In case you're wondering, this puts my yard mammal list up to TWO.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Life Yard Mammal
I'd be curious to know how many of you blokes have COYOTE for their yard! [BEWA, what say you?]. Just this afternoon, the fam and I were maxing in our living room and I see a dog saunter past our patio door. Something immediately struck me as odd so I jumped and yelled for my wife to bring our son over to the window. Sure enough, a gorgeous coyote stopped at the street, looked around and took off to the south. I can only imagine that it caught wind of all the rabbits that hang out in the neighborhood. Everyone got to see, including my son...I know this because he was saying "woo woo" as we were looking out the window. Frickin' awesome!
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It's amazing how bold they've become in suburban and even urban areas. They're a staple here (I've seen them in the parking lot, not just the golf course). I think the plentiful small dogs and squirrels pull them in.
ReplyDeleteYes, very bold. Just wish they would take more dogs, cats and squirrels. There is a pack that "sings" across the street from here at dusk frequently.
ReplyDeletei've heard them several times from my place, and once I was having a few beers with the fella's around the fire and had one come run right through the yard in front of us!
ReplyDeleteMeant to add that its pretty cool to have the whole fam have such a close encounter with Canis latrans. Hopefully, you will be privileged be as personal with C. lupus if you haven't already had such an inspiring experience.
ReplyDeleteThey're more common than peoples realize, probably everyone here has had them in their yards. I hear them howling at night and have spooked a couple up before. My mammal life list on the prop.: Virginia Opossum, Red Squirrel, Gray Squirrel, E. Chipmunk, E. Fox Squirrel, Flying Squirrel, Groundhog/woodchuck, Muskrat, White-footed Mouse, Deer Mouse, Meadow Vole, Eastern Mole, Short-tailed Shrew, Eastern Cottontail, N. Red Bat, Big Brown Bat, Little Brown Bat, Eastern Pipistrele, Long-tailed Weasel, Mink, Red Fox, Coyote, Raccoon, Striped Skunk, feral house cat and dog, and Grizzly Bear. Can anybody beat that?
ReplyDeleteBy Grizzly Bear, I mean White-tailed Deer of course.
ReplyDeleteI find the myotis/pipistrele ID to be suspect........
ReplyDeletepips are fairly straightforward to I.D. in flight at dusk with the swaro's (anyone else batwatch?) their tawny color and tiny size quite evident. Of course seeing one on the tree down by the creek in broad daylight helps too. Big Brown is pretty easy too once you get the GISS down in flight. And Little brown myotis is pretty easy when its bat in hand in a large roost in my barn. Are you a batman Haastage? I love the little buggers, I've been a member of BCI ever since I was a little kid, two of my friends have been bat surveyors for the past two summers and its been awesome to get to tag along on their mist netting. I was really jealous of my friend lauren who got to radio track an Indiana Bat this summer during her second year as a bat researcher its her first time ever seeing an Indiana. I am pretty sure I've had Northern Long Eareds on the property, but I'm only tentative at best for in flight ID on them, the nifty bat echolocation detector I borrowed from work at the nature center said it was the right frequency, but I'm not going to call it until I see it better.
ReplyDeleteWell I am a closet mammalogist, and bats are pretty damn nifty. I've never been a hard-core bat guy, but thoroughly enjoy them when encountered. I must admit to feeling a lot of fear when trying to identify flying bats. Most of my bat ID's are myotis sp, hmm-that looked like a larger myotis sp...., Hoary/Silver-haired Bat, and Red Bat. The last 2/3 I will see coming off Lake Superior when I am lake-watching during migration.
ReplyDeleteSo my mammal list
ReplyDeletesmall myotis sp (Northern/Little Brown), Short-tailed Shrew, , Deer Mouse, Meadow Vole, Eastern Chipmunk, LEAST CHIPMUNK, Gray Squirrel, Red Squirrel, E. Cottontail, Red Fox, Coyote, White-tailed Deer, Striped Skunk, Ermine, and my pièce de résistance PINE MARTEN!
Near misses have been the Black Bear that my neighbors (Ryne & Jen) had in their driveway one morning and the Moose that spent a week at the park at the of my street- I was so waiting for that guy to end up at the drip.....
How could I forget Raccoon?!
ReplyDeleteOh and Ben, thanks for the tips on flying bats- I didn't realize there were ways of telling Pips from myotis in flight
Pips also flutter like crazy, but you're right I'm much more confident with some bats more than others in flight. Pine Marten's are awesome, I'm surprised you don't have good old Porcupine up there. I've not seen Least Chipmunk in the East only in CO.
ReplyDeleteThis bat discussion is fascinating. I'm pretty sure I have Big Browns down on flight GISS but not really sure. While doing some lake watching on southern L.M. this fall, I had multiple Reds come in off the lake and one Hoary type bat. Very cool to see.
ReplyDeleteBen, where did your friend radio track here Indiana Bat?
Have you guys heard researchers recently petitioned to have Little Browns emergency listed under ESA? Pretty frightening...
Rick, never had the opportunity to see C. lupus. Although, once while doing a CBC in northern MN, we came across a steaming fresh deer kill...does that count?
ReplyDeleteOk so here is my best wolf story
ReplyDeleteIts dusk in Rudyard (the eastern UP for you dirty buckeyes), and it is one of THE MOST GLORIOUS sunsets I have ever seen- just so f-ing vivid, crimson, deep purple, whatnot. Landscape framed in spruce, very attention getting. I was just arriving in the Yoop after coming back from Motown, and really needed to "de-coffee". So I am taking a leak staring at this incredible sunset when I realized there was this huge wolf not more then a couple hundred yards in front of me (perve!) So we're watching each other for a minute and then it starts to trot away, only to flush a Short-eared Owl up.
So there I am watching a SEOW flying over a wolf framed by this amazing sunset lined in spruce thinking how much I loved the north and that I was never leaving again.
And how you can piss where ever you want up here.....