we didn't get more animals coming through this trail but we didn't bait the game cam and these animals have a very wide home range, so this is understandable.

Ecological notes: This area of the woods is unique because it acts as a border for Centennial Woods.  Borders are special areas in the woods because we see different species composition and activity in these parts.  It is important to protect these areas that act as a buffer zone and provide corridors for wildlife to pass through.

Where: Centennial Woods near the Sheraton hotel

Other notes: You may be able to see the nubs on the buck's head where his antlers will emerge later this season.  It was exciting to examine this remote area that we would have not likely spent much time exploring if it hadn't been for the proposed development.

Here's a map showing where we set the game cam up.

View Game cam in a larger map

View Game cam in a larger map

Game Cam in Centennial Woods

What: I set my game cam up along a game trail on the southeast corner of Centennial Woods near the Sheraton. My hope was to capture some wildlife images to show who is using this part of the woods (there's a proposal up for discussion of an intermodal transit facility to be built that might encroach on the ecological boundaries of Centennial Woods; the assumption seems to be that no one uses it and that there's nothing there so why not develop it). See if you can tell what's in the photos below. Roll over images to see answer (the first one doesn't have anything but will help you see what's in the second one). The last two are of the same animal. And I know the photos aren't exactly prize winning, but I only had it up for two nights and I checked once. I'll leave it up another couple of weeks and then post what I find next.

Ecological notes: The spot is a cool location in CW because it's one of the most remote sections of Centennial Woods, at least in terms of its proximity to trails. It's also one of the younger patches so there's ample browse for deer and cover for rabbits. I've tracked fishers up and down in this area. There's lots of goldenrod and milkweed blanketed the field. Closer to the woods it grades into a pretty young stand of quaking aspen (almost exclusively), with occasional white pine and white birch.


Other notes: On a recent trip to this spot a friend and I found a deer skeleton and a goldfinch nest. I went back out today and found another goldfinch nest and a cercropia moth cocoon! It would be an incredible gift to the community if UVM extended the boundaries of the Natural Area to include the land that is ecologically contiguous with the Natural Area boundary. Centennial Woods used to be 210 acres of land. It's been slowly cut up for roads, baseball fields, parking lots, powerlines, quarries, hotels, gas stations, and housing developments. At some point we'll regret our decisions and the next generation will never know what they're missing.