Reader Ed Kroc has sent some photos from Vancouver, British Columbia, as well as explanatory notes:
I wanted to pass along another set of photos, this time from Stanley Park. These guys are all common sights year round, but still great to observe. Enjoy!
The stylish, the striking, the flamboyant Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus). First the female, gliding along the top of Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park.
Then the male, atop a small pond nearby, sporting his black and white bouffant in a rather subdued position. Both sexes will raise or flatten these crests to express alarm or excitement, and they’ll also use them in their courtship displays. [JAC: This is a striking case of sexual dimorphism. But of course it’s not genetically based; the difference is a social construct that is culturally conditoned. 🙂 ]
(As a side note, the colour hasn’t been altered in these photos. The red pond effect was created by the sunlight streaking in at just the right angle through the flame red trees along Georgia Street. Right place, right time!)
A family of North American River Otters (Lontra canadensis) has moved into the lagoon runoff and has since been busy devouring a sizeable portion of the resident fish life. They catch their prey under water, but have to come to the surface to eat. The first picture is a bit grisly, but I love the satisfied expression mid-nom.
The next pictures show one of the otters enjoying the first (and maybe only?) snow of the season. After charging through some ice to get to shore just for the heck of it (he could have easily went around, but seemed to be quite entertained by continually cracking through it), he stood on the bank, looked around to ensure nobody was peeping (missed one!), and then took a few minutes to roll and twist through the snow. What fuzzy animal doesn’t love snow? Hell, I’d probably roll around in it too if I had such a thick and warm blanket of hair covering my body!
Finally, a bit of a self-indulgent photo. Really though, is there anything more beautiful than a male Wood Duck (Aix sponsa)? The patterns, the colours, the gaze: truly an amazing feat of sexual selection.
Finally, reader Joe, whose wife won the ticket to the New Yorker Cats vs. Dogs debate (and who didn’t meet me because he was sidetracked by Anthony Hutcherson’s Bengal cats!), sent me a picture of a white squirrel taken by his sister, along with the note:
Recently while helping a friend move my sister, Kelly, snapped a picture of a white squirrel with her iphone 5 through a car window and a fence. After sharing the picture on Facebook I asked her some questions about the picture, and said I knew of someone who would probably be interested in a higher resolution picture if she could get one. Turns out her friend is a budding photographer. They returned to the location and snapped another picture and sent me this message:“Hey Joey! This was taken today around noon in Arlington Mass. It was raining hard so the squirrel was a little wet. We got this photo in a panic before he ran around the corner. Kerry Mullaney took this photo with her Nikon d3100 camera with a 55-300mm lens. 300 mm. ISO 1400. 1/125 shutter. F5.6. No compensation or bracketing. It was pouring so the shot was a little rushed but it’s better than the iphone photo! :)”
I’ve cropped it so you can see the rodent better:
As Joe pointed out, this squirrel is not albino, but has leucism, a genetically-determined loss of skin and fur pigment. It is seen in many animals (see the Wikipedia page for pictures of leucistic species), and is distinguished from true albinism (also genetic) because albinos also lack eye pigment, and so have pink eyes. This squirrel, as you can see, has regular black eyes, and also a touch of brown on the head and tail, as leucism sometimes shows what we geneticists call “incomplete penetrance”: that is, the gene doesn’t affect every bit of skin or fur on the animal. And white squirrels also show “variable expressivity”: animals that are identical in genetic constitution at a leucism gene (more than one gene can cause the condition) can nevertheless show different amounts of whitening.
How white squirrels survive in the wild is a mystery (they’re easy targets for predators), but a website on white squirrels claims that some of the several U.S. towns claiming to be “the home of white squirrels” actually trap and remove (or maybe kill!) the darker ones to keep up the town’s name. That’s odious.
UPDATE: Reader Todd has sent another photo of a white squirrel:
Hey, white squirrels abound in our town of Bowling Green, Ky. My wife has become somewhat obsessed with them because the University of Louisville (where she got her PhD) had albino squirrels on campus, and Western Kentucky University (where she now teaches) also has white squirrels . . . which are not albino. Here is a picture of one that was in our backyard. There are several in our neighborhood.
Gorgeous Stanley Park pics, Ed! Makes me want to head on out there. Great white squirrel, too, Joe.
Yes I love the reflection in the water & the second one is candy cane-y!
Quote: “several U.S. towns claiming to be “the home of white squirrels” actually trap and remove (or maybe kill!) the darker ones to keep up the town’s name. That’s odious.”
“Odious”, perhaps, or at least unpleasant to contemplate (from the gray squirrel’s point of view), but isn’t is just “natural selection” at its most raw? We are part of nature, too, as you often point out.
Being “cute” is a pretty good survival trait during the anthropocene.
Artificial selection is, of course, a special case of Natural Selection. So was the Final Solution, but that didn’t make it a good idea.
Hubristic, entitled and solipsistic, as well as odious. Political and “boosterish.” H.L. Mencken brilliantly critiqued this phenomenon, one aspect of “Amuricun Exceptionalism.”
I gather that “cuteness” or magnificence hasn’t done elephants, whales, etc. much good.
We’ve got a few white squirrels here in Richmond, Va., too, but all the ones I’ve seen are true albinos, with the pink eyes.
Once, a while back, hawks set up shop in the area, and you didn’t see a white squirrel for several years. Of course, the albinism trait has to be fairly rampant in the grey squirrel population of the area. (I think, if I recall correctly, that albinism follows Mendelevian genetics, i.e., the dominant/recessive trait bit. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.)
The spouse gives all the white squirrels in the area special names. The current squirrel is named Snowflake and seems to be doing well.
Seagulls have returned to Richmond in the last couple of weeks. They seem to have a special affinity for taco chips. Just FYI.
Once again I am transfixed by the artistic effects of animals amidst the ripples of reflecting water. Its like looking at a Dali painting while on acid. Not that I know…😗
I wonder if white animals are more common in urban/suburban areas due to lower predation. Of course that assumes lower predation since some predators do pretty well in human settings.
Otters are awesome.
I have seen the occasional white squirrel in North Carolina.
Nice pics all around, and thanks for sharing them.
I can understand why we have none of the white squirrels, however we have lots of black ones. The predators from above are many. We don’t have rabbits any longer for the same reason. You have to go into town to see any chance of a rabbit.
I was just in Palo Alto, California, and many of the squirrels there are also black. They also looked chunkier than gray squirrels, so I am not sure if they are a color phase of that species or are some distinct endemic western squirrel species. Anybody know?
We have mostly black squirrels in southwest BC too. They are a melanistic morph of the Eastern Grey Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis). It’s like leucism in reverse! (Or is it more like albinism in reverse? I’m not sure….)
The water effects in the first two Merganser pics are stupendous (esp. the male). So much of great photography is being in the right place at the right time. Nice water droplets on the wood duck, featuring the oily feather’s ability to wick water. The 2nd otter pic depicts a regal looking specimen.
I’ve only seen albino squirrels, never one with leucism. Very cool.
Great pictures, everyone!
Love the river otters! How sweet to see such close-ups!
Also–two very cute squirrels. 🙂