Hangin' with Burt

Hi All,

Sorry I missed Sundays outing--I really wanted to go but something came up. I had hoped too, to share some photos of my adventure last Friday with Ben Kilham--there are too many to attach to email so I'll just send a couple of my faves. Maybe some of you saw the article in the Sunday Concord Monitor? The photos in the article were taken on Wednesday but I got to go out with Andy Timmins, Will Statts, and Ben on Friday.

The den we visited was found by someone walking their dog (the dog stuck his head inside) so we didn't know who was in there. As you can see in the photos (1-3), my fellow tracking experts, that the bear had already been active and was working hardily on the trees (Ben thought he may have been eating the cambium)!

The biologists went ahead of us and tranquilized our bear (Andy is holding the poke stick in photo 3) but waited till we got there before they pulled him out. At one point, two of the Fish & Game guys were head first in the den (photo 4), each holding onto a paw, while two other guys had them by the feet and were trying to pull them out. In the end, they ended up tying a rope around both paws to pull the bear out.

Our bear was a big male, 220 lbs after a long winter of fasting, 28" around the neck, and 44" around the barrel--with one end of the weigh stick jammed in the fork of a tree, it took three guys to lift the other end (photo 8).

Ben felt strongly that this was Burt, one of Squirtys first cubs and the father of the cubs she has now (we can ask Ben about his food sharing theories and studies when he presents for our group)!

They don't usually collar the males because they tend to wander outside Bens study area but he did put a collar on Burt, I guess because he's been sticking around but I'm not sure about this?

In any case, it was a great time and I was grateful for the opportunity to spend the day with those guys, and especially with Burt!

Denyce

We Found Us a Kitty

On Sunday, March 16, Suzanne, John, Martha, Karen, her friend Allison, Mitch and I snowshoed up Plymouth Mountain to get in some tracking while we still have snow. No sign of moose up there at all, but we did find BOBCAT tracks up top. My photo of the track isn't the best, so I'm hoping John will post a better one. It was a fine day: Corn snow, which made for some interesting butt slides down the mountain, some clouds, mild, lovely. We also saw plenty of snowshoe hare tracks and another, which Martha thought was oppossum.

That evening, we had a potluck at Ron and Diane West's home (Thanks Ron & Diane!), followed by a movie of Ben Killam's work with bears.

Escarole with Chicken Sausage

At our potluck supper last Sunday night, a couple of folks asked for the following recipe. I made a few changes to the original recipe, below (I used precooked, low-fat chicken sausage and two bunches of swiss chard, instead of escarole. No added salt; rinsed the capers). Here it is:

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds sweet Italian chicken sausage, cut into 1-inch pieces
Crushed red pepper (optional)
10 cloves garlic, chopped
4 heads escarole, cut crosswise into 3-inch lengths
1 cup pitted Kalamata olives, halved
2 cans (15 ounces each) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/2 cup small capers
1/2 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, grated
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/2 cup Italian-flavored bread crumbs, toasted

In a large, deep, ovenproof saute pan over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the sausage and red pepper, if using, and cook until sausage is light brown on all sides and almost cooked through, 8 to 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and the escarole and continue cooking over medium heat, stirring, until escarole begins to cook through and is reduced in volume but remains green and crunchy, about 10 minutes (do this in batches if the pan is too small). Add the olives, beans, pine nuts, and capers. Stir them in and heat through, about 2 minutes.

Turn on the broiler. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the cheese, and season with salt and black pepper. Sprinkle the mixture with bread crumbs and heat under the broiler until crumbs are golden brown, about 2 minutes. Serve immediately.

Deer Kill

Suzanne and I were tracking in our backyard headed towards the nefarious Mike E's property, when we ran upon a deer kill. The skull, neck and lower jaw were intact and there were many coyote tracks around. Check out the pics. Gruesome!

Breeding Season

From the Society for the Protection of NH Forests newsletter, interesting tidbits:

February is peak of the breeding season for coyotes, foxes and bobcats - apropos for Valentines Day. Even as the late winter snow continues to fall in March, members of the weasel family enter their peak breeding season. Hunting prey along brooks like mink and otter, above and below the snow like ermine and long-tail weasel and even in the forest canopy like fishers, the weasels are renowned for hunting, feared for their ferocity and valued by fur-trappers for their pelts.

Bobcat? What do you think?

On Sunday, 2/24, Monica, Suzanne, Martha and I and a couple of friends snowshoed the Cockermouth Forest in search of bobcat tracks. We skirted Little Pond and took a right up onto the ridge. No sign. Instead, we saw another ridge, much higher, across the way. We'll try that one next time. On the way to Little Pond, we spotted tracks which may have been bobcat, we're not sure. It was probably chasing prey, perhaps porcupine, judging by the waddling gait. What do you think? Bobcat???

Other sign: fisher, coyote, weasel, snowshoe hare, bear bites, a babysitter tree, scent marking at an intersection and moose browse. It was a sunny, mild day. Most of all, it was FUN!

Tracking with Alcott Smith

On Sunday, January 27, Denyce, Martha and Linda joined the Bearcamp Trackers in Tamworth for a day of tracking with Alcott Smith, a noted naturalist from Western Massachusetts. Alcott, a retired veterinarian, studied for many years with Paul Rezendez, author of Tracking and the Art of Seeing. The man has an encyclopedic knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Northeast, and we feel lucky to have spent the day with him.

The Bearcamp Trackers (named after the Bearcamp River) trained with Sue Morse four years ago, and have been out tracking fall through spring, once a month, ever since. They’re full of fun and adventure. Their mission is to raise awareness about wild animal habitat and travel corridors between the White Mountains to the north and the Ossipee range to the south.

It snowed all day, not great tracking conditions. But Alcott taught us how to identify the animals with some degree of certainty anyway. In most cases we wouldn’t have been able to write up data sheets, but we made some guesses that most of us agreed on.

We traveled through a forest that’s managed for pine—lots of pine, with a good mixture of early, mid and late succession soft- and hardwood trees. We ate lunch on the ice in a lovely wetland, with lots of coyote tracks. In all we saw five species. Coyote, porcupine, long-tail weasel, fisher and (maybe) fox. We also got a good look at a porcupine den, which was dug into a berm. No bobcat.

Alcott stressed that we need to turn on our senses when out tracking, think and feel like an animal. He's also not keen on tv's and computers, which distance us from using our senses.

Here’s a list of some of the things we learned:

• Alcott said that February 2 is a day to be celebrated. "If there is any day worth a celebration it's February 2." This date is the half-way moment between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Animals begin to stir, give birth, mate, etc., depending on the species. It signifies hope--a return of warmth and renewal of the species.
  
• In snowy conditions, rely primarily on track patterns, and follow the tracks for a ways. The pattern may stay consistent, or may differ – indicating an animal other than who you first thought. We found this with what we thought was a showshoe hare who turned out to be a fisher who alternated between bounding and individual footprints.
• Predator lays are round; prey lays are oval. We found a predator lay atop a large boulder on the wetland edge. What a spot for lying around waiting for prey to walk by. Judging by all of the tracks in the area, we decided it was a coyote.
• To determine which way the animal is traveling, notice the deep cave or deepest part of the print. That’s where the animal’s weight is heaviest, on the front of the track. Also, you may see a plume, in front of the print, where the animal kicks up some snow as it moves forward. This sign is especially useful when snow fills in the track.
  
• Most animals eat and depend on beaked hazelnut. You can identify this small tree (or bush?) in winter by the tiny oval catkins on the branch tips.
• Animals will use ruts in logging roads as travel corridors. They do it all the time. They also will travel along an edge of thick cover. For example, we saw porcupine prints beside and continuing under an edge of thick, young pines that were growing across the old rut.
  
• Alcott noted that this property was being managed to favor uneven-aged white pines, for ongoing, long-term logging The land had been striated to improve seed regeneration – which was phenomenal! Very clean logging too.