Seeing Red

Every summer we are visited by a photographer who shares with us his photographs and his stories. He somes up from "down below" and spends the summer up here camping and snapping photos.

Last summer he watched a red fox for many evenings. One of the things he noticed was that the fox had one leg that was all bloody. Eventually, the fox turned up with the leg missing...possibly chewed it off to stave off infection, or to remove a limb that was no longer useful. Here is one of his photos of the fox:

(Photo courtesy of George Seymour)

If you really look at it, you will note that the fox's hips are slewed at an angle...just enough to get the one remaining hind leg centered under the body. Many animals that end up with three legs actually do very well. Note how healthy this fox's fur is - moving as a tripod is certainly not slowing it down! Hopefully it made it through this winter as well.

Red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are rather common up here, although we also have grey foxes (Urocyan cinereoargenteus), which I have only seen out the other end of town. Sometimes the difference can be difficult to ascertain, because the body fur of each species can show great variation. What, then, is the fail-safe clue? The red fox, whether it is red, blonde, or silver-black, always sports a white tip on its tail. The grey fox (which can often look reddish) has a black tip on its tail.

The most interesting fox tails I have found, however, are at the doctor's office. In the hallway, as you walk to the examining rooms, he has a rack (like a coat rack) hung with various animal skins (where else but in the Adirondacks, eh?). The red foxes he has hanging there have rings on their tails! I've never seen the like before or since. Very odd.

Many thanks to George for letting me share his fox photo with you all.

Blizzard?

According to the Weather Gurus somewhere over there in Vermont or down in Albany, we are supposed to get socked with upwards of a foot of snow before tomorrow morning.

As I lay there in my bed this morning, listening to the school closings and trying to convince myself to get up, I had images of still having to walk the dog and no doubt shovel a wall of snow from the driveway. Needless to say, I rolled over and dozed off again. Fortunately, the snowfall was very little this morning, so when I finally hauled myself out of bed, with forty-five minutes to get ready for work, walk the dog, feed myself and the animals, and shovel, I was able to forego the latter!

But now, about 4:00 PM, the snow has changed. It went from very fine, itty bitty flakes to big, ol' honkin' flakes, which are now building up rather rapidly on the ground. Our snow stick is almost up to 30" (it was about 24" this morning). But that's okay; somehow I find it much easier to shovel snow when I get home after work than I do when I get up in the morning! And it's been a while since we've had any significant snowfall, so we really shouldn't complain too much. The only down side is that there probably won't be many tracks to look at for tomorrow's school group. Should be good snowshoeing, though!

I'm So Proud!

When you get a group of kids who catch your excitement for tracking, it is magic!


One of the groups I had today really got into the stories and finds on the trails...even to the point of getting down and sniffing red fox urine!



For those of you who don't know, red fox urine is very skunky - if it is really fresh, the smell is quite strong, as in dead-skunk-in-the-road strong. If you have an active red fox den nearby, you will likely smell it long before you see it.


And right now it is breeding season for red foxes, so scent marking is going on all around. It's very exciting.


Y'see, tracking is more than just looking at footprints. It's looking at how the animal moves, figuring out what it was doing, trying to get inside the animal's mind. It's looking for scat, for browse, for hair (we found fox hair on the trail!!!), for scratches, for kill sites. It's detective work at its finest - CSI eat your heart out.

Pine Siskin Wars

When the pine siskins are mobbing the feeders, they do a wonderful display with their wings and tails, fanning them out and flashing their hidden colors, which are really quite beautiful.


So this morning I thought I would attempt to capture it "on film." Well, wouldn't you know that the birds decided to be civil today! I finally ended up with two shots, however, that do show the colors.




As I sat there perched on my desk, waiting for the perfect shot, I marvelled once again at how the siskins sit and gorge at the feeders. And they were throwing an awful lot of seed on the ground. Now, I'm willing to believe that there are plenty of dud seeds in a bag, but it seems they were tossing out twenty for every one they ate, which seemed a bit excessive. And then suddenly, all the birds were gone. I had noticed the occasional chickadee flying up from the ground under the feeder, so I craned my neck to look directly down from my window, and there were the siskins, and chickadees, feeding on all the seeds on the ground. Could it be that the siskins, whom I had previously categorized as greedy pigs, were being altruistic and casting seed upon the ground so others could eat as well? HM. Every story has more than one side.

A Spot of Color

When the world is white and grey,

a spot of color can brighten your day.

This lovely amaryllis was a gift this last Christmas. It came into bloom over the weekend - what a great greeting when we came in to the office this morning!

Incoming!

If you wait around long enough at the feeders, and have your camera set for taking multiple shots while you press the shutter release once, you just might end up with some pretty nifty shots.

Here we have a blue jay coming in for a landing (in the shade, unfortunately):

And also an evening grosbeak doing the same:

This blue jay was either stretching up to force some seeds into its gullet, or was taking a peek in the window:

Strange Growths

You never know what you will encounter when you go out the door and into the "wild." You might stumble across unusual tracks, or hear the song of a woodland bird that is new to your ears. Maybe a new flower is in bloom, or a large hatch of mayflies occured. Perhaps the new light of dawn is bathing the world in gold, or a full moon appears like a search light across a snowy expanse. The possibilities are endless and it's all free for the taking!

Well, here is a recent strange encounter: bizarre growths on the side of a birch tree. Actually, strange growths on two birch trees. It's been a while since my "Forest and Shade Tree Pathology" course, and since I wanted to be sure I identified the causative agents correctly, I sent photos and an enquiry off to Professor John Castello, the current pathology professor at SUNY ESF. Here are our findings:

This is the first one I came across. The black growths seem to erupt from the bark of the birch like some alien bursting forth (which, in a sense, I suppose it is).




Part of what grabbed my attention was the shear size of the thing - I placed my glove on the upper-most growth to act as a reference for size. Maybe it's a burl in the making. Hm.


I had an email from Professor Castello this morning identifying this as the "sterile conk of Inontus obliquus." So I zipped on-line for information on this fungus. Apparently it is very common on birch species, although it has also been found on alder, hickory, beech and hophornbeam.

The black "stuff" that is erupting from the trunk is fungal tissue "erupting from bark cankers" (this from http://www.pfc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/, a forest disease website from Canada. The tree's trunk is often thickened at the site of the disease, where the tree reacts like a body with cancer: rapid reproduction of wood and bark. There are fertile fruiting bodies, but these are annuals (where as the black bit is perennial) and are difficult to find due to rapid deterioration from insects and weather damage.

The bottom line is that this fungus causes a very severe white heart and trunk rot - not good news for those in the timber business.

One website(http://www.wholelife.com/) I found claimed that Inontus obliquua has medicinal properties. According to the article, written by Kahlee Keane, "This birch fungus known as chaga or "tsyr" has been part of Russia's traditional medicine since the sixteenth century. In recent years its therapeutic qualitites have been validated by such people as Dr. Kirsti Kahlos, a pharmacognycist at the Huinveristy of Helsinki who has been looking at the action of a triterpenes called inotodiol found in chaga. Kahlos and other recsearches have found this constituent active against influenze, inflammation of the stomach and intestines, as well as specific tumors."

So, there you have it.

The second birch tree had an entirely different appearance. It looked as though steps were growing from the trunk all the way up the tree, alternating from left to right.


Up close, the bark had been stretched and broken into patterns that immediately brought to mind the growth pattern of turkey tail fungus (Tramedes versicolor).


From the step-like swellings along the trunk new twigs seem to be sprouting.

Professor Castello suspects this is the same disease...perhaps the black fungal tissue just hasn't erupted from the trunk yet.