Life Below Zero - UPDATE January 19, 2025
Notch
Notch, the tamest deer here, knows how to start a day demonstrating her trust. I drove in, saw her in the middle of the yard. She showed she knew what she had trained me to do. As I was getting out of the truck, she walked to her usual feeding spot at the front corner of the cabin and calmly watched as I parked, walked to the front deck and in the door. I did what I was supposed to. I went upstairs, got a scoop of raw peanuts without shells, carried it to the edge of the upper deck and saw her standing calmly as I towered over her some 10 feet above her. She didn’t flinch when I poured the peanuts down and she began eating. I went downstairs with my camera to get pictures of her face on her level. I braced the lens against the living room picture window ten feet from her as she just kept eating. I made strange noises to get her to look at the camera, but when she lifted her head she was looking other directions. Finally, when I was being quiet, she gave me the look in the picture, showing her big round eyes that probably give a big field of vision as a prey animal. Thank you, Notch. I’ll do the same for you every time.
Bald eagle
Bald eagle
Another wake-up situation a couple days ago was the eagle swooping by with the beef fat stuck too tight to the spot to be successful. So instead of heading across the lake loaded with high calorie fat and being mobbed by ravens that would land near him in the big white pine where he eats it, he landed nearby for a picture. When he flew off and landed across the lake where he could see what I was doing, I quickly microwaved a pile of beef fat that he could eat easily if he came back before it froze to the spot. While I was back working, he flew off.
American goldfinch female fluffed
American goldfinch female fluffed
Chickadee with seed
Chickadee with seed
Blue jay w beef fat
Blue jay with beef fat
Goldfinch male
Goldfinch male
Pine siskin
Pine siskin
Not as spectacular, but a story of their own is how little half-ounce birds like chickadees, goldfinches, and pine siskins survive temperatures far below zero (26 below this morning). I asked Google how they do it, and Google said they eat twenty times their normal calories. That would explain why the cold days of late brought a flock of over a hundred goldfinches and pine siskins to compete with red squirrels, and 3-ounce blue jays. etc. When flocks of 8-18 blue jays come to fill up on sunflower seed hearts and sometimes throatfuls of beef fat, blue jays dominate. Their main competitors are red squirrels. The little birds just keep their distance. When the blue jays move on and the squirrels give the little birds an opening, a dozen chickadees and nuthatches dash in to carry away seeds to peck apart.
The picture shows a portion of the big flock at one of the feeding sites focusing on sunflower seed hearts while a chickadee and a downy woodpecker peck away at the pile of frozen beef fat. The high calorie pile is so popular with woodpeckers that it has one woodpecker or another pecking at it nearly all day. In the picture a little one-ounce male downy was able to slip in between visits by hairy woodpeckers twice his size, concentrating on the fat so diligently that the goldfinches and pine siskins can feel safe keeping a 6-8 inch distance and go about their work.
Flock
Flock
I like the picture of the half-ounce female goldfinch resting in fresh snow puffing up her feathers, appearing far bigger than her actual weight of less than a half ounce.
Thank you for all you do as we all find ways to survive the cold that is covering many states at this time.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
Author
Topic: Jewel and her cubs (Read 1764898 times)