Ecology- MMG

[Jean]

i'm trying to spread the rumor of rocky mountains purpurated fever being carried by ticks in my area to reduce trail attendance. it hasn't worked so far.

[chenda]

@chenda- do you have any ideas what the "odd yellow looking thing" might be?

Oh I meant the baby pidgeon is odd and yellow, I meant to write 'an odd yellow looking thing'

@icefish - interesting, we do have lots of cats about.

@jean - maybe spreading rumours about wild bears gone mad might be more effective ? (If you have any in the Alps ?)

[sky]

Went for a forest walk down a pipeline road, and saw a turtle, snake and fawn.

https://postimg.cc/gallery/w1BnwfP

[sky]

Trying to learn how to post pictures...

[mountainFrugal]

A mountain lion attacked my friend's cat right in front of him in his yard. They live right next to the forest. His cat hangs outside while he is doing projects (semi-outside). He chased the mountain lion away and it dropped his cat, but the cat did not make it from it's injuries. Bummer.

I do invite the mountain lion to come to our neighborhood and have as many cats as it wants. The neighbors do not spay or neuter their outdoor cats and they have a small population that is getting out of control and killing many of the local birds.

ETA: I am pro-indoor cat only due to the environmental impact on local animals and birds that feral/outdoor cats impose.

[mountainFrugal]

The woodpeckers are back in our oak tree. I think they have chicks in there, but it is too high for me to go take a look or to hear the chicks.

I almost stepped on a huge gopher snake while running today. It was over a meter long, looked well fed, and was sunning itself on the trail. They always startle me because they have very similar markings to Western Rattle Snakes. It always takes a second to find its tail to make sure! I poked it with a stick on it's tail to have it move off the trail. MTBs often use the same trail and might be moving too fast to see it.

[AxelHeyst]

Speaking of rattle snakes: a few days ago I was walking down my driveway to the workshop, and flushed one of our little chipmunks (I really need to figure out what the species actually is. They're very common here.) I watched the little guy dart along when all of a sudden - snap! - a rattlesnake I hadn't seen struck from the shade of a bush. The snake missed, barely, and the chipmunk darted off. I didn't get close enough to see but it was at least 4 rattles, maybe 5?

[OutOfTheBlue]

Came upon daytime squirming crawlers in today's barefoot hiking along a deserted path in the mountain. Sweet moskitoes tasted my blood all the way, and an orange butterfly as well as a big colorful fly came to clench their thirst on the sweaty dew of my skin. A strange sound producing animal partly hidden in the branches that I could not make out if it was a bird or something else seemed to be addressing me. Remembering David Abram's "Becoming animal", I offered a singing note in return. A call from the heart. Emotion arose from this speechless expression, and I repeated it a few times before setting off. Remembering my place in the family of things, in the communion of subjects...

Think I saw what that particular caterpillar looks like in butterfly form. Long intricate black wings with a white circle... Such a beautiful rearrangement.

Question: Is it okay to share more participatory/reciprocal experiences like this in this thread or is it best to observe a more objective naturalist stance?

[jacob]

The local rabbits have no fear this year. I'm almost tripping over them on a daily basis. They just sit there staring at my 4' away while I'm (and they too) are gathering vegetables from the garden. Strength in numbers, I guess. This is not a [Coopers] Hawk year, obviously.

[chenda]

The baby pidgeon is all grown up, but the parents have laid two more eggs. My patience and tolerance for pidgeon breeding is wearing thin, especially as I want to use my balcony again. If anyone knows how to gently encourage them to move elsewhere let me know.

[mountainFrugal]

@chenda - pigeons are hard to handle. You essentially have to remove the nest while they are out and replace the area where they were nesting with spikes or some other way to discourage them from rebuilding the nest.

We are in Utah visiting friends and family. There was a moose that came out of the forest and starting eating the shrubs around my friend's house. It would start at the bottom of the branch with it's teeth/lips wrapped around it and then slide up to the end of the branch defoliating the branch completely! They also have an aspen tree in the backyard that has a bunch of aphids on it. The aphids tap into the phloem of the leaves to extract the sugar and protein. There is much more sugar than protein so the aphids end up excreting honeydew droplets. The infestation is intense and the outdoor seating area is completely covered in honeydew.

[mountainFrugal]

I am sitting on my new aunt/uncle's porch. They have 2 hummingbird feeders. There is a lot of activity at them. The hummingbirds often swoop in at full speed to get the feeding bird off the feeder then loop around and land. I have also seen a three bird aerial fight, but they do not seem to contact one another. I think they are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufous_hummingbird . Scroll down on the wiki page for some slow-motion hummingbird battles.

[mountainFrugal]

In the local National Forest they are doing mechanical thinning. This is the next best thing to controlled burns for clearing out dense underbrush that can create fire ladders to the top of the canopy (crown). Once a fire is in the crown it spreads much easier and can burn at a much higher temperature because it is more exposed to wind.

The local impact on the animal population is really interesting. There is a large sow black bear with 2 cubs in the general area where I run. I am always on the lookout for her or the cubs. I saw her last year a handful of times, but have not seen her this year. However, I have seen many more prints than I did compared to last year. Of my bikers/hikers/runners I know in town, they seem to have collectively seen her more frequently this year.

My hypothesis is that the mechanical thinning of the area is decreasing the number of places that she and her cubs can hide so they are much more frequently spotted (less cover). This in turn is causing them to spend more time roaming the area to get away from people (and machines). It could also be that the cubs are a year older so they need to increase their range to keep them all fed. Headed out for a run, wish me luck!

[mountainFrugal]

More bear tracks on my running route. Tropical storm Hilary, pushed rain all the way North into Southern Oregon. We had 2 days of drizzle which refreshed the dirt for good MTB riding. The bears were on the move during the storm. It was interesting to observe tracks get put down in fresh mud and then watch the edges of the tracks gradually round with more rain (the next day).

Evening edit: I was about 20 feet from crashing into a bear (not the big mother) on the downhill MTB trail. It ran across the trail and jumped over a bush. It miscalculated how dense the bush was. It's rear legs got a bit caught in the brush and it almost flipped over on it's head! I had so much speed that I ripped around a large banked turn and could hardly see from it's dust cloud! Needless to say I was shouting "Hey Bear!" frequently the rest of the way down.

[shaz]

@mountainFrugal do you ever wear a bear bell when you are trail running?

[mountainFrugal]

Not for trail running, but I am thinking about one for my MTB. This will also help with people ignoring signs and pedaling uphill on downhill trails instead of taking fire roads up. I just tuned up my disk brakes and now my MTB makes much less noise. haha.

Update: It appears that people have tested whether bears can even hear bells. They can in quiet forests, but not for example next to a rushing river. So it still could be a good idea, or I could just shout every once and while. It is still a good idea for people though. Bears at least tend to get out of the way. People (especially tourists) do not.

[shaz]

So true! We use bells on the horses. We started doing it for wildlife and quickly realized the bells are most useful to alert humans to our presence. You wouldn't think a horse could sneak up on someone but it happens A LOT if they aren't wearing the bells.

[shaz]

We looked for feathers on our ride this weekend, and found grouse, turkey, goose, crow, and red-shafted flicker feathers. This is the first time I found red-shafted flicker feathers; they are pretty dramatic. Here's a representative photo: https://www.fws.gov/lab/featheratlas/fe ... lt_ventral. The flickers themselves look less brilliantly orange than the individual feathers do.

[NewBlood]

I have been using the BirdNET app to identify birds in my parents' backyard. The neighbors have a few big trees that are always full of birds.
My slacker-mode observations over the last couple of weeks (only putting the "certain" ones, some bird calls get highly variable results for the same sound):
Magpies (Pica pica, so loud!)
Common blackbirds (Turdus merula)
Sparrows (Passer domesticus)
European Robins (Erithacus rubecula)
Dunnocks (Prunella modularis)
Long-tailed tits (Aegithalos caudatus)
European turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur)
Spotted flycatcher (Muscicapa striata)

It's pretty fun. Obviously I didn't need the app for some of these, but it's really cool to see what all the songs and calls look like on the spectrogram.

[theanimal]

Looking around this morning, we noticed that the light was off. It seemed the sun was muted, our toes were still cold and the solar panels weren't delivering as much power as they normally do at this time. Turns out, there is a partial solar eclipse happening. At Quail Haven, we are just southwest of the path, so only about 1/3 of the sun is obscured. Elsewhere in the main path (from southern Oregon to Corpus Christi, TX) there is 80% obscurity.

@AxelHeyst's mom showed us a cool way to view it if you don't have the glasses. Take a pair of binoculars and invert them facing the sun. The eclipse will be present in the light that filters through the lenses on the ground or whatever surface you are displaying it on.