Hard Working Animals

Police dogs, draft horses, barn cats, and lab rats are all animals that could be considered to work a full time job. In a salute to Labor Day, here are a few wild animals that work just as hard as humans and domestic animals.

Earthworms are working hard to keep your garden healthy. Often overlooked because they remain unseen, these slimy little guys are tunneling all day, allowing air and water to move around the soil. They cycle nutrients by eating decaying plant matter, creating fertilizer that living plants can use. 

Earthworm (Christian Science Monitor)

Mound building termites built mud homes that can reach heights of 17 feet and displace a quarter ton of soil. It can take years to build, and a single heavy rainstorm can damage or destroy it. Worker termites are always on the ready to make repairs as needed. Additionally, they also farm a fungus as a digestive aid. The fungus breaks down partially digested cellulose from the wood and grass the termites had eaten. After the fungus does its thing, the termites re-ingest what the fungus broke down.

Termite mound (Journal of Experimental Biology)

Beavers are the best known engineers in the animal world. They build water tight dams out of sticks and mud. Ponds form behind the dam, and while the beavers selfishly build dams and create ponds for themselves, the important wetland habitat benefits many other species as well. Even humans benefit, as the wetlands filter water and serve as flood control.

Beaver preening

Beaver dam

While you're enjoying a long weekend, just remember the critters that work hard 365 days a year just to survive. This week's information comes from National Geographic for worms and termites.

Pond Life

Having spent three seasons doing amphibian egg mass surveys, I can tell you that there are two kinds of people: those who look at a pond from the outside and just see a pond, and those of us who have been in a pond and have seen little world contained within.

Northwest salamander egg mass

Just getting close to the pond changes your view of it. Driving by, you can easily define the shoreline. Walk up to the shoreline and you aren't so sure anymore when the ground gets softer and wetter.
The most obvious pond life is visible before you get to spongy edges. Ducks and geese are patrolling like an avian navy, while a great blue heron flies overhead. Lily pads dot the surface and the whole northern and eastern sides are cloaked in rushes and reeds. If you are still, you might hear the bullfrogs and Pacific tree frogs.

Pacific tree frog

Mallard duck

Put on your waders and step into another world. Look into the water and you'll see insects and their larvae on and below the surface: mosquitoes, craneflies, dobsonflies, and more. Tadpoles and the occasional small fish dart by. A squeak and a splash reveals a startled river otter. Attached to the plant life, you'll find frog, toad, salamander, and newt eggs. Some are below the surface, covered in algae. Some are on the surface, anchored to the stem of emergent vegetation.

Caddisfly larvae

Scoop up a water sample to look at under a microscope. In addition to the floating dirt and plant material, there are tiny shrimp-like critters a quarter inch long. Even tinier are the microscopic algae, protozoa, and bacteria.

Freshwater shrimp- either an isopod or a copepod

If it's a rainy day you won't see much below the surface, but the raindrops take on a totally different sound when they are falling all around you and only landing on more water.
I hope you enjoyed today's aquahike. Ponds are full of life, even if hidden in plain sight. It's a fragile ecosystem, so be kind to your local ponds.

Caution: beavers working

Animal 911

In spite of humanity’s destruction of the environment over the last few centuries, most people believe in helping out in ways that don’t require a drastic lifestyle change. One way that people can feel good about the world is wildlife rescue. Every year thousands of good Samaritans encounter orphaned, sick, or injured animals that they deliver to or are picked up by professional wildlife rehabilitators. The goal of wildlife rehab is to provide medical care to the animal and release it back to the wild.

Orphaned raccoons

Many times, an injury is so severe the animal would be unable to return to the wild. In those instances, the animal usually moves to a wild animal park or some other educational organization where it works as an animal ambassador. Animal ambassadors are a way to connect the public to critters they wouldn’t normally get to encounter, especially up close. They work to raise awareness about the wild world around us and offer a glimpse of how these critters live. Many times they can shed some light on the daily challenges they face, in addition to having to deal with people.

Eastern screech owl working as an animal ambassador

I recently visited a wildlife rehab center. Animals are separated by species, although there may be several, such as raccoons, sharing living quarters. The raccoons are quarantined on arrival to check for rabies. All enclosures are covered to keep birds from escaping, or getting in and eating the patients. On the day of my visit, there were raccoons, a beaver, owls, hawks, vultures, squirrels, crows, baby opossums, and songbirds in treatment. In the past, they have rehabbed deer. There is no animal too great or too small for these people to help.

Great horned owl

Orphaned opossums

Blue jay on the mend

Feeling a Little Squirrely

If you live near a park, or even just a tree, you’ve probably noticed how busy the squirrels are this time of year. I’ve been watching them scurry about looking for acorns outside my office (no, this isn’t my day job) and getting into fights. In another one of those perfectly timed connections in the natural world, the acorns are dropping with the temperature and giving squirrels a feast to carry them through the lean winter months.

The eastern gray squirrel is the dominant squirrel species in my neck of the woods. Others that I’ve seen in my journeys are the Douglas squirrel and golden mantled ground squirrel in Washington and Oregon, the American red squirrel in South Dakota and Alaska, and I even saw a black squirrel in Minnesota. The black one was actually an eastern gray squirrel with a condition called melanism, which is sort of a reverse albino. 

Douglas squirrel

Golden mantled ground squirrel

Squirrels are one of my favorite critters. They are rodents and belong the family sciuridae. Several species of squirrels have a scientific name beginning with Sciurus and I just love that. Every time I see sciurus it makes me think of scurry, which is what those little guys do when they aren’t climbing trees.

Rodents have front teeth (incisors) that never stop growing. It’s great for beavers, since chomping on trees all night will quickly wear out their teeth. It is also helpful when you’re just a tiny little thing eating nuts and acorns. If you’ve ever gotten close enough to a squirrel to see its teeth, they are frighteningly large considering the size of animal attached to them.

Terrifying squirrel teeth (Capitol Theater)

Squirrels spend a lot of their time in trees, and they are agile climbers but they occasionally have an accident. You didn’t hear it from me, but a squirrel in the park fell into the creek once back in the 90s. It made me promise not to tell, and it’s probably dead by now but it’s best not to take chances. 

Eastern gray squirrel (Ohio Department of Natural Resources)

Red squirrel (World Association of Zoos and Aquariums)

All those nuts and acorns the squirrels are gathering now are too much for a meal and won’t fit inside a squirrel house. So they hide their overstock from other critters that might want them by burying them in the ground. With so many nuts hidden in so many holes, there’s no way a squirrel will remember each hole. The ones that get left behind stand a chance of germinating and growing into trees. So not only are squirrels terribly cute, they are also little horticulturalists.

In addition to your basic tree squirrels, there are also ground squirrels. The ground squirrel side of the family includes marmots, groundhogs, chipmunks, and prairie dogs. While they get their name from their dwelling, ground squirrels are not averse to climbing trees. 

Western chipmunk

Nature Minute Road Trip- Wolves of Yellowstone

Predators are an essential part of a healthy ecosystem. Owls and snakes might be patrolling your neighborhood, keeping the rodent population in check and out of your house. Birds and bats target pest insects. Top-level predators, the large killing machines, are equally important but have suffered from human ignorance. To demonstrate the importance of top-level predators, enjoy the story of the gray wolf and how its return impacted life in and around Yellowstone National Park. This is the first story from the Nature Minute Road Trip. 

Wolves were extirpated (made locally extinct) from Yellowstone in the 1930s. They were a menace to neighboring ranches’ livestock and preying on the park’s more charismatic wildlife like bison and elk. Mind you, this took place before the National Park Service placed much emphasis on the “preservation” part of its mission and focused more on the “enjoyment” part. This was a time of public bear feedings.

Gray wolf (in captivity)

By the time 1995 came around, the elk population had gotten out of hand. After much deliberation, a wolf pack from Canada was transported to Yellowstone. The wolves were carefully selected to ensure that their preferred prey was elk, since that was the target species for culling. Yes, different wolves prefer different prey, but they will switch depending on availability.

Elk

The wolves were placed in kennels to quarantine them and let them acclimate to their new surroundings before being released into the wild. Contact with rangers and biologists was limited so they wouldn’t get used to being around people. After release, the fun began.

With large predators on the loose again, the elk had to adapt. They began spending less time in open areas. Lower elk numbers combined with elk lifestyle changes led to young trees growing. Previously, the elk had eaten nearly all new trees before they had a chance to reach maturity. With new trees like willows growing in the river bottoms, beavers began migrating back to Yellowstone. The new trees, even newer beaver ponds, and lower coyote populations (out competed for food by the larger wolves) brought in a host of birds and small mammals that had left. With the birds came smaller predators like foxes and hawks. 

Wolf being released at Yellowstone (NPS photo)

The leftovers from wolf kills attracted more corvids (ravens, crows, and magpies) and benefited eagles (bald and golden) as well as bears (black and grizzly). The absence of elk in the river bottoms and the emergence of trees there changed the course of rivers by stabilizing the banks. This was a two-fold move. The elk were eroding the banks with their constant trampling and the trees added stability by holding soils and rocks in place.

The wolf reintroduction was not without its critics, people we will call lupophobes for their fear of the wolf. People to this day still deny that the wolf reintroduction has done any benefit for the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Science hasn’t proven that all these changes are caused directly by the wolf’s presence, but it does prove that the benefits took place after. You decide. I'd been to Yellowstone before the return of the wolf, but I barely remembered any of it, let alone enough to do a before and after comparison.

This week's wolf information and picture come from the National Park Service.

Signs, signs, everywhere there's signs

We all know there are a lot of animals out there. You see them all the time. When I’m roaming the woods, I don’t always see critters. But with a little bit of training, you can tell who was there before your arrival. Here in Washington, it rains a lot. That means mud, which fortunately reveals what critters came and left tracks. Animals even help themselves to our trails, making it easier to follow their travels. On one expedition to the Ohop Valley, I found an animal superhighway. The highlight was a coyote track inside an elk track on top of a mole hill.

Deer track in sand near Mashel River

Scats are another obvious animal sign. When nature calls, animals answer right on the trail as they walk. Scat can tell us who walked before us and what they ate. Owl pellets are the indigestible remains that come up the other way and are just as revealing.

Coyote scat showing the remains of a bird

Otter scat

Great horned owl pellet

Other signs are more subtle. Trees might contain fur that got snagged as animal walked by and brushed against it. Or the bark could be scraped off by a deer, elk, or bear. Lower branches might display gnaw marks from a busy beaver. Easily overlooked is a squirrel midden, the pile of husks left over from a sciurid feast.

An elk rubbed its antlers on this tree

A bear scraped the bark off this tree

A beaver almost chopped down this tree

Squirrel midden, husks from a demolished fir cone

Carcasses are the next best thing to seeing a live animal, even though I rarely encounter them. The good work done by the decomposers happens quickly, except in cases of roadkill where it is too dangerous to be rapidly effective. Also, animals typically run off to seclusion to die and are not likely to be found close to a trail. In my years of wandering the wilds, I’ve come across a rabbit, an opossum, bits of a deer (likely killed by a coyote), a mole, a pile of feathers belonging to an owl or hawk (possibly done in by a bobcat) and a seal. So when someone suggests the lack of a body as evidence against the existence of Bigfoot, ask when the last time they found a dead anything in the woods. 

Deer fur left over from a kill by a coyote

Harbor seal carcass at Kalaloch Beach, Olympic National Park

Feathers from a hawk or owl, I suspect killed by a bobcat

What signs have you seen lately?