History, Natural History & the Arts
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has reminded New Yorkers to appreciate wildlife from a safe distance and resist the urge to touch or pick up newborn fawns and other young wildlife.
Human contact with wildlife can carry unintended consequences detrimental to the creatures people intend to help. [Read more…] about Leave Wildlife Alone: If You Care, Leave It There
Around the time spring flowers are blooming and migrating songbirds are arriving, the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation starts receiving calls concerning fox sightings in and around rural and suburban areas.
Red fox are small furbearers, typically 10 -12 lbs., about the size of a house cat. During the spring, fox seek out den sites to raise their young (kits). Sometimes, for homeowners, these den sites are not in ideal locations, including under sheds and porches. [Read more…] about Red Fox Dens in Suburban Areas
Some people have life birds, species of birds they’ve waited their whole lives to see in the wild. I don’t have one of these, but I do have a life mole. I’ve been waiting to catch a glimpse of Condylura cristata, the star-nosed mole, ever since I learned about this animal during a small mammals course in graduate school.
Can you imagine a palm-sized mole whose pink, star-shaped nose contains 22 fleshy tentacle-like appendages, living right underfoot? [Read more…] about Star-Nosed Mole: A Nose That Knows
As the buds on hardwood trees and shrubs open and New York State’s forests again are cloaked in green, they provide our many herbivores with a welcome change in their diet.
While many plant eaters are able to subsist on woody buds and cellulose laden layers of inner bark throughout winter, leafy matter provides far greater levels of nourishment. The porcupine, a common denizen of the forest, is among our first order consumers of greens when they emerge in spring. [Read more…] about Porcupines And Their Need For Salt
As spring arrives, so do… bats? Like many other naturalists, I spend lots of time during this season looking for migrating salamanders and blossoming bloodroot.
I’ve never thought much about what bats are doing this time of year. It turns out these flying mammals, who retreated into hibernation back in the fall, are emerging from April through May, as the weather grows consistently warmer and insects again fill the air. [Read more…] about Bats Emerging From Hibernation
Over the past decade, the number of fishers taken by trappers has declined in the Central Adirondacks, and since the harvest is often proportional to abundance, there is a believed to be a population decline in this area as well. [Read more…] about Study Seeks To Answer Questions About Fisher Declines
Whenever the subject of fishers comes up, you hear they’re mean, nasty and vicious – a smaller wolverine with attitude. Fishers get a pretty bad rap, but when they do, there’s a great deal of projecting and anthropomorphizing going on.
Fishers aren’t mean or evil, and they don’t really eat many house cats at all. [Read more…] about Fishers And Their Bad Reputation
Beavers are the great architects of American ponds and streams. The North American beaver competes with the Eurasian beaver to be the 2nd largest rodent in the world, after another semi-aquatic mammal, the South American Capybara.
The average weight of a beaver in New York State is 42 lbs, though 60 pounders are not that unusual. Beavers have an average body length of 2 and ½ feet to 3 feet, and a flat swimming rudder tail of 8 to 14 inches. The tail doubles as a warning device, used to loudly slap the water when predators, dogs or people are sighted. [Read more…] about Beavers: Nature’s Architects and Engineers
Sometimes it pays to be an insomniac. One frigid winter night, I climbed out of my restless bed and slipped outside to stand under a sky littered with stars and take in the complete silence of darkness. Suddenly, a ruckus broke out along the edge of the pond near my home. A series of high-pitched yips echoed from the shore. A wild yapping answered from closer to my own yard. [Read more…] about Fox Calls: Yips, Shrieks, and Yaps