Species of the Month

October’s Species of the Month is another Halloween-related critter, just in time for the spooky holiday. Last year it was the little brown bat; this year we profile the great horned owl. Because they are primarily nocturnal, you are most likely to see one perched in the branches of a bare free, silhouetted against a full moon on a window cling or cardboard cutout decoration. 

Scientific name: Bubo virginianus

Kingdom: Animalia (animals)

Class: Aves (birds)

Order: Strigiformes (owls)

Range: North and South America from northern Alaska to southern Brazil

Habitat: Nearly universal in their range: forest, grassland, desert, swamp, and urban areas

Lifespan: 13 years in the wild, on average

Diet: rabbits, rodents, insects, amphibians, crustaceans, reptiles         

Predators: crows, raccoons (egg depredation)

Conservation Status: No special protection

Owl in a tree, Eatonville, WA

Other Information: The great horned owl is specially adapted for night hunting. The large eyes make efficient use of low lighting, and the round face funnels sound to the ears. The ears are offset, one higher on the head than the other, allowing the bird to locate prey by sound with pinpoint accuracy. Feathers have special edging that make for silent flight. The “horns” are feathers, not ears, and may serve as camouflage. They mate for life, and find each other during hooting rituals. While males hoot all year, females only hoot during mating season. A clutch of one to six eggs per season is the norm, although the number of offspring is dependent on prey density. Great horned owls are one of the most widespread birds, ranging from the polar regions to the tropics. As such, individual diets vary depending on specific habitat and location. Nests generally are someone else’s abandoned nest, such as a squirrel’s. The owls I saw in Washington flew out of a barn when I approached it, and I observed pellets (undigested feathers and bones that are coughed up) and droppings but no nest.

Information on owls comes once again from University of Michigan’s Animal Diversity Web. 

Owlets (Missouri Department of Conservation photo)

Adult great horned own (Missouri Department of Conservation photo)

Cloudy With A Chance Of Meteors

The Orionid meteor shower, happening through the end of October, reaches its peak October 20-22 (Friday-Sunday). Luckily, the peak nights for viewing are on a weekend; the best time for viewing the meteors, which appear to radiate from the constellation Orion, is around 2 AM. Expect to see about 20 meteors per hour.

The Orionids are named for the constellation they appear to radiate from. They are specks of dust and debris left by Halley’s Comet, which last made an appearance in 1986. Comets orbit the sun just like Earth, and leave behind a trail of junk as they orbit. They are basically giant, dirty snowballs and as they near the sun, they begin to melt somewhat, causing the debris trail. If a planet’s orbit crosses the debris field, whatever gets swept into the passing planet’s atmosphere will heat up and burn from friction. Odds are, those bright streaks you see in the night sky are no bigger than a grain of sand.

Meteor facts this week come from Space.com. 

The Trees Must Be Crazy

Fall has finally fallen here in the Northeast, at least for a few days. In parts of the Northwest, it may already seem like a distant memory as an early winter is settling over the Cascades. Seasonally, despite the wacky weather, it is a perfect segue into this week’s Nature Minute: the odd foliage of the Pacific Northwest.

Everyone knows the old line about deciduous trees ending chlorophyll production in the fall. We see the leaves change colors and drop off annually. Also, you know that evergreen trees keep their green needles year-round. They actually shed needles constantly, but stay with me here! What if I told you that in the forests of Washington, some of the trees have it all mixed up?

In areas less than 50 miles or so from the Pacific coast, there is a deciduous tree called the Pacific madrone or madrona tree. It has thick leathery leaves, and it keeps them all year. Unlike the maples, oaks, cottonwoods, and alders of the Northwest that go bald every year by November, the madron sheds its leaves every other year.

Pacific madrone

Leathery leaves of the Pacific madrone

Unripe berries of the Pacific madrone. The berries will ripen in fall and winter,
providing a much-needed food source for birds and other critters.

Another tree that defies the consensus is the larch, a conifer found on the east slope of the Cascades. Like its friends the firs, spruces, and pines, the larch has needles on its branches. However, once fall arrives, the larch’s needles turn golden yellow and fall off. That’s right, the Northwest has an evergreen deciduous tree and a deciduous conifer. Now that everything you know is wrong, the big question is why. The easy answer is that no one knows. But fall is a great time to curl up with a mystery.

Summer larch (British Columbia Ministry of Forestry photo)

Fall larch (Herb Museum photo)

Road Trip Adventure- The Badlands

This week’s Nature Minute is the final story from the road. This week we take a look at Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The dazzling colorful rock formations here remind me of the Grand Canyon, though not as grand. I didn’t have time to explore, so I took in as much scenery as I could while cruising through. 

The mixed grass prairie doesn't betray what lies beneath

The first thing I saw when I entered the park was a prairie dog. Despite being known for the rock formations, there is a considerable amount of prairie here, complete with bison, prairie dogs, and reintroduced black-footed ferrets. Shortly after seeing the prairie dogs, I took the first turn (a right, if you’re keeping score) to see just how bad the lands are. There was a bighorn ewe keeping watch over the parking lot, my second critter of the morning. A quick scan of my surroundings revealed a few more sheep picking their way along just beneath the ridgeline.

Bighorn ewe

Like a gaping wound, an opening in the prairie
exposes the colorful bands of sedimentary rock

For being such a bad land, the Badlands hosts an astounding amount of wildlife. According to the National Park Service, 39 species of mammals, 9 reptiles, 6 amphibians, and 206 birds have been documented in the park. In addition to those listed earlier, there are coyotes, bobcats, foxes, two deer species, and pronghorn. Bird species include cliff swallows, horned larks, and northern harriers. Herps include rattlesnakes, snapping turtles, chorus frogs, spadefoot toads, and blotched tiger salamanders.

How did the Badlands form? Layers of sediments were deposited over a period of about 40 million years, beginning 67 to 75 million years ago. The oldest (and bottom) layer is muddy sea floor, complete with ocean fossils. Other layers were deposited by flooding rivers (when the area was a tropical forest), or most recently, ash from volcanic eruptions. These sediments all compressed into sedimentary rock and each layer is its own color. Erosion gives us the shape of the formations. Modern rivers scoured away at the layers of sediments, creating the peaks and canyons that we see today.

Badland formations

Badland formations

Here we can see where a river is
still carving out a canyon

Badland formations

Badland formations

That’s it for this year’s Nature Minute road trip. I hope to more travelling in the future and share more stories from the road. I encourage you to go seek your own adventures in the wild. This week’s information comes from the National Park Service (wildlife and geology). 

Road Trip Adventure- Wind Cave

As promised, this week we are going inside Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. This little gem is separated from Custer State Park by just a cattle guard. Eastern tallgrass and western shortgrass prairies mingle with Rocky Mountain and boreal forests here, all on top of the largest cave system in the US. Enjoy another story from the road.

I was looking forward to visiting Wind Cave NP, even before I learned just how extensive the cave system is. I was even more excited when I got to the visitor center and saw black-footed ferret on display. Shortly after crossing the cattle guard from Custer State Park, I saw a little weasel run halfway across the road, then turn around and run back. In the visitor center, I immediately recognized the black-footed ferret as the little critter I saw. I was excited because that little guy is one of the rarest mammals in North America. 

Black-footed ferret (NPS photo)

Thought to be extinct, wildlife managers recently began reintroducing the black-footed ferret after a colony was found in Wyoming. They began a captive breeding program and ferrets were reintroduced in several locations in the west, including Wind Cave, but only four colonies are considered self-sustaining. Threats the ferret include habitat loss, loss of prey (prairie dogs), and diseases such as plague and canine distemper.

Moving on to happier topics, I was delighted to learn the National Park Service offered a variety of cave tours. All tours are ranger-led, because with over 100 miles of known passages any many more miles yet to be entered, they don’t want a bunch of people roaming around unattended. I volunteered to enter the cave last and act as our caboose. 

Wind Cave's largest natural entrance

The tour I chose was the “Natural Entrance” tour, because it is shortest and most frequently offered. The cave’s largest natural opening is a very small hole that only a child could fit into. We entered the cave through a door a few feet away from the natural opening. It was put there in the early 20^th century when what is today’s national park was then a private homestead. The cave has many different formations, but the most impressive is the rare boxwork formation. Boxwork is thought to form from mineral deposits left behind when water seeps into cracks in the rock, remaining even after the rock erodes or dissolves away. At the end of our tour, I was proud to report that we didn’t lose anyone. 

Boxwork, a rare cave formation

Close-up of some of Wind Cave's intricacies

Inside Wind Cave

Back above, I enjoyed the panorama of Black Hills, prairie, and pine forest. I even saw a few bison lazing the day away. 

Lazy bison

I also noticed some clouds, and remembered how Wind Cave got its name. In the early 20^th century a young boy was roaming the prairie when he heard a rushing noise. He located the cave’s natural opening. The noise he heard was wind rushing out. It blew the hat off his head. He thought it was a cool trick, so he brought his friends the next day. Instead of blowing his hat away, the wind sucked the hat into the cave. The direction of the wind is based on air pressure, and the wind was blowing in when our tour began, a sign of storms in the area. Not long after we left the park, we had a thunderstorm. The cave was true to its word. 

A storm's a-brewin'

Watch this video of a park ranger and Lakota Sioux member telling the story of her people’s emergence from Wind Cave. 

This week's information on black-footed ferrets comes from US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency overseeing implementation of conservation plans for endangered and threatened terrestrial species. National Park staff frequently request that visitors report sightings of certain animals. Mount Rainier wants us to report mountain lion and bear sightings. Olympic wants us to report fisher sightings. Wind Cave wants us to report black-footed ferret sightings, which I did. The rangers were excited to hear about my sighting because ferrets haven't been seen in the area where I saw mine. Citizen science at its finest!