Bobcats Foraging
Bobcats are active all winter, particularly at dawn and dusk, when their primary prey (hares and cottontails) are active. Mice and voles are also a significant part of their diet, and occasionally larger-bodied male Bobcats successfully prey on White-tailed Deer. The pictured tracks reveal that while foraging for food, a Bobcat discovered the remains of a Porcupine that had been killed and skinned by a Fisher.
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Young Snowshoe Hares Dispersing
Snowshoe Hares have up to four litters a summer (females mate within 24 hours of giving birth). Their litters range from two to nine young (leverets), with larger litters the further north you go. Unlike cottontails, the Snowshoe Hare gives birth to precocious young – their eyes open shortly after birth, they have a dense coat of fur, and they are able to weakly move about within 30 minutes.
The female leaves the nest once she’s through giving birth, and returns once a day to nurse her young. By the fourth day, the young hares scatter from the nest. They reassemble at the same time each evening and their mother appears and nurses them for five to ten minutes. She then leaves and the young disperse. This behavior continues for about a month, until the young are fully weaned. (Thanks to Virginia Barlow and Wendell for photo op.)
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Apple Scat
At this time of year it’s not unusual to find the scat of various mammals consisting mostly of apple. Red Foxes, White-tailed Deer, Cottontail Rabbits, Porcupines and Black Bears, in particular, are all avid consumers of this appetizing fruit. Birds, including Purple Finches, Cedar Waxwings and Northern Mockingbirds, also include apples in their diets . While many insects drink the juice of apples, it’s not that often you see an insect like this Woolly Bear caterpillar (the larval stage of the Isabella Tiger Moth) consuming a sizable chunk of a McIntosh apple and leaving behind tell-tale scat. (Discovery by Sadie Richards)
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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.)
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