The abrupt end of one meadow vole.

More snow today. We have had quite a lot of snow this winter which makes a change from the last two winters. One unfortunate side effect of deep snow is that the white plastic spirals that protect the trees from the meadow voles aren't as effective. In the below photo you can see a meadow vole has almost completely girdled a maple tree just above where the plastic spiral stopped. A warm spell in January had given a hard crust to the snow, then a later snowfall gave the voles something to tunnel through at this new surface. This photograph was taken at the end of January when another warm spell revealed their pathways. Some of them were only market out by the dirt from their feces. In the photo below the dark specks of dirt on the snow around the trunk are feces from the meadow vole.

Not too far from this tree I spotted tracks that told a very clear story in my mind. In the first photo below you can see the tracks of a meadow vole as it was hopping over a fresh sprinkling of snow past a few grass stalks poking out of the snow. Suddenly its tracks stop at a place where there are a whole mess of confusing tracks. Looking more carefully in the second photo below there are a few specks of bright red. Somebody caught the poor guy and whoever caught it must have flown there. You can see what are clearly the mark of the bird's broad tail and the marks of its feet. About 10 feet from this spot in the third photograph are the marks of a large bird's tail as it brushed the snow. The story that comes to me is of a meadow vole scampering along in the dark over the fresh fallen snow when an owl perched 50m away in the bushes spots it. It launches itself and glides in low over the snow. It caught the vole before the little guy even knew it was there and dispatched him on the spot before taking off to feed at a more secure location. I would bet the bird was an owl as a vole is quite unlikely to be out in the open like that except at night, the most likely candidate being a Barred Owl as I know they are about because I saw one this winter in the Stoney Swamp.

As a bonus, here is a Youtube video of a meadow vole behaving quite strangely in broad daylight. This isn't my video but I saw a meadow vole behave like this several years ago on the berm. It just rested in broad daylight on top of the snow as I passed quite close by on my skis. I didn't have my camera with me that day or else I would have had plenty of opportunity to get a good closeup of the fellow.

Turkey Tracks in Snow

There is no mistaking the evidence that wild turkeys visited the berm area in the past couple of days. In the image below you can compare the turkey track with the smaller tracks of a crow. Their tracks in the snow are at least twice as wide as a crow's and it is easy to see the individual toe marks.

I have very rarely seen a turkey fly as they mostly get around by walking. I followed the tracks of the one that landed below as he walked with his friend along the berm from the 2009 planting to the 2010 planting. I wonder if they continued on and visited Ben Franklin Wood.

This is the first time I've seen wild turkey tracks in Manordale. Wild turkeys were only introduced to eastern Ontario about 20 years ago and Ottawa about 12 years ago. This area is north of their historic range but they have been very successful so far.

Winter Rabbit tracks

The temperatures plunged this week from above freezing on the weekend down to around -30C. This with a dusting of new snow made it an excellent time to go looking for tracks on the berm. There were a whole load of fresh crow tracks in among the 95 trees. It must have been a whole flock of them giving the forest a good picking over. There were also a few rabbit tracks.

The picture above shows heavy browsing on an apple tree by a rabbit. This apple tree is rather bushy because it is just the regrowth from the root stock after a crabapple tree fell down a couple of years ago. I find it incredible the number of pellets he produced. The snow fell a couple of days ago so this pile is just from the past two days. I followed the tracks of another rabbit through the woods and he also was passing a huge number of pellets. Every few feet along his track there would be another pellet. And it was clear this was just one rabbit; the track was wandering around so much it couldn't be the pellets on a rabbit run poking out of the snow. It is purely my speculation, but I believe the rabbit I was following wasn't actually feeding but was just out in the cold -20C degree weather to pass scat and would have quickly returned to his burrow afterwards. I located his burrow to be an old groundhog hole (in center of picture below) under a glossy buckthorn bush by the eastern path over the berm. Cottontails don't make their own holes but they aren't above using one if there is one available.

Last year there were hardly any rabbits overwintering on the berm. This year there seems to be at least two: one on the east side living in the old groundhog hole and another living along the fence behind Kelvin that occasionally visits the crabapple trees.

Snowy New Years

I came back from Christmas in rainy Vancouver and was greeted by this wonderful blanket of snow. It was almost up to my knees when I trudged through it to inspect the goings-on on the berm. Not much is happening. There were very few tracks in the snow except my own.

Around New Years is the latest sunrise of the year, coming up in Ottawa at 7:43AM. From this point on the days are getting longer by more than a minute a day.

Can hardly wait for spring.

Snowy December

Today is the earliest sunset of the year. Hopefully yesterday's snowfall stays around to brighten up the rest of the winter. I only learned last year that the length of the solar day varies over the course of a year due to the earth's axial tilt to the celestial equator. The solar apparent noon varies by as much as 16 minutes from noon over a semiannual cycle. In Ottawa, in November the solar noon is about a quarter of an hour before noon while in February it is about a quarter of an hour after noon. At the equator where there is always about 12 hours of sunlight, the earliest sunset occurs in early November, but because our hours of sunlight, this far north, are still shortening in November sunset continues to get earlier and earlier even as solar noon moves back towards the clock noon.

In the foreground of the above picture you can see several clumps of poplars that have sprung up on the north slope of the berm. These suckers have grown about 20 feet over the past four summers since the mower was banished from the slope. They are already starting to shade the trees planted on the slope in 2009. The planted trees may have to put up with some shade for a couple of decades, but that is the way of natural succession. The sugar maples will still be relatively spindly in 20 years time. The ones planted in 1995 still look like they could be toppled by a couple of blows with a good sharp ax. Poplars are very fast growing but short lived trees. you can see in the background of the above picture one of the parent poplars, planted in 1995, had already grown into a large substantial tree before it was blown down by a wind storm this summer.

Midges in November

The first snowfall of the season fell yesterday. Late November, before the snow flies, is a pretty dreary season and the insect photography opportunities are quite limited. The one bug I have been seeing lately are mosquito like insects hovering around small trees and bushes. As late as last Thursday I saw one hovering around this basswood. More often there are a whole bunch of them bobbing up and down in a little cloud. From what I've read on the internet what I was likely seeing were male midges trying to find a mate.

Midges are a new insect for me. I had always thought that midge was just a generic term for small annoying flying insects, now, thanks to the internet, I have learned they are a family of insects (Chironomidae) that resemble mosquitoes but don't bite. They are very common; large swarms of males are often seen hovering over or just to one side of a bush or tree limb. They spend most of their life as aquatic larvae; the adults don't eat but only live long enough to mate and lay eggs. Finding midges in November isn't surprising as many midges species are cold tolerant; some will even appear in winter to mate. That is an amazing strategy to avoid predators; just appear once the predators have all either died off or have gone into hibernation. It also probably makes it easier to find a mate in the brief time they have before they die.

Last fly of the year

Flesh Fly (Family Sarcophagidae)

It was a nice cool sunny November day today when I visited the roadside berm. This fly, here sunning himself on a buckthorn leaf, was the only bug I saw. I expect he'll be the last fly I'll see this year.

The leaves are mostly off all the trees revealing the under-story of european buckthorn that keep their leaves much later than most other trees or bushes. In the above picture you can see the modest little thorn bracketed by the two terminal buds of the buckthorn twig. Next year the buds will branch out leaving a small thorn at the crotch of the branch. In the picture to the right you can see the small thorn at the crotch plus a couple of the juicy black berries that are an easy way to identify the bush. Not every bush will have berries, so the thorns at the end of twigs are a better winter marker for this invasive bush. In the summer the upsweeping veins on the leaves are an easy identifying feature. The only other tree I know that has similar leaves is an apple tree. In the 2009 area there are a couple of volunteer seedlings that look a bit like european buckthorn. One is indeed european buckthorn (see below) but the other is an apple seedling.