Outside My Window

There’s not much time left to prepare for winter, especially if you’re a chipmunk.

Eastern Chipmunks don’t hibernate and they don’t even fatten up in autumn like groundhogs.  Instead they stash a winter’s worth of food in their underground burrows where they live from late October to early March (in Pennsylvania) in periodic bouts of torpor.

Torpor is a short period of lowered body temperature and metabolism which conserves energy when it’s cold.  For chipmunks the length of torpor is highly variable.  They wake up throughout the winter to eat and even come out to forage if the weather’s nice.

Busy, busy, busy!  The chipmunks haven’t disappeared underground in the Pittsburgh area yet but their deadline is fast approaching.  To expedite their task they can pack up to 32 beech nuts in their cheeks before heading home.  Once there, they store the food in various chambers in their elaborate burrows which extend as much as 33 feet long and three feet below the surface.  Quite a palace.

I can imagine a chipmunk returning home at this time of year and inspecting the cupboard.  Do I have enough food yet?  Is the weather still good enough to go out and get more?  Is it time to stay home and sleep?

In the next week or two a cold front will come through, the weather will turn nasty and the chipmunks will pack it in.  Then we’ll have to wait for a sunny winter day to see them again.

(photo by Brian Herman)

For more than a week my husband and I have heard a mysterious hoarse barking in our neighborhood at night, sometimes behind our house, sometimes at the ballpark across the street.  It’s usually three to ten short hoarse barks, then it stops for a while and starts up again in another location.  The first time I heard it, it woke me at 4:00am.  I lay frozen in bed, listening.  There’s a wild thing outside!

We live in a city neighborhood where the houses are five feet apart and the backyards are 600-700 square feet so wild things are unusual, even startling, where we live.  I’ve seen birds and raccoons and groundhogs.  But larger animals?  No.  We don’t even have deer on my street.

Every night we hear the barking.  It starts as early as 8:30pm and it’s quite loud.  The neighbors turn on their outdoor lights and peer out into the darkness.  We talk about it at the bus stop, “Did you hear it last night?  What is it?”

In the beginning I ruled out red fox because I’d heard one bark in Maine and this sound is not nearly so creepy, but Wednesday night the barking was very close and downright annoying.  I had to know so I searched online again and found this excellent video of a ”Vixen Barking.”  Aha!

Thursday morning she called from the wooded gully across the street an hour before dawn.  I watched from my front porch as one housecat, then another, scurried from the woods to the houses next door.  She barked again, half a block away, then crossed the street and I saw her silhouetted by the streetlight.  A fox!  Very cool. 

Why is she in my neighborhood and how long will this barking go on?  I found those answers online, too. 

• Foxes like places that have high prey populations, especially rabbits.  We have lots of squirrels and this summer a bumper crop of rabbits. 
• Foxes bark to claim territory.  Unlike distress or fighting sounds of other animals, foxes repeat the call to get the message across. 
• Foxes pair for life but the family stays together only during the breeding season.  At this time of year the families split up and the young foxes are finding new places to live.  Our fox may be new to the area.
• The barking will certainly end by the next breeding season – probably much sooner.  Just to prove the point she was silent last night.

Mystery solved.

(photo from the National Park Service via Wikimedia, in the public domain)

Last night I was awake at 1:00am when I heard a metal clang in the backyard.  It sounded suspiciously like our squirrel-proof metal bird feeder.  I almost ignored it and went back to bed but the sound made me curious. 

The moon was full and bright.  It lit the back yard but not the place under the trees where the feeders are located.  I crept downstairs.

From the kitchen window it was still too dark to see the feeders so I turned on the backyard light. 

Aha!  The metal feeder was askew, tilted so that all the seed had fallen out. 

It took me a long time to notice that the thieves were still there.  Two raccoons were meticulously searching the ground, eating the fallen seed.  Their keen noses could smell the treasures the squirrels had buried and they were digging holes to retrieve them. 

This morning my bird bath is muddy (they wash their food), the feeder is empty and the backyard looks like it was bombed by small explosives.  My only consolation is that the damage is light.  If I lived in the country, it could have been a bear.  (Click on the picture to see a bear in Marcy’s Cunkelman’s backyard in Indiana County.)

(raccoon photo by Chuck Tague; bear photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

September isn’t the best time of year to hear wildlife.  The birds have stopped singing and a lot of animals are quiet as they prepare for winter. 

Not this guy, though.  He’s as loud as can be when he’s worried and my presence in his woods worries him. 

I’m out on a peaceful hike.  There’s no noise in the woods.  I’m looking at the ground, watching my step over roots and rocks when, Yikes!   A red squirrel shouts right above me and I nearly jump out of my skin.  As soon as he’s startled me, he subsides into a long, scolding chatter.   He flicks his tail and stamps his feet.  He is mad!

Red squirrels are highly territorial – even aggressive.  They scold other red squirrels just as much as they scold me.  I’ve even heard one scold a goshawk - a dangerous feat if there ever was one!  I’m not sure what advantage it gives these guys to be noisy around danger, but maybe they just have so much attitude that they don’t know how to shut it off.

This red squirrel sure “got” me.  He had my heart pounding until I figured out what he was.  There might be a louder animal in Maine at another time of year but for an all-around noisy, brash animal you can’t beat this tyke.  I give him the Loudest Animal award.

(photo by Chuck Tague)

Have you noticed more rabbits than usual in your neighborhood?  I have.  It seems they’re really thriving in the city lately.

And they’re thriving in Indiana County, too.  Marcy Cunkelman was wondering why her flowers were missing their heads.  Then she caught this guy in the act.  Click the photo to see.

Very cute, but… !

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Since I live in the City of Pittsburgh I believe I live far from Nature and have to leave town to see it.  Meanwhile, my city neighborhood has quietly gone wild. 

I shouldn’t be surprised at this.  Fifty years ago Pittsburgh was very smoky and housed 680,000 people inside the city boundaries (which end at Ross, Wilkinsburg, Dormont and Crafton).  Today it is not visibly smoky and the city population is about 300,000. 

There’s lots of room for wildlife as I am finding out.  The critters have been especially noticable this month … “in your face” if you ask me.

It started with the squirrels who’ve become very bold and more numerous as the month progressed.  The extra squirrels are newbies who were probably led to my feeders by their mother.  Now they lounge, play and fight in my backyard - and periodically try to break the bird feeder.

We have raccoons.  They live across the street and come out at night to dig up my garden and wash their hands in the bird bath.  I am really annoyed at the damage they’ve done to my front garden and I fear they may be eating eggs and baby birds as they did at Marcy Cunkelman’s a few days ago.  My neighbor suggested red pepper as a way to discourage their digging.  Marcy suggests removing the raccoon.  She’s going to trap hers because he’s systematically eating every baby bird in her yard.  Grrrr!

If I had a vegetable garden I’d be angry with the rabbits and groundhogs too.  Yesterday a rabbit strolled into my backyard and ate all the dandelion leaves.  This is good!   The groundhogs have stayed across the street because I have nothing interesting for them to eat.

And the most surprising find … a toad on my neighbor’s steps at dawn on May 1.  I have never heard frogs or toads singing in the city so it’s a wonder that this one showed up.  Maybe the day will come when I hear spring peepers at home.  Now that would be amazing!

(photo of an American Toad by Chuck Tague)

Who is this bright-eyed visitor at Marcy Cunkelman’s feeder in Indiana County?

For starters he is very, very cute. With large, beautiful eyes he is so small you can hold him in the cup of your hand. He has soft gray-brown fur on his back and a white belly. His body is flattened and he has a fold of skin from his wrists to his ankles. Even his tail is flat so he can steer effectively.

He’s nocturnal, shy and gentle unlike his distant cousins who damaged my bird feeder. And finally, his Latin name Glaucomys volans means “graymouse flying.”

By now I’m sure you’ve guessed he’s a flying squirrel. I’ve done some guessing too – that he’s a southern, as opposed to northern, flying squirrel – based on their relative abundance in Indiana County (fewer northerns) and the type of forest near Marcy’s house (the kind southerns prefer). To really identify this guy I must see his size and color, neither of which I can tell from this picture.

Flying squirrels live in mature forests with abundant oaks, hickories and beeches. Their main foods are nuts and fruits. Like all squirrels they store food for the winter and can hardly wait for spring. Soon they’ll be munching on tree buds – a favorite delicacy – as well as blossoms, mushrooms, eggs, nestlings (oh no!) and even maple sap. They are so omnivorous they’ll even eat carrion.

Their principle means of travel is by gliding from tree to tree – almost, but not quite, flying. They climb high, bob their heads to judge distance and take off. Sailing with arms and legs outstretched they look like kites, then land back feet first on the target tree. Click here to see a video of this action.

Flying squirrels nest in tree cavities that they line with shredded bark, leaves and grass. They normally have several nests located in abandoned woodpecker holes: a primary nest that they use the most and others that are havens when the first one is threatened. The nests must have small entrance holes 1.6″ to 2″ in diameter or else gray squirrels take them over.

This month and next the flying squirrels will produce their first of two annual litters containing three or four young. Their newborns are hairless and helpless with closed eyes and ears. In seven weeks they reach adult size and are weaned. By the Fourth of July Marcy will have several more flying squirrels in her area and perhaps at her feeder.

I have never seen a flying squirrel – my city neighborhood doesn’t have the right habitat – but it pays to watch your feeders at dusk. Maybe you’ll have a night visitor.

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

This is not to start a topic on cats but I do want to crow that my cat Emmalina is now a star on WQED’s Pets page that just went up today.  She’s #13 & #14 in the gallery if you click “view slideshow” on this page. 

Here she is, looking unusually pensive.  (photo by Kate St. John)

p.s. You can send WQED your pet’s photos from the Pets page.

While I was at work yesterday The Squirrel destroyed part of my expensive new bird feeder. 

I bought it because the squirrels had eaten my old wooden ground feeder and gnawed its wire pigeon-proof cover into sharp thin tines.  The new feeder is all metal and has a spring-loaded perch so that when a heavy bird (pigeon) or a squirrel stands on it the cover closes and hides the bird seed. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t mind if the squirrels eat some seed but I have to deter them or they wolf down everything.  They’ve enjoyed my largesse to the point that I now have five of them sparring over access to the peanuts in my “No Mess Mix.”

So I thought I was safe and felt really, really smart when I brought home this crafty feeder. 

If I was a squirrel however, I would have noticed that the most important component – the perch – was made of wood.

Last evening I found the situation pictured above.  The feeder was missing its perch, the perch was in bits on the ground and The Squirrel was picking through the bits eating the seeds he’d knocked out of the feeder. 

As I investigated I discovered he didn’t do this without personal sacrifice.  He left behind one of his claws in the closed cover.  Ow!  I’ve noticed that the normal rodent (squirrel) reaction to being stuck anywhere is to chew one’s way out of it, so the perch might have been an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire. 

I couldn’t leave the feeder without a perch.  The birds were milling around trying to figure out how to eat when there was nowhere to stand, so I found a dowel among the wood scraps in the basement and taped it in place. 

This will have to do until I can construct a better solution.  Maybe the manufacturer supplies replacement perches at Wild Birds Unlimited.  I can’t be the first person who has The Squirrel in her back yard.

(photo by Kate St. John)

Last night it snowed then sleeted then rained.  It’s still raining, but so cold it’s turning to ice.

This morning I looked out the back window to see how the bird feeders were doing and found a network in the snow. 

What’s this?  I went out to investigate. 

All the lines originated from a hole under the sidewalk and grew outward like a tree toward the bird feeder.  Subnivean mouse trails! 

Subnivean means “under the snow.”  The mouse came out last night and tunneled to the feeders.  Under the snow he stayed warm and relatively safe from predators while he munched down on fallen seed.  Until today I didn’t even know he lived there because his trails in powdery snow aren’t as visible, but this morning the ice and rain made his tunnel roof transparent.  Way cool!

Many animals live under the snow all winter.   If you click on the photo, you’ll see a diagram of subnivean life in the arctic.  Here in Pittsburgh we don’t have snow cover all winter so the activity is intermittent. 

Want to hear more?  Here’s an audio story from New Hampshire Public Radio.

(photo by Kate St. John… using my cell phone.)