Moose Beds
In winter, Moose prefer to use powder snow areas in mixed forests, under large conifers, as bedding sites. They can rest while standing or when bedding on the ground. When standing, a moose’s head and neck are relaxed but its ears are constantly moving in order to detect sound coming from any direction. When bedded on the ground, a moose’s legs can be tucked under its body or extended (when laying on their side).
A favored resting and sleeping position of antlered bulls is on one side of their body, with legs stretched and one antler touching the ground. Moose have the ability to nearly disappear if they bed down in snow. A bedded moose does not move and looks very much like a stump or rock. When they rise, they often leave shed hairs and scat in the depression they’ve made in the snow.
A large bed with one or two smaller ones indicates a cow and her calves have bedded down together. (Thanks to Kit Emery for photo op.)
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Coyote Beds Reveal Females In Estrus
Female coyotes have one heat, or estrus, a year, sometime between January and March. As the time approaches, mating pairs scent-mark in tandem. The female urinates and then the male usually follows suit and urinates adjacent to it. After mating, the reverse takes place, with males often urinating first and the females adding their scent afterwards.
Once estrus arrives, drops of blood are often evident in the female’s urine, but scent-marking isn’t the only place you see evidence of estrus. If you come upon a coyote bed in the snow this time of year, inspect it closely — the females’ beds often will have drops of blood in or near them (see photo). A recent discovery of a group of five coyote beds showed evidence that at least two of the beds had been occupied by adult females in estrus.
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Coyote Beds
Like most carnivores, coyotes do not have permanent homes, other than the maternal dens in which they raise their young. In the winter, coyotes do not usually seek shelter in a den, but rather prefer to sleep outside, preferably out of the wind in a hollow or under an overhang, a fallen tree or the spreading boughs of an evergreen (see photo, where two coyotes bedded down). A study on the relative time coyotes spend resting or hunting found that they spend more time resting in these sites in the winter, when they depend more on carrion, than in the summer, when small rodents are readily available and more time is spent finding and catching prey.
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Coyote Shelter
Like many carnivores, coyotes do not have permanent homes, other than the maternal dens in which their young are raised. After being active at dawn and dusk (as well as occasionally during the day and night), they are apt to rest, curling up in beds they make in the snow right out in the open. However, they will take advantage of a sheltered spot, such as this hollow stump, if it presents itself. Tracks leading into and out of this stump, in addition to many hairs on the ground inside it, left no question as to what canine had sought shelter here from the cold, winter wind.
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Black Bears Birthing
Right now, partially or fully exposed to the sub-zero temperatures we’re experiencing, female Black Bears are giving birth to cubs that are blind, nearly hairless and weigh less than a pound. Although the mother’s metabolism is slightly reduced, her body temperature is relatively high, and she is very responsive to her cubs. The cubs do not hibernate – they retain full metabolism in order to maintain maximum growth, nursing frequently and for long periods of time. Their mother keeps them warm by hovering over them and breathing on them. Like human mothers, she sleeps when her cubs sleep, but awakens quickly and responds to their cries. (Photo taken during research; cub is roughly two months old.)
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Fisher Sign
You can spend days following the tracks of a fisher – this tireless member of the weasel family travels up to ten miles a day during the winter, foraging for food and stopping to bed down periodically. One of the more common signs of fisher, other than tracks, is their resting spots. Fishers are active day and night, but even they have to stop now and then to rest, often at the base of a tree. More often than not they defecate before departing. If you look closely you’ll see the fisher’s scat – guide books often state that the scat of fishers is dark and twisted. While this is sometimes so, their scat can also be somewhat mustard-color and not be at all twisted, as in this photograph.
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Mystery Photo: Eastern Cottontail Rabbit Nest
There were some extraordinarily creative guesses for this Mystery Photo, with several correct ones that identified the cottontail rabbit nest pictured yesterday. Two species of cottontails can be found in New England – the common Eastern Cottontail Rabbit and the increasingly scarce New England Cottontail Rabbit. Although the two species are very difficult to tell apart, young New England Cottontails usually have a black spot between their ears and never a white spot, which makes this nest that of an Eastern Cottontail. The female rabbit digs a nest hole about four inches deep and up to eight inches long, usually in grass or thickets where it is well concealed. She lines it with grass and fur plucked from her body. After her 3 – 9 young are born, she covers the nest with her fur and dry grasses and leaves the are in order not to draw attention to the nest. She returns at night to feed the young, squatting over the nest while her young reach up to nurse. Unlike hares, rabbits are born blind with only a sparse covering of hair and remain in the nest from three to five weeks, when the white blaze on their forehead starts to disappear. Snowshoe hares are born with eyes open, fully furred and disperse from the nest soon after birth. (Thanks to Noreen Anderson for photo.)
Muskrat Division of Labor
Although muskrats are primarily nocturnal, you occasionally see them in the daytime, especially in the spring and fall. They often reside in ponds or marshes, where they live in the pond bank or build their own house out of mud, cattails and other available plant material. Muskrats are herbivores, favoring cattail roots, arrowhead, bur reed, pickerelweed and other aquatic vegetation. The pictured muskrat is not feeding, however — more often than not muskrats eat their food where they find it, especially during the warmer months. It is doing its share of parental care — this is the time of year when the first of several litters of muskrats are born. While the mother nurses her four or so young, the father spends time gathering bedding material for his offspring. The muskrat in this photograph spent a morning cutting and gathering several mouthfuls of grasses growing by the side of the pond. When he couldn’t fit one more blade of grass in his mouth he would scurry down the bank and disappear into a burrow which most likely led to a chamber where his young are being raised. Like their beaver cousins, muskrats tend to keep a tidy house and forage for fresh bedding for their young with some regularity.
White-tailed Deer Bed Positions
If you walk in many of New England’s woods, it is likely that you will come upon deer tracks. If the snow isn’t deep enough to keep the deer confined to one area, or “yard,” such as this year, then tracks can often be found throughout the woods. Where there are tracks, there are also beds – spots, often on higher ground, where deer bed down for the night. By looking at the edges of the indentation left when a deer lies down, you can usually determine which direction the deer was facing. (It’s back leaves a fairly symmetrical curve in the snow, and its knees often make impressions.) Deer frequently travel in herds and bed down together. Because they are prey for numerous animals, it should come as no surprise that their actions, even ones as simple as in which direction to lie down, are intentional. If you look at an area where several deer bedded down, you will usually find that each deer is facing a different direction. This is so that, together, they have as much of a 360 degree view as possible, in order to spot an approaching predator. The deer that occupied the closest bed in this photograph was facing right, while the further deer was facing left.
Fisher Bed
Some of the most common tracks in the woods of central Vermont are those of fishers. These members of the weasel family, although known for their agility in trees, travel extensively on the ground. Fishers have been known to cover 28 miles in two days in search of food. They may be active day or night, and especially at dawn and dusk. If you persevere long enough while tracking one, you will be rewarded by some kind of sign in addition to tracks, be it a trampled conifer sapling, or a stump or a log where a fisher has marked its territory by depositing urine, scat or both. Occasionally you will come upon a bed, often right next to the base of a tree, where the fisher has stopped to rest. More often than not, their typical dark scat can be found in these locations.
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