Tag: ruffed grouse

Perfect Perches

Perches–they’re important to wild creatures for many different reasons. The gray squirrel in the opening image (from yardandgarage.com) is using a perch as a feeding site. The next photo shows a Norway spruce whose dead lower branches provided feeding perches for a red squirrel. You can see how the piles of inedible cone cores and scales accumulated under the branches the squirrel perched on. These accumulations are called middens, and they can build up over time into substantial mounds.

Favorite perches often show signs of usage. The red squirrel that used the perch shown below left a cone scale and a number of opened seeds, some with wings still attached.

Red squirrels may mark perches by biting them. In the next photo you see a Norway spruce branch that bears the distinctive paired incisor marks made by a red squirrel. The lower branches of conifers are usually dead, so these marks don’t heal over and may last quite a while.

In the next photo you see a discovery I made during summer a few years ago. The Norway spruce cone crop that year was early and abundant, and a red squirrel had left a cone core, stripped of its supply of edible seeds, resting on the perch it had used. And in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t put it there, it was all the squirrel’s doing. The scales that dropped as the squirrel fed can be seen on the ground at the base of the tree.

The photo below shows an unusually well elevated feeding perch used by a gray squirrel.

In the next photo you see what I found on top of the log: the remains of an acorn the squirrel had fed on.

Here’s a perch used not for feeding but for food storage. A gray squirrel lodged a black walnut in the crotch of a honeysuckle branch. I’m not sure what the squirrel’s motivation was–perhaps it was to keep the walnut away from other squirrels.

A perch doesn’t need to be overly high to be suitable. In the next photo you see a log used by a squirrel–it could have been a red or a gray–feeding on a white pine cone.

Rocks can also make good perches. Last August a red squirrel harvested young larch cones and brought them to the rock shown below for consumption. Where rocks or logs are available they are preferred over ground level feeding sites.

But food isn’t the only thing drawing animals to perches. A red fox balanced on the log in the next photo in order to deposit its scat. Scat is important in intraspecies communication, and wild canines prefer to leave their scat in conspicuous positions. Sometimes this requires a little acrobatic ability to position the scat just right.

One of my favorite spring experiences is hearing the drumming of ruffed grouse. Males in search of mates perch on logs or other raised features and beat their wings to produce a resonant booming sound. They prefer platforms that are unobstructed and raised well off the ground. You can see a spot in the center of the image where the bark was dislodged by the drumming bird.

Perches can also be used as observation posts. In the next photo you see a mound of earth thrown up by a falling tree. There were tracks–they were barely visible so I didn’t include a photo–going up the side. The size of the impressions suggested a fox.

On top of the mound (shown in the next photo) there were obvious signs of disturbance, showing that it had been used as a perch. The fox would have sat quietly while it listened, looked, and sniffed for signs of prey animals.

We seem to have circled back around to the topic of food, so here’s my last example of a feeding perch. A black bear climbed the beech tree in the photo below and pulled a nut-bearing branch inwards until it broke off. The bear consumed the goodies, pushed the branch aside and pulled another one inward until it broke. The discarded branches formed a tangled cluster, and the bear might even have stood on the growing mass of harvested branches as it continued to pull more branches in. These branch clusters are known by the somewhat misleading term bear nests, although they have more in common with squirrel middens than with nests. With healthy beeches becoming less abundant, bear nests in beech trees are harder to find than they used to be, but the same kind of sign occurs in apple, black cherry, serviceberry, and oak trees.

Wild creatures know their territories in minute detail, and they’re familiar with all the best perches. The attributes of a perfect perch vary somewhat with the specific animal and situation, but safety and accessibility are always important. The location also needs to be appropriate to the animal’s purpose, whether it’s to consume food, to find food, or to advertise its presence. If we stay alert for perches we can begin to understand what makes a good perch and what they can tell us about the lives of the animals.

Dust Baths

The photo above (by Rajesh Kalra) shows a house sparrow in the throes of a dust bath. By rolling, wiggling, and scooping up dust with its wings, the bird covers itself with dust, then shakes vigorously to fling the dust in all directions. You can see a dust bathing bird in action here. It’s believed that dust bathing helps to clean dirt and excess oil from feathers and skin, and to suppress parasites. Without this kind of maintenance the bird’s health would suffer and flight efficiency would decline. Dust bathing is a common behavior in many birds.

Once the bath is finished and the bird is gone, the evidence remains in the form of body-sized hollows. Dust baths sometimes appear as roughly circular cleared spaces surrounded by vegetation, as in the photo below. The diameter of the sandy hollow (15 inches) strongly suggests turkey.

Sometimes feathers provide definitive evidence of who the dust bather was. The dust bath in the next photo is ornamented with a few body feathers belonging to a ruffed grouse. There’s also a partial track below the feather. At roughly 8 inches across, this dust bath was the right size for a grouse. The bird had chosen an inactive ant mound, and the finely processed soil was a perfect medium for a good cleansing thrash.

In the next photo you see a dust bath that holds definitive evidence of the bather. A turkey tail feather lies on the lower left side, and a clear track sits in the center. Finding tracks as good as this one is unusual, because they are generally obscured as the bird shakes the soil off. The whole area was large, about three feet across, but the hollow made by the turkey’s body was about 18 inches across.

Some bathing spots don’t seem very enticing. The grouse dust bath shown below was located in a gravel road and couldn’t have been very comfortable. The hard surface must have yielded very little dust, so I wonder how much benefit the bird’s effort yielded. Maybe it was the best site the grouse could find.

Birds aren’t the only creatures that take dust baths. Large herbivores such as bison and elk often roll and wiggle in dusty spots, and small rodents are frequent dust bathers. Rabbits and cottontails also enjoy an occasional roll in the dirt. The next photo shows a snowshoe hare dust bath. Rear tracks show as sets of claw marks on the left and indistinct shapes on the right.

Another mammal that likes to roll in sand or soil is the otter. The animal that made the roll shown in the photo below had just come out of the water, and part of its motivation was to dry its fur. The sand bath also probably helped to clean the otter’s fur and remove excess oil. You can see flattened areas where the sand was pressed down by the otter’s body, and there are some tail marks on the left. The disorganized collection of tracks in the center is interesting. It looks to me like the animal shook itself vigorously to throw the sand off, lifting and placing its feet several times in the process. It then proceeded on its way toward the top of the frame.

Dry, loose substrates are preferred for dust bathing. Dusty roads or trails, sandy deposits, fine humus, and decomposed logs are likely places to find dust baths. Small birds and mammals often choose hidden locations for their hygienic activities. Turkeys usually establish dust baths in open sites where escape is not hindered by obstacles. But wherever you find them, you should check out any strangely hollowed or cleared spots you come upon. You might have found the location of a seldom seen part of a wild creature’s life.

Logs

Living creatures see the world in terms of significant objects. We humans are no exception–for us significant features would be such things as chairs, doorways, computers, streets, buildings, picnic tables, traffic lights….you get the idea. For wild animals rocks, thickets, streams, cliffs, and trees come to mind. And then there are logs–items that we usually ignore unless we’re looking for a place to sit. Downed logs are important to many animals in many different ways, and the evidence is often plain to see.

A chipmunk sat on the log in the photo above to eat a red oak acorn. In order to get at the edible meat, the animal tore narrow strips and small chunks from the outer covering. Logs serve as feeding platforms for many small rodents, including red and gray squirrels, and the leftovers often reveal who the diner was. When squirrels feed on red oak acorns, the shell fragments left behind tend to be larger than those discarded by chipmunks.

The log above was used by a red squirrel feeding on red pine cones. As the squirrel fed it dropped the cone scales and cores on the ground in front of the log to create a large midden. Red pines are self-pruning trees and don’t offer many branch perches, so although red squirrels prefer the safety of branch perches, they sometimes need to use more earth-bound objects. Logs, stumps, and rocks can offer a good view of the surroundings and allow the animal to detect danger.

And how do we know it was a red squirrel? Although gray squirrels do sometimes eat conifer seeds, they don’t store them the way red squirrels do, and they never feed on enough conifer cones to create middens the size of the one in the photo.

Tracks on logs tell us that they can also serve as travel routes. Of course we need snow to see this kind of evidence–the light snowfalls of early winter and early spring often show the prints of animals that walked on logs. The coyote that made the tracks in the photo above found the log to be a convenient route through an area obstructed by branches and undergrowth. Walking on logs may also be quieter since leaves and debris can be noisy, even under a layer of snow. Another advantage of walking on logs is a better view. The greater elevation helps prey animals to detect danger, and predators to detect prey. I’ve found many different tracks on logs–the list includes squirrels, white-footed mice, chipmunks, raccoons, bobcats, bears, red and gray foxes, coyotes, fishers, minks, and weasels.

Logs offer these same advantages when there’s no snow, so we can be sure that animals also walk on logs in warmer weather. Without snow their tracks are difficult to detect, but we may still find evidence of their passing. A long-tailed weasel left the scat shown in the photo above on a mossy log. The scat was not quite 1/4 inch in diameter and contained hairs from a small mammal.

The logs in the photo at the head of this article are ones I visit regularly, and they often accumulate the scat of several different kinds of animals. This suggests that they have some special importance, but I’m not sure exactly why. The log in the foreground bridges a low, rocky gully, but the more distant one lies on more level ground. Both logs are large, but there are other logs nearby that are as big or bigger and don’t accumulate scat. Whatever the reason, we can be sure that each species that travels those logs takes note of the messages left by other creatures.

In addition to serving as perches, travel routes, and bulletin boards, logs may be a source of food. This log was torn open by a black bear in search of the grubs that were living and feeding in the rotting wood. Bears are not the only creatures that find food in logs–skunks, raccoons, and woodpeckers also open logs in search of edible morsels. But the size of the fragments and the distance to which they were thrown could only have be the work of an animal as powerful as a bear.

Have you heard a grouse drumming this spring? At this time of year ruffed grouse are looking for mates. The males seek out large logs, and once they find a log that offers a stable and well elevated surface they send out a kind of drumming sound with their wings. The low sound travels long distances, and the elevation of the log gives it even more range. Females are drawn to the sound, and if they’re impressed they will mate with the male. In the photo above I’m perched on a grouse drumming log, taking a photo with my old SLR camera. In front of me on the log you can see several grouse scats.

Whether they’re dinner tables, highways, message boards, pantries, stages, or even just obstacles, logs are significant objects for inhabitants of the natural environment. The evidence they present can reveal unseen dramas in the lives of animals. So before you sit on that log, take a look at it. You might be rewarded with a message that opens a window into the life of a wild creature.

Ruffed Grouse Snow Beds

When the snow gets deep and temperatures go down, ruffed grouse have a wonderful way of staying warm overnight. They can’t climb down into woodchuck burrows the way rabbits do, or follow narrow openings down to warmer depths like weasels. And they don’t curl up with their tails over their heads like foxes. But they can fly, and that allows for a unique strategy. In mid-flight, a grouse tucks its wings close to its body and dives into the snow. Once submerged all it takes is a few wiggles to shape a perfectly formed and well insulated snow cave.

I found the grouse bed pictured below back in November after an unusually early snowstorm. The place where the bird plunged into the snow is on the left, and the exit side of the bed is at the lower right. The trail the bird made as it walked away extends toward the top of the frame.

Here’s the same grouse bed from another angle–the entry is now at the top of the frame and the exit is at the bottom. The cavity where the bird spent the night is located under the undisturbed snow between the two holes. If you could peer down into the lower hole you would see a chamber roughly the shape of the grouse’s body.

If you can’t picture how it all happened you’re probably not alone. One of the keys to interpreting nature’s messages is to go back in time to the beginning of the incident and work your way through to the end.

Consider what happens when you toss a ball into soft, fluffy snow. The ball disappears and leaves nothing but a small depression where it went in. It’s only when you grope around trying to find the ball that more of the snow gets disturbed. A similar situation occurs with a grouse’s snow bed. Once the bird disappears under the snow, the only sign on the surface is a depression where it went in. The grouse can’t be seen, and there’s smooth, undisturbed snow everywhere except for a hollow of tossed snow. It’s not until the next morning, when the bird wakes up and begins to wriggle forward and upward, that the snow around it is disturbed and at least one other hole in the snow appears.

In the photo above, you can see some dark material in the lower hole. A close-up shows that the dark material in the cavity is scat. Grouse typically defecate before they begin to work their way out of the their snow cave.

If the snow isn’t deep enough–or soft enough–for a plunge, grouse rest in surface beds like the one shown in the photo below. On the right side of the photo you can see a hollowed out, grouse-body-sized depression. The usual scat pile sits in the bottom of the bed, and the tracks made by the bird as it walked away can be seen heading toward the left. The scat in the surface bed (and also in the snow cave in the preceding photos) is dry and fibrous, the type of scat produced from the grouse’s normal winter diet of buds, twigs, and catkins. But in the photo below there’s another kind of scat, lying roughly in the center. This wetter, softer scat is called caecal scat, and it’s produced when a grouse eats higher quality food, such as the cambium layer of woody plants. More nutritious food goes through an additional digestive process in specialized intestinal pouches called caeca.

I marvel at the adaptations that ruffed grouse–and other creatures–have for coping with the challenges of winter. And I love the way such behaviors become more real when when I can see and understand the actual evidence. It’s worth the effort to parse out the story and see what birds and animals really do to survive.