Today! Truth is, both Lightning and Rocky are frantically licking the same treat placed on the tree by the Animals Keepers, but they had me going for a minute or two. Please read on. Ranger Rock spotted two Red-shouldered Hawks either passing an object between one another, or placing sticks on a potential nest. I’d heard the birds calling from that location just minutes before but passed it off as simply red-shouldereds doing what red-shouldereds do, making a lot ofRead more
Posts filed in: Mammals
Who’s out and about?
Some turtles… Read about Chip here. A Mallard… A squirrel… A land bird… And speaking of fox… And that’s it! Stay tuned, more to come.Read more
Smartweed
Last week I tweeted about a Canada Goose apparently eating smartweed in the Wetlands. I also mentioned that not many creatures will eat the pungent weed. Other then a few caterpillars, the Smartweed Caterpillar (Acronicta oblinita) and the Tobacco budworm (Heliothis virescens), I personally haven’t witnessed much in the way of smartweed consumption among our fauna (there seems to be a caterpillar adapted to eating just about every plant in existence). There’s little doubt that many creatures use smartweed for cover, shelterRead more
Of Red Wolves
The photo above was taken on Friday, February 17, 2012 at 11:00 AM. The photo below was taken on Friday, February 15, 2013 at 10:54 AM. If you don’t know what’s going on in the photos, the wolves are mating, or rather, have already mated and waiting for the swelling to go down before they separate, which is normal. The timing of this mating is interesting and may give us a clue as to when to look for this behavior inRead more
What comes out on warm nights?
Bats! Tuesday and Wednesday of last week were exceptionally warm days with mild nights. It was apparently warm enough to awaken some of the local bats. I wasn’t at the Museum to witness bats actually flying over the campus on either of those nights but Ranger Rock spotted one floating in the Sail Boat Pond on Thursday morning. The bat, unfortunately, was not alive. How had this bat ended up in the water? I can’t say for sure but IRead more
Killer Kitties?
That’s not my title. It’s the title, or at least part of the title, of an NPR interview on All Things Considered. I happened to be listening to NPR on the radio on the drive home the other day. An animal ecologist, Pete Marra, from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute was being interviewed about a study he and colleagues of his had recently conducted. The study was focused on determining how many animals are killed in the states each year by us,Read more
Squirrel wounds
The squirrel above was at the bird feeders. The wound, which appears to be rather fresh, didn’t seem to bother the squirrel as it went about feeding. But I suppose that there’s not much the squirrel could do even if it did bother the varmint except lick the wound. I guess the question is, how did the squirrel get the injury? If it were earlier in the year I might suggest that it was a warble that the squirrel keptRead more
What’s that sound?!
Why, it’s 1414 howling! If you’re lucky enough to be in Explore the Wild when the wolves start to howling you’ll get quite a thrill. It’s both thrilling and chilling to experience these wolves doing what they used to do in the wild many years ago throughout the Southeast. The only place in these parts that you can experience Red Wolves howling nowadays, without treking out to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern North Carolina, is right here at theRead more
Another winter update, w/wolf on the side
Hazel Alder, which grows on the north side of the Wetlands, typically blooms in February. It looks as though it’ll be right on time. There are both male catkins and female flowers (small reddish spikes at top of photo) forming on the plants. The fertilized flowers will become tiny “cones” which look very much like miniature pine cones. Over at Bird Viewing (the feeders) I saw a couple of Red-breasted Nuthatches after not seeing them for several weeks. And, aRead more