Saturday, June 8, 2019

"Good wildlife habitat good habitat supplies an animal with food, water, cover and space"............"A wild creature(and us human animals) needs these 4 essentials so it can move about without exposing itself to excessive danger"............... "The blend of food, water, shelter and space determine an area’s habitat suitability for a species of wildlife or a suite of species"..................."An animal’s habitat is the physical place where it lives"..............."A good habitat provides a creature— whether a mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, or insect—with the resources it needs to survive. In its habitat, an animal can grow from birth to adulthood, remain healthy, evade predators (at least for the most part), and shelter during harsh weather, and mate and reproduce"................"Some animals are generalists, able to thrive in more than one type of habitat"............."White-tailed deer can live in large expanses of deep woods, in small woodlots, in thickets, in farmland, and in the suburbs and on the fringes of cities"................"Other creatures have more specialized habitat needs"..............."The wood thrush, a migratory songbird with a beautiful utelike song, usually nests in mature forest where tall trees stand above an understory of smaller trees, shrubs, and low plants, with abundant leaf litter on the ground"...............If you wish to create wildlife habitat in your backyard, onyour farm or at your Summer get-a-way home, a good beginning primer that will help you get started has just been published by Stackpole books entitled: MAKE A HOME FOR WILDLIFE: CREATING HABITAT ON YOUR LAND.............Written by Charles Fergus, himself a creator of wildlife habitat on his 120 Vermont acres, Fergus makes the premise that "almost anyone, whether they have a 1000 acres or a half-acre suburban house lot can improve their land for wildlife"............"The book is part how-to and part inspiration"................"The information about how to go about turning your property into a wildlife haven is interspersed with profiles of people and organizations that have done exactly that, and with readable essays about the animals that might take advantage of your work, from wood thrushes to weasels".................Should you seek to purchase a copy of MAKE A HOME FOR WILDLIFE, simply click on the link in the article below

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CLICK ON THIS LINK TO PURCHASE A COPY OF "MAKE A HOME FOR WILDLIFE https://www.amazon.com/Make-Home-Wildlife-Creating-Backyard/dp/...
Thursday, June 6, 2019

"The Mt Emily(Oregon) Wolf-Cougar Study is a collaborative effort between the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and Oregon State University"........... Beginning in 2014 and running through the Summer of 2018, the goal of the project was to determine how Pumas(Cougars) would react to the interspecific competition directed toward them by the newly colonizing Wolves............ "Previous studies have suggested that wolf pack structure provided wolves the advantage in wolf-cougar interactions (i.e. outnumbered), and that the likelihood for wolves to kill cougars is greater than for cougar to kill wolves"..............."However, the effects of competitive interactions with wolves may be limited if cougars exploit alternate prey resources, habitats unoccupied by wolves, or if interactions are rare".............."Thus far in this Mt. Emily region of Oregon, the research team found that Cougars are eating fewer deer since wolves have arrived".........."They(Cougars) are scavenging more and eating smaller prey"............."The number of elk have increased"............."The number of deer have stayed the same".............."Cougars are selecting prey closer to water, deeper in forests, and higher in elevation"..............No question that a ripple effect across this natural system has taken effect----Most likely, as in Yellowstone, the full complement of top-down carnivores restoring optimum biodiversity to the landscape

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From: Randy and Pam Comeleo ; rottyler@peak.org ; Date: June 6, 2019 at 11:25:49 AM PDT To: rick.meril@gmail.com Subject: Carniv...
Monday, June 3, 2019

With only a 10 to 40% chance of a Mother Wild Turkey Hen successfully hatching her annual clutch of up to 13 newborn chicks, it is truly amazing that Turkeys have rebounded across their historical range from near extinction at the turn of the 20th century..........The Wild Turkey restoration is truly one of our great wildlife come-back stories..........."Most turkey nests are found in the woods within 100 feet of an opening such as a logging road, clearing, or field".........."The hen looks for a concealed spot with overhead cover from which she can easily watch for predators"......."Raccoons, skunks, foxes, coyotes, bobcats, fishers, snakes, hawks and many other animals have a taste for their eggs"..........In addition to this intense predation, during the first 4 weeks of a chicks life, prolonged cold and rain can kill them"..........."Only some 25% of newborns make it to their first months birthday"...........Those that do survive, follow three mother throughout the Summer, scratching in the leaf litter for tree seeds and catching grasshoppers and other insects in the pastures"......... "By August they are able to fly to the treetops to escape danger and to roost"........."In the fall and winter, the Mom and brood join other hens with their broods".........."The chicks will stay with their mother during the Winter until the spring mating season arrives"

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https://northernwoodlands.org/outside_story/article/wild-turkey-nest The Wild Turkey Nest by Susan Shea June 3, 2019 0 Commen...
Sunday, June 2, 2019

"Wolf packs are fiercely intolerant of other wolf packs, their rivals"..............It is also a fact that our nomadic hunter-gatherer human groups also fought each other--fighting ingrained in out DNA............ "For warfaring behavior to evolve, it must afford group members a survival advantage"............"Wolves likely evolved to be territorial because it benefits them in several ways: repelling intruders makes it easier to protect vulnerable pups at the pack's den, and securing territory with abundant prey ensures an uncontested food sources"................ "Success in both these aspects of life—reproducing and eating—perpetuates the genes of high-performing individuals, whether they be wolves or humans"............."And in the case of the wolf, the ones best at reproducing and eating are aggressive with their rivals"............."In fact, of all the dead wolves recovered in Yellowstone, intraspecific (wolf vs. wolf) strife accounts for two-thirds of natural mortality"................."And what are the 3 critical factors determining how successful a given wolf pack is at attacking and displacing a neighoring pack?".............."Large pack size, packs with many male adults and having old, experienced pack members is the winning formula!............."Interesting to know is tha tthe most influential factor in whether or not a pack defeated an opponent is the presence of an old wolf"..............."A pack with one old wolf more than the opposition has 150% greater odds of winning, making age more important than having a numerical advantage"................ "But why?".......... "Old wolves are past their physical prime, participating less and less in hunts as they age".............."But What old wolves possess is experience"................"They've encountered competitors many times, seen pack mates killed, participated in killing rivals"................"They may avoid a conflict they figure they can't win, upping their chance of survival".............."Having an experienced wolf allows a pack to draw from past knowledge, increasing the odds that even a small pack can defeat a larger pack"............Interesting to note that as pack animals, both wolves and humans choose to follow/elect older adults as their leaders

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https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/ys-24-1-territoriality-and-inter-pack-aggression-in-gray-wolves-shapin   Yellowstone Park Territoriality an...

This past April, a wolf den in Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota began to flood due to rapid snowmelt.............Watch mother Wolf methodically and carefully remove all of her newborn 7 pups, going back an extra time to make sure that she had not left any of them behind..............Maternal caring at its finest!

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https://www.earthtouchnews.com/natural-world/animal-behaviour/watch-this-wolf-mom-carefully-and-methodically-rescue-her-pups-from-a-flooded-...
Saturday, June 1, 2019

At the time of European colonization(circa AD1500), Bison ranged east of the Mississippi River up into Western New York(hence, the city of Buffalo), south through the western sections of the Mid-Atlantic States down through western Florida................."Pennsylvania contains numerous examples of locations named after buffalo".................."In frontier culture, people often named their lands after a rare or unique sighting of wildlife, such as White Deer, Bald Eagle, or Native American names like Swatara (“where we feed on eels”) and Moosic (“place of moose”)"................."The sheer numbers of buffalo place names makes a very strong case that some of the earliest white settlers in the Susquehanna region almost certainly encountered buffalo or Indians who related buffalo sightings".................."The year, 1801, is in the same general time period when the animals were killed off in neighboring states"................."By 1730 buffalo were gone from the tidewater region of Virginia; in 1808 the last Ohio buffalo was killed, and by 1825 the last was killed in western Virginia"................."Southwestern Pennsylvania probably had a higher number of buffalo, still far from the herds of thousands described by Shoemaker, but that would be the region expected to harbor the last hold out of the species".................."It is possible however that a small herd of animals was pushed to the northeast and temporarily into the Susquehanna Watershed"..................."As various militaries and explorers increased hunting pressure on the area around Fort Pitt, modern day Pittsburgh, the mountains and valleys of central Pennsylvania may have offered a refuge for a short time until that region too began filling with Europeans and their rifles".................."By 1600 bison had recolonized the south as far east as St. Simon’s Island, Georgia where bison bones were found in an Indian mound located in Chatham County"................"Bison bones dating to 1700 were found in Clay County, Florida at the former site of a Spanish settlement known as Fort Pupo"................"General Oglethorpe, who founded the state of Georgia, went hunting for bison in 1733"................"Edward Kingo saw 100 bison on one acre of ground near Abbeville, Georgia about this same time period"............."Buffalo licks consisting of minerals or clays attracted huge herds of bison"..............."The Great Buffalo Lick in east central Georgia was covered in white clay-colored dung, and great pits were licked from the soil by large herds of bison".............."Bison congregated around Big Bone Lick and Blue Licks in Kentucky for the mineral salts"................."James Couper shot the last known bison in Georgia circa 1800, near the Turtle River, a coastal waterway"............."This was also the last bison known from the Atlantic Coast"

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The range of the American Bison is mapped above, with the plains bison in darker brown and the larger woods bison in lighter brown. The ...