There’s been a bare spot in my backyard since early summer when the mower hit the dirt and scraped off the vegetation. It looked unremarkable until early July, when I noticed that the soil had been disturbed. I wondered what kind of creature would have been doing something–and what it would have been doing–in some dusty soil in my backyard.
One morning–quite early–I was looking out my window, and I saw a cottontail rabbit lying stretched out on the denuded spot. It wasn’t stirring up a cloud of dust the way birds do in dust baths, but occasionally it wiggled and pushed its body from side to side with its back feet. Between movements it just lay on its belly. Eventually it jumped up and hopped away.
When the light was better I went out with my camera and photographed the fresh signs, shown in the photo below. There were gouge marks (there’s one at the lower left of the close-up photo below), and I could see soil that had been scattered on top of vegetation (check out the plants at the upper right). Fine dust penetrates into fur or feathers and helps control parasites, so the dry soil made an ideal dust bath. So mystery solved, right? Not quite.
In the area just beyond where the rabbit had been I saw more disturbances, but these didn’t look the same. You can see them in the upper part of the next photo. They looked more weathered than the fresh signs of dust bathing I found after I saw the rabbit. But without more to go on I was at a dead end.
A few rainy days changed the soil texture, and the dust bath changed into a patch of wet dirt. But I kept watching, hoping to see what else happened in that bare area. Once a squirrel came by but didn’t do any digging and didn’t stay long. Finally, I saw the culprit–a flicker digging for ants. It poked and shoveled and as it attacked the dirt it scattered clumps of soil in all directions. In the next photo you see the craters and beak gouges just after the flicker made them. This was done when the soil was moist, so the texture is coarse rather than fine and dusty. Bits of dirt lie on top of the vegetation around the digs.
I thought at first that the flicker preferred mining for ants in bare dirt, but then I noticed small holes in areas with plant cover, especially moss. In the next photo you can see the openings in the moss made by the bird’s beak. Even if I hadn’t seen a few ants, I would have guessed that the flicker had detected a subterranean ant colony, because the flicker digs were spread out over several square feet.
Since my observations of the rabbit and the flicker it’s been quite rainy, and the surrounding plants have grown in over the bare patch. The chance conditions that brought each creature to the spot were different, and they may not be repeated. But my next interesting sighting could happen any time, so I’ll keep looking out my window at every opportunity. And when the next interesting thing happens I’ll hurry out to see what kinds of signs were left.