Squirrel Cleanliness After Eating An Acorn

Again, I witnessed,  for  an incredibly quick moment, the actions of a gray squirrel after he finished his acorn. He hastily swatted his pouches with both paws to clean the leftover acorn from his face. This glimpse reminded me of any small child who wipes his sleeve across his mouth in a gallant gesture to clean his face.

In the picture above his Eastern Gray Squirrel is braced against the back of a tree while sitting on a broken branch about 15 feet above the ground. 
In the picture below, he has finished his acorn. Sat with the tips of his paws forming a circle. Then once, then twice, he brushed his pouches to clean himself. 

Chipmunks And Spring

Here in New England spotting the a harbinger of Spring is only akin to seeing the first snowflake in Fall.  Last week I caught a robin eating the holly berries. Phil-that's Punxtwany Phil, of course, may be the most famous weather animal/ weather fortuneteller, but  he has a tinier cousin, the chipmunk,  who does not get as much press, but only shows himself when the last days of February begin to warm up enough to remind us that there is  green under that white blanket.
Now that first thing you must know, is that little fellow is not really hibernating. Well, he does sleep. But unlike the true hibernators, he does not store up an extra supply of body fat.  He wakes up to eat some the seeds, berries, nuts, and grains  he gathered in his pouches and  brought back to his burrow. Then he falls back to sleep. Scientists call this a torpor.  Does this sound like something you would like to try? Unlike another larger cousin, the gray squirrel, he just is not big enough to manage the snow.
 We know Aesop's fable about the grasshopper and the ant; again,  the little guy anxiously preparing for the cold ahead while the grasshopper baths in the warmth. Getting ready for winter is important to the chipmunk. Their short two to three year life, becomes shorter without a winter cache.
I began wondering about the chipmunks after I saw a few scurrying over the hardened snow.  There seems to be a fair amount of love for this little creature. Maybe we have Alvin and his friends  to thank for that. But in the real forest and farm world the chipmunk plays an important roll. Even though these speedy ground squirrels spend most of their time hidden under grass or in stone walls or ducking into a  tree hallow, they are fairly easy prey for the fox, coyote, hawk, or snake looking for supper. They also raise the farmer's angst when they eat the newly planted seeds, but get an appreciative nod when they munch on insects destroying the crops.
Maybe with a little luck or quick flash someone has snapped this cutie with his five backstripes, glossy eyes, and straight up tail as he darted across the yard or stole a seed from the bird feeder.

A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker's Reward

"Hey! it was not easy getting to these sticky, gooey insects! I want them all!

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker In Connecticut

It looks like there is another fellow besides the robin who did not want to make the  trip south last autumn. This hardy male sapsucker was pecking at his hole almost all yesterday, ignoring the cold and snow. Usually, this member of the woodpecker family prefers warmer weather-at least, above 39 degrees.

The brush-like bristles on his tongue help him lap up the  tasty sap that sticks to just as tasty insects. Hmmm!Good! But not only a delicious meal for a any hard-pecking sapsucker, but filled with amino acids and protein.

I first noticed him around 7:30 EST and continued to marvel at his tenacity that kept him pecking until late afternoon. The Smithsonian Migratory Center  points out that their bird of the month in August, 2003,  methodically drills horizontal holes around the  less than healthy tree.

Notice his ever-so-lemon chest and the red around his throat which marks him as a male and especially his verical black stripes. No other woodpecker can claim this pattern.

A Robin Wintering In Connecticut

Sometimes Nature reminds us that even the very familiar can be special.  Even though the robin is a common backyard visitor and often the  harbinger of Spring known to every child,  this  puffed-up, haughty fellow sitting in my evergreen  on this very cold February morning reminded me how Nature can turn the ordinary into the extraordinary if we are willing to take a moment to appreciate it. You can see the look in my visitor's eye. Can you hear him saying? "I know I am the most handsome..."

Read All About It


Sharing The Wonder of Birds With Kids by Laura Erickson

The Mourning Dove

A few days ago, I talked about the mystery bird I glimpsed flying away from the feeder. It turns out that he visited again today. As he walked casually around the feeder, finding fallen seeds, I began to think that he was about the size of my bird in flight. Finding this nature site was my first step in solving the mystery. With some trial and error, I plugged in tan instead of yellow and was fairly certain I had found my bird. Then I googled some images of the mourning dove in flight. My search proved successful. This description, "Mourning Doves fly fast on powerful wingbeats, sometimes making sudden ascents, descents, and dodges, their pointed tails stretching behind them." on the Cornell Ornithology Site matched my bird's flight exactly.

Eastern Gray Squirrel

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This Eastern Gray Squirrel knew where to find his acorn breakfast. First, he tunneled through the snow to get a stronger whiff to locate the nut. In one experiment, the scientists hid the nuts for the squirrels. The rodents found just as many acorns as  they do when they store their own winter cache slightly below ground. This  proved that it is smell, not memory, that leads a hungry squirrel to his meal.

Read More About It:


The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri




http://www.amazon.com/Busy-Little-Squirrel-Nancy-Tafuri/dp/0689873417/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265771663&sr=8-

Mystery Bird?

Recently I glimpsed a bird flying away from my feeder which borders a Connecticut forest. I only saw it from the back. But as it flapped it wings fairly noisily to escape, it flashed  yellow stripes  beneath each wing.  It had  white and brown mottled coloring on its back and wings.  It was bigger than a songbird, but smaller than a turkey vulture; possibly the size of an owl or hawk? Nothing seems to match this description. Any ideas or pictures?

Groundhog! Groundhog! How Much Wood....?

Groundhog! Groundhog! How much wood can you chuck? This doesn't have quite the same ring as the familiar tune, "Woodchuck, woodchuck, how much wood can a woodchuck chuck?" When Punxsutawney Phil in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, or Wiarton Willie in Wiarton, Ontario, or General Beauregard Lee at Yellow River Game Ranch outside Atlanta, Georgia, climb out of their winter quarters very few of us think of this February 2nd celebrity as a woodchuck. So were did he get this name? Possibly from an Indian Tribe. The Agonquians of Narragansett Bay called this first cousin to the ground squirrel, "wuchak." Another question. How did a rodent make it on national TV every February 2nd? As they say in politics, he rode the coattails- not those who dress for the annual event in formal garb-but the coattails of Christianity. Early Christians who also felt pelted down with winter cold had a celebration on February 2nd to encourage a fertile spring ground.The legend of this festive occasion tells that the priests would scan the skies for clear weather But it was the four-legged mammal who made the call with his shadow. In Germany the badger played weatherman and in England and France the bear got the credit for predicting the length of winter. In America the Pennsylvanian community had to settle for the rodent, albeit, the biggest one. Bright skies brought gray shadows and foretold six more cold, winter weeks.

The Mighty Chickadee In The Colorado Forest

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describe the little bird that frequents most of Canada and North America as "universally cute." But Kailen Mooney, while a doctoral student at UC-Boulder in 2006 proved this "cute" bird can also save the magnificent pine trees. He found that these mountain chickadees , along with other songbirds such as the red-breasted nuthatch and the pygmy nuthatch who are year-round residents of the Colorado pine forests can change the "flavor" of a tree. Mooney put about 300 insects and spiders on some ponderosa pines in Colorado. Then he covered the pine with netting so the chickadees and his friends could not eat the aphids and caterpillars. While dining on the branches the tree, like other plant life, these insects cause the tree to give off an odor. When the birds ate the insects, the tree's "flavor," or odor, which Mooney explains is a chemical called terpene, changed. But wait there are three other actors in this environmental tragedy. In walk the bark beetle, the squirrel and porcupine. They smell a change. A whiff they dislike. Like so many of Aesop's tales, the largest forest inhabitant once again is saved by his tiny companion. But the play does not end here.