Category: Honorary cats

Readers’ wildlife photos

April 23, 2020 • 8:00 am

Today we have part 2 of physicist/origami master Robert Lang‘s series of photos from his California studio (part 1 is here). Robert’s notes and IDs are indented.

Continuing my series of photos shot over the last year from my studio in Altadena, California, on the edge of the Angeles National Forest.

A Western Fence Lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis— see comments below) Southern Alligator Lizard (Elgaria multicarinata). These are all over the place up here, but they’re both fast and skittish, so it’s hard to get a good picture. This one had found its way into a  large copper kettle on the porch, and the smooth sides of the interior prevented its escape. (Once I got the picture, I tipped it over and let him scram.)

And now, the mammals. On the small side, we have what I think is a Brush Rabbit (Sylvilagus bachmani). We also have Audubon’s Cottontail (Sylvilagus audubonii) in and near Altadena, but we’re up in the chaparral at about 1900’ elevation, which is more Brush Rabbit territory. Hard to tell by sight: they look pretty much alike.

Where you have rodents and lagomorphs you have predators, and I get regular visits from several. Coyotes (Canis latrans) are very common up in the chaparral, like this one below. They also range far down into suburban Altadena, where they help control the population of feral and outdoor cats (sorry!), to the benefit of suburban bird life.

About 20 minutes after the coyote wandered through, a Bobcat (Lynx rufus) also stopped by.  It paused to sniff the California Sagebrush (Artemisia californica), which does have a lovely fragrance, but I suspect it was sniffing more for “Coyote” (or other critters) than for the aroma of the plant itself.

A less common canine visitor is the Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus). I’ve only seen a few of these in back. They’re delicate little things, very wary.

In the definitely not-wary department, I get tons of California Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus californicus), especially during the Fall dry season, when it’s not uncommon to get multiple visits per day, and in the Spring, when the acorns are falling.

Two young deer in Spring, admiring the origami:

During the fall rut. That’s a dominant buck, sticking close to his doe. A couple of smaller bucks were also hanging around nearby, not getting too close (the buck chased them away), but still sticking close, presumably looking for an opening.

And a close-up of the big guy.

Readers’ wildlife

February 15, 2020 • 8:00 am

We have contributions from two readers today. The first is a stunning leucistic pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), with the photo taken by Peter Thornquist and sent in by his friend, reader Gregory.

The bird is the subject of an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (click on screenshot),

An excerpt:

The leucistic pileated Thornquist photographed Saturday was a male, an identification made possible by the red slash along its bill. Females of the species have a red crown only.

Thornquist said he’s only seen a pileated woodpecker in Milwaukee County three times, and each was leucistic. He believes it’s been the same individual.

The distinctive bird may have been spotted by others in southeastern Wisconsin in recent years, too.

A leucistic pileated has been reported at Cedarburg Bog in Saukville, Mequon Nature Preserve in Mequon and Schiltz Audubon Center in Bayside, according to local birders.

Given its call, appearance and behaviors, if it stays in the area it will likely continue to be observed.

Is it possible the male pileated has been traveling widely looking for a mate?

“If that’s true, I hope he finds one,” Thornquist said. “It would be great to have a family of them gracing the Milwaukee River corridor.”

And today we’ll finish the batch of animals photographed by reader David Hughes on a trip to India. Wild felids! David’s email to me with this group was called “And now your favourite animals”. (His first two sets of photos are here and here.)

And now your favourite animals….

 

Squirrel: The Indian giant squirrel (Ratufa indica), photographed in Satpura Tiger Reserve. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but this is not far short of a metre long from nose to tail tip. It’s a southern Indian species which reaches its northernmost range limit around Satpura, so it’s used as the emblem of the park.

JAC: I added a picture from Wikipedia because I didn’t know these squirrels existed. Look at that tail!!

 

Jungle cat (Felis chaus), photographed on a late-evening drive in Satpura. About the size of a domestic cat, and with a similar taste for mice and small birds.

 

Leopard (Panthera pardus), Pench Tiger Reserve: Of course, it’s the big cats that everyone really wants to see. Leopards are still widespread across much of India, but very elusive, so it’s a real thrill to see one. This individual was perched on a rocky outcrop, enjoying its latest kill, a spotted deer. The photo was taken with my longest lens through a veil of leaves and branches, so it’s not the best quality. The forested terrain makes it hard to get good views and photos of animals, compared with the more open environment of your typical African park.

Tiger (Panthera tigris): and finally, the most sought-after species of all. On my tour we saw tigers in Pench and Kanha, but drew a blank in Satpura. None of the sightings were particularly long duration, or close-range, but they’re still memorable. This is a tigress seen on an early-morning drive in Kanha. The park rangers monitor the tiger population by camera-trapping, and know all the resident adults as individuals. This tigress is T32, the “Umarjhola female”. She was born in mid-2011, so would have been around 7.5 years old when photographed.

Central Park squirrel census

January 11, 2020 • 7:45 am

Because of a paucity of readers’ wildlife photos (I do have some, so if you sent them have patience), I’m deferring posting those till tomorrow, replacing them with a SQUIRREL CENSUS post by Greg:

by Greg Mayer

We’ve long been fans of squirrels here at WEIT, and so I was quite pleased to come across the following item in the New York Times, a combination of text, audio, video, and stills, on a census of the gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) in Central Park. (Be sure to have the sound on for the squirrel vocalizations.)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/08/nyregion/central-park-squirrel-census.html?

And it’s not just because it’s squirrels– it’s the location, too. Research takes me every year or two to the American Museum of Natural History, which is located on Central Park West between 77th and 81st Streets, and I often walk across to Central Park to have lunch, where I enjoy the wildlife, including the squirrels. Mike Klemens of the American Museum did a herpetological inventory of Central Park, which I’ve remarked upon here at WEIT (the only herps I’ve ever seen are turtles in Turtle Pond), so I’m glad to see the squirrels get their due.

The Times also had two earlier articles about the start of the census, here

and here:

Going through the multimedia piece on the results of the inventory, I noticed this photo. . .

Screenshot_2020-01-09 There are 2,373 squirrels in Central Park I know because I helped count them .png

. . . of a melanistic squirrel in the Park. This is interesting for two reasons. First, I didn’t know there were black squirrels in Central Park—I’ve never seen one. (In New York City, “black squirrels” are a color form of the gray squirrel; in other places, the “black squirrels” may be fox squirrels, Sciurus niger.) Second, it shows that the black squirrels are not all blacks (sorry, New Zealand!), but usually have some reddish color in them. In the one above, the belly is quite extensively reddish; in black squirrels I’ve gotten close enough to see, there’s usually some red color on the back, although their appearance depends on the lighting; and from a distance they may appear all black.

I was hoping to look at the report of the squirrel census to see the prevalence and distribution of the black squirrels (as well as to find other fun squirrel facts), but was disappointed to find that the report will cost you $75! But, a single ring chart was visible on the census website—in a copy of the report opened to show what you would be paying for—and this chart shows that there were 140 black squirrels out of 3938 squirrels whose color was recorded: a frequency of 3.56%. (There’s also mention of a more common “cinnamon” morph, but I’m not convinced that’s a distinct morph.)

The Times piece also provided some bits of data. From the following figure, I was able to determine that of 2969 squirrels with a known color depicted, 103 were black, for 3.47%. (The “white” squirrels in the figure, 54 of them, are actually blanks—squirrels with no color data recorded. The pie chart had 74 such missing-data squirrels.)

Screenshot_2020-01-09 2 There are 2,373 squirrels in Central Park I know because I helped count them .jpg

I’m not sure why there are 3023 squirrels total in the Times‘ figure, but 4012 in the ring chart, but the two estimates of the prevalence of the black phase, 3.56 and 3.47%, are very close. It’s no wonder then, that the handful of squirrels I would see during my Central park rambles would not include any black ones.

In a nice “squirrel map” of all the sightings in Central Park in the Times piece, there are about 3 or 4 black squirrels recorded in the part of the park between the American Museum and the Turtle Pond, so they do occur there, but, again, at low frequency, so no surprise I haven’t seen them.

(Here are some earlier WEIT posts on color polymorphism in squirrels.)

Spot the owl!

October 20, 2018 • 7:45 am

Stephen Barnard sent a “spot the. . .” photo from Idaho, and in it, somewhere, lurks an owl (I don’t know the species, but I’ll ask). Click on the photo to enlarge it (twice to make it really big), and I’ll post a reveal at noon Chicago time.

This one ranks as “medium”, but please do not reveal in the comments where it is. If you found it, just note that.

Readers’ wildlife photos (and video)

August 20, 2018 • 7:45 am

Today Bruce Lyon, an ecologist and evolutionist at UC Santa Cruz, graces us again with a nice science-and-photo post—his final contribution on owls (Honorary Cats™). Bruce’s words are indented. Don’t miss his remarkable frogmouth video at the bottom!

Here is a third batch of owl photos and natural history to follow on the previous two owl posts (here and here) from a couple of weeks ago. (Note that ‘owl post’ also refers to mail delivery in Harry Potter novels—owls deliver the mail). Today I focus on Spotted Owls, why they are threatened, and why some owls have ear tufts and others do not.

This spring I was also lucky enough to see Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis) in three different locations in California. Spotted Owls live in old growth coniferous forest in the western part of North America and they are threatened in much their range.

Below: A female Spotted Owl roosting in late afternoon near Yosemite Park in California. The pair’s territory was in a lovely patch of mixed forest with some huge oaks, madrone, cedars and Douglas firs. I was able to sex the owls by differences in their calls.

Below: The male was roosting about 30 feet from the female.

Below: As evening approached, the male started waking up and he did several wing stretches. Many birds do these wing stretches prior to activity when they have been sitting for a long period of time—I assume it is like an athlete warming up.

Below. The photos of the male owl revealed the asymmetry of plumage markings on his face, particularly the brown facial disk and spots that separate the sides of the disk above the eyes. I find this asymmetry interesting because the ear openings are also asymmetric in some owls—I wondered if these two asymmetries are linked. I found a paper with measures of the degree of ear asymmetry for a few owl species but when I compared these measures to photographs of owl faces from the Internet, I could not see any link between ear and plumage asymmetry. The top photo is a normal photo that shows the right-left asymmetry in plumage markings; the lower photo is a Photoshopped fake that shows what perfect symmetry would look like for comparison (a mirror image composite of the same side of the face duplicated and flipped).

Below: The owls featured here and in previous posts are all round-headed owls that lack visible ear tufts. However, about a third of all species of owls have ear tufts. The Long-eared Owl (Asio otus) has particularly nice ear tufts. I photographed this bird at Mercy Hot Springs in central California.

Below: Baby Long-eared Owls at Mercy Hot Springs. Owls can rotate their faces to a remarkable degree and the slow shutter speed I was using nicely captured the motion of this rotation.

Why do some owls have horns while others lack them? Several hypotheses have been proposed, but one seems most compelling to me: ear tufts make the owl more cryptic, which reduces the risk of being mobbed and, for small owls, perhaps even being preyed on by larger predators. When disturbed, many roosting owls change their shape and become tall and skinny. The idea is that the skinny posture, the bark-like plumage pattern and ear tufts all combine to make the owl resemble a broken-off branch. This idea is supported by the observation that owl species that are active during the day tend to lack ear tufts (they are active, not hiding, so there is no benefit to hiding). In contrast, nocturnal species that roost during the day tend to have tufts, especially those that roost in forests.

Below: A fun study with a captive Northern Pygmy Owl (Glaucidium gnoma), a diurnal species that usually lacks ear tufts, provides convincing evidence that ear tufts serve an anti-predation function. When humans approached the owl it never changed its appearance. However, when the owl was exposed to two types of predators, a cat and a peregrine falcon, it invariable changed its posture—it became skinny and extended its eyebrows to create prominent ear tufts. It also exposed a few different white plumage patches, which the authors suggest might act as disruptive coloration—bold or contrasting coloration that breaks up the outline of an animal and makes it harder to detect. The authors thanked Elwood the cat for his cooperation in the study. Can’t beat a study that combines honorary cats and real cats.

Below: The Tawny Frogmouth (Podargus strigoides), a large and nocturnal nightjar relative, also mimics a broken-off stick. I found this bird roosting in a patch of forest near Melbourne, Australia a couple of years ago. Frogmouths can be very difficult to spot in this pose because they really do look like a branch.

Below: In the same large patch of forest, someone found a female frogmouth and her chick sitting together on the top of a wired in enclosure. I suspect the chick had fallen out of its nest and then somehow clambered to safety up on railing. The video shows that frogmouths undergo the same posture change as owls when a predator approaches. I put my camera on a tripod far enough away so that the  birds assumed a relaxed pose but as I approached they got skinny and pointed their beaks up at an angle. They do not have ear tufts but instead use their beak to resemble a broken off branch stub; they also have a feather tuft that points in the same direction as the beak that may work like an owl ear tuft.

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 30, 2018 • 7:30 am

Once again we have a nice science-and-photo post by biology professor Bruce Lyon from the University of California at Santa Cruz. His notes are indented, and the subject is owls, also known as Honorary Cats™.

A second batch of owl photos and natural history to follow on the Northern Pygmy Owl post (here) from a couple of weeks ago. To contrast with the pygmy owl, here are some photos of a very large species, the Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulas), the tallest North American owl. Their height is deceptive thought because under all those feathers is a puny body—despite being five inches longer than Great Horned Owls (see post about them here), Great Grays Owls are 15% lighter than great horneds.

Below: a comparison of the heads of great grays (left) and great horns (right) reveals another important size difference—great grays have very small eyes. I do not know if this is just a consequence of great grays having smaller heads when the feathers are removed (i.e., skull size), or whether, relative to skull size, they have smaller eyes. I suspect they do. They often hunt during the day, so diurnal hunting might not require large eyes. And the fact that they can find prey based on sound may make the eyes less important for hunting than for great horns. I do not know if great horneds can hunt by sound alone but I suspect not. Their facial disc is not as well developed as the great gray and they also have bilaterally symmetric ear openings.

Great Gray Owls are one of my favorite birds, period! They seem mystical with their huge heads and facial discs, and they have a slow flapping flight that is almost butterfly like. They also live in beautiful wild areas that have a mix of coniferous forest and meadows for hunting. Small rodents (voles, mice, lemmings) comprise the bulk of their diet (90-95% depending on location). It’s amusing to think that tiny pygmy owls often take larger prey.

Below: A great gray owl hunting in a burned-out forest not too far from Yosemite National Park this spring. Hunting involves sitting on a perch for a long period of time and then gliding down and pouncing on prey.

Below: When the owls are sitting still next to the trunks of large trees they can be remarkably cryptic. Another owl near Yosemite.

Below: The same bird hunting in a meadow. It is much more conspicuous than in the above photo but they can still be surprisingly easy to miss even when out in meadows.

These owls can hunt entirely by hearing, and the big facial disk apparently serves as a parabola to focus sound on the asymmetric ears used to triangulate and pinpoint the location of a sound source. In winter, the owls can locate mice hidden under the snow and then glide to the area and punch down hard through the snow to snatch the rodent. They are deadly accurate. A friend who watches gray grays in winter in Canada has several times had an owl glide in from a perch a hundred meters away and then punch through the snow and grab a mouse a mere couple of feet from where he was standing. These birds can be extremely tame and apparently can hear mice from a long distance away. Below is video clip from National Geographic showing a bird hunting in winter.

These owls breed in the forest near the wetlands where I do my coot research in central British Columbia but it took me many years to find a nest. Great gray nests can be found by following an adult returning to the nest with prey.  I found my owl nest by watching a great gray catch a mouse in a meadow and then fly off into the woods. I knew it was going to its nest so I sprinted after it for about 400 meters but then lost sight of it as it disappeared in the fairly dense forest.  On whim, I continued on in the same trajectory the bird had been going and after 300 more meters I encountered the bird now flying back towards me in the opposite direction. I went another 200 meters to where the bird had flown from and heard the faint calls of a female calling from the nest and her calls led me to the nest (she was probably telling the male to keep hunting). Unfortunately, the nest was in the worst possible location for observing or taking photos: it was in an old raven nest very well hidden at the top of a tall spruce. However, once the chicks fledged I was able to get great views of the family hanging out—this pair of birds was completely oblivious to people.

Below: Look at the massive head on this bird! I think it hears a mouse.

Below: The same bird. This bird has heard something rustle in the underbrush and has gone into what I call ‘mouse mode’. They often have a relaxed posture but when they hear something that could be rodent, their comportment changes—they stare intensely at the source of the sound and their entire posture changes and they often cock their head back and forth, presumably to pinpoint the location of the sound.

Below: The same bird hunting in the forest in the early evening when the light was quite nice.

Below. Something suspicious has been detected and the bird launches for a pounce.

Below: One of the three chicks out of the nest. Owl chicks often leave the nest before they can fully fly. They scramble around the branches and are sometimes called ‘branchers’ at this stage.

Below: One of the fledgling next to the trunk of a very large Douglas fir. Although the birds nested in a tall spindly spruce, there were lots of large Douglas fir nearby. This nice patch of woods has since been logged.

 

Wildlife videos: Fox cam!

July 17, 2018 • 7:45 am

Reader Michael called my attention to this Fox Cam, which shows a large and entertaining brood. The YouTube notes:

A family of wild Red Foxes has raised kits in a den on the campus of the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in Holderness, New Hampshire for three successive springs. In 2016 she reared 5 kits, in 2017 she reared 7 kits. This year she appeared with 9 kits on April 4. After more than two weeks of observations we were astonished on April 20, when we counted 11 kits. We can’t believe that one female produced all these kits and we are puzzled why we have not seen all eleven until now.

For a passel of different live wildlife streams, go to this site.