Maine Nature News
Vol. 6, no. 6, Tuesday, February 6, 2001
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Friday, February 2.
Old Town (Map 33) Somewhere near nine o'clock this morning, while
driving north on College Avenue Extension, I was delighted to see a barred owl
perched on a snow-laden hardwood limb that hung over the road. I pulled off the
road and was able to observe it only a few
moments before another vehicle approached, causing it to take flight and
disappear further into the woods. Before
it lifted its wings it gratified me by swiveling its head to glare down at me a
moment, briefly scrunching its head lower and blinking vacantly, as if to
dismiss me, in one fleeting moment, as nothing more than an ignorant nuisance.
Though it crossed the road barely 15 feet over the pavement,
the driver of the oncoming car was oblivious to its presence, enrapt with conversation on a cell phone. D.W.
Thursday, February 1. Pembroke (Map 27) Tried out my new cross country skis. My trail through the spruce and fir woods seemed so cozy in the summer, but now the snow-laden branches sag down and greatly impede my progress. The snow is about 20 inches deep with a light, brittle crust from Tuesday's rain about 6 inches down. My poles have the bigger baskets but still seem to sink almost to the ground making a distracting crackling noise going through the crust. Few animals are stirrin: no rabbits, deer or porcupines, only a couple of red squirrels. After an hour of considerable exertion I'm thoroughly drenched from sweat and snow and head home. F.G.
Saturday, February 3.
Medway (Map 43) On a snow shoe hike downstream on Hathaway Brook to its
confluence with the East Branch of the Penobscot River my wife and I began to
feel the effects of optical sensory deprivation.
Please accept my indulgence in hyperbolism because there's no other way
to better describe the experience. We
were re-opening a track I'd made a week or so earlier, staying on my
"float" and packing the 6 inches or so of the newest snow.
The most recent snows had heavied up near their conclusion, and the
boughs of every conifer and the horizontal limbs of most deciduous trees remain laden with snow.
The sky was a grayish white that bleached the green out of any visible
needles from fir, spruce, cedar and
hemlock. The air itself was eerie as it appeared almost foggy.
I say almost, because it was barely perceptible, but there nevertheless.
(I've seen the air like this a few times this winter, with the temperatures only
in the 20s. Quite unusual.) An almost spectral mist. We found
ourselves in a world of only black, white, and a hazy gray.
About half way to the river we suddenly saw up ahead a brilliant
sight! Scores of soft, bright
red berries on vines that embraced the bare trunks of stream-side alders.
We've never in our lives seen mere red berries bring such life to a
landscape! And we'd only been without color for a half hour or so! And
what a relief to our eyes it was! Unfortunately
I cannot identify the berries, though I've sometimes seen them before along
brooks and near ponds. (Last summer
when we on Allagash lake we saw some near the trail to the ice-caves but never
could positively identify them. They're about the size of green peas and somewhat
translucent. Whenever I've seen them, the vines seem to be at their vertical
limit at five or six feet. Any ideas what they are, please?)
After rounding a few more bends in the river my wife pointed out a sight I'd failed to notice when I'd been here last.
Two crystal "conks" on a young red maple, made of clear,
solid ice. As most rivers
and streams swelled last fall with the heavy rains, then froze over before the waters subsided, the banks are littered with thick ice chunks
and most trees along the banks still hold rings of ice
as evidence of the high water. The
conks we saw though, were worn smooth at the edges, giving them a
polished look.
Just as we were reaching the river our dog, who at that point was leading the way, abruptly stopped and began rooting through
the snow. After zeroing in, Misha
started digging excitedly, so we
went over to see what she'd found. Under
approximately 20 inches of snow she'd found
what appeared to be the skin of a dead mouse or mole, a slate-gray scrap
no bigger than a Zippo lighter frozen into the cold ground. The nape of its fur couldn't have been more than an eighth of
an inch. Our Misha is a spoiled domestic canine and yet she found such a
thing as she was trotting by! Imagine
what foxes and coyotes are capable
of smelling when they're fighting to survive.
Such reminders are what our Nature outings
are all about, I guess. D.W.
Sunday, February 4. Orono (Map 23) While raking snow off the roof I saw, in miniature, something akin to the conditions of snow on mountain slopes. First, the story of all the season's precipitation falls could be seen in the cleanly cut layers exposed by the slice of the snow rake: powder, ice, sleet, etc. Next, I could see that the lowest layers of snow had begun to granulate -- taking on a consistency like sugar -- as does the old snow in mountain accumulations. Finally, I tried to cause "avalanches." But this seems to require two things: enough loose snow to precipitate a cascade of snow below it, and a sufficiently steep slope to keep the momentum. My roof was marginal for both these conditions. Anyway, it gave me some amusement as I set about this chore. F.W.
Monday, February 5. Fort
Kent (Map 68) Little Black Lake. We
haven't had any substantial snowfall since December 20, and
I cannot recall having seen so little of the white stuff (20") on the
ground this time of the year. This is particularly noteworthy because we have
not had a thaw since Dec. 15. We have, however, had many snowy days and nights
throughout January and early February . However, only one of them,
occurring a couple of days ago when we got about 3 inches, exceeded the range of
less than one to at most two inches.
And each of the many times it snowed a little,
what came down was of such a
light, fluffy nature that it added little to the total depth once compacted by
gravity, wind, sun, and subsequent snowfall.
However, I am not complaining. Instead of wielding my snow scoop for
hours after each snowfall, I was able to spent almost all of my days exploring the wintry landscape on the ice along our lakeshore or in the
hills, fields and woods of our lake's watershed.
It was the hills that beckoned today. My first discovery was a fox
trail with two pieces of scat that, following my examination,
are p lying next to me as I am writing. Having fully thawed out, they
are now beginning to exude the "mild musty odor" described by my
Rezendes tracking guide. Actually, I would be willing to argue the mild part.
The smell is beginning to insult my
nose, and think I will have to move the scats
to our garbage pail. Anyway, all it really is, is an elongated hair ball,
a little less than 3/4 inch in diameter and some two inches long. One end
is blunt and the other one tapering
to something that looks like a small pointed paintbrush. When teasing
the scat apart, I noticed that it consisted entirely of hair, all
amazingly neatly aligned, with no sign of any bones. This, according to my guidebook, is
typical of red fox scat, but can also be found in coyotes. However, bone
fragments do occur at times, less frequently and smaller in size in the case of
red foxes, more frequently and larger
in case of coyotes with
their stronger jaws. The main difference, however,
is the diameter of the scat.
According to my guidebook, if it is 3/4 inch or more, it is most likely to be
from a coyote. If 5/8 inches or less, red fox is the better guess. But, as
so often in case of wildlife
trails, the lines between different, especially related,
species are not clearly drawn. There is some overlap in the scat
diameters of foxes and coyotes, so, to be sure,
one must look at multiple indicators.
In my case, given the more fox-like trail and the diameter being
just under 3/4 inch, my vote goes to the fox. Another thing that caught my
attention was an about 15 feet tall beech with sun-bleached yellow leaves intact
and all trembling in unison with
sharp, short motions like the hands
of an old person. Framed by the dark, leafless
and totally motionless trees that surrounded it, and accompanied by a loud
rustling sound, this made for quite an unusual experience.
Also unusual was that, for the first time this winter, my snowshoe
trail had been used extensively by snowshoe hares. I had previously reported
that while many of their trails crossed mine, it was rare that any
followed it for more than a few feet. The difference this time was really
striking. My only explanation, or better guess, is
that the two inches or so of loose new snow that covered my trail must
have been more to the hares' liking
than a more compacted trail. Could it be that they didn't like the odor of my
snowshoes? It was, of course, now well hidden under the snow. Or did it
perhaps just take some time for the furry snowshoe runners to discover the
advantages of a packed trail? How much I wish I could ask them! Finally, I would
like to express some gratitude to foxes and coyotes for marking overblown and
almost obliterated portions of my customary trail with their footprints. Even
when their tracks, made when the new snow was not yet as deep, were partially
covered, they were quite visible and thus often the only guidance I had in my
efforts to maintain the trail after windy or snowy days and nights. E.T.
This report was sent by our correspondent R.K. from Phippsburg, who is in Connecticut for the season
Thursday, February 1. Hello
from Connecticut: I have been
interested in following the Maine happenings, especially since we are doing a
lot of tracking down here. Mostly
it is rabbit, deer, squirrel and mice but we have also recently seen tracks of
opossum and raccoon. The latter
left trenches in plowing thru the snow! We
also puzzle over fox, dog and coyote tracks.
I did read in a book on Fox that it is a good rule of "thumb"
(!) to use what the author calls a "two finger rule", i.e. if the
track accommodates two fingers it is a fox; if three fingers fit it is a coyote.
In a picture, this measurement was made with the fingers tucked under
with the knuckles pointing forward in the track.
Just an idea......
The other thing I wanted to share was a bit
of descriptive writing that sort of fits with the questions about animals that
tunnel under the snow. Jean George
in Snow Is To Live With writes: "The most fascinating use to which
snow has been put by the creatures of the wild is its development as cities.
Under the snow are millions of rooms, tunnels and roadways - drilled,
packed, dug and bitten there by wintering animals, until a cross section of a
week-old snowstorm would look like Swiss Cheese.
For, to almost every animal that digs in the ground, here is a medium
just as warm, just as safe, but one which can be tunneled and carved with a nose
or a hot breath. To the
hard-digging beasts of the earth it is a glorious relief.... Mice, shrews,
weasels and otters all carve roads and rooms beneath the snow.
The star-nosed mole makes cloverleaves and roller coasters, turnpikes and
apartments --and he does it faster than anyone."
Have fun!
R.K.
Winter lights
Looking up these
winter evenings, does it appear to you as if the very brightest sky objects all
fall into a line? This is actually true. If one could see the
Solar System from the side, it would be apparent that all the planets and most
of their satellites, orbit the Sun in approximately the same plane as the
Earth's orbit. The projection of this plane onto the sky is a circle
called the "ecliptic." The constellations behind this virtual
circle are the famous Zodiac (Aries, Taurus, etc.) This is a good time to see
this, with the Moon and the bright planets now visible, Venus, Jupiter and
Saturn all anchoring the effect.
Be sure to look for phenomena around the Moon caused by high clouds
containing ice crystals, notably the "moonbow" and other subtly
colored displays.
Please share your observations with the Maine Nature News.
E-mail: menature@maine.edu
Thank you.