The groundhog responsible for trimming the lawn greenery in our area has discovered the long-disused driveway salt barrel:
There’s always another appointment on the calendar, though:
A busy critter with no time to waste!
Tag: Wildlife
Other creatures in our world
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Beaver Dam: Rising Water
The furry engineers in charge of maintenance laid several layers of branches along the breast of their dam:
Beaver Lodge and Dam – raised dam – 2020-03-31 Their pond is maybe nine inches deeper than a few weeks ago. The rail trail has little danger of flooding, even as the water creeps closer, because the roadbed is higher than the far shoreline.
Go, beavers, go!
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Monthly Science: Praying Mantis Ootheca
We extracted the Praying Mantis oothecae while clearcutting the decorative grasses bracketing the front door. As far as I can tell, they’re still charged up and ready for use.
The masses resemble rigid foam wrapped around grass stems:
Praying Mantis ootheca – stem side It’s a mechanical joint, not an adhesive bond, and the dried stems slide freely through the openings:
Praying Mantis ootheca – bottom From one side:
Praying Mantis ootheca – right And the other:
Praying Mantis ootheca – left They’re now tied to stems of the bushes along the front of the house, which (I hope) will resemble what the little ones expect to find when they emerge, whenever they do.
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Monthly Image: Albino Squirrel
We’re riding home with groceries when a small white shape scampered across a yard and jumped onto a stump:
Albino Squirrel 2020-03-03 – 680 crop If you’ve ever seen a gray squirrel, you’ll recognize the shape, even in this gritty enlargement:
Albino Squirrel 2020-03-03 – 680 – detail crop Wikipedia says this one is likely a leucistic white squirrel, rather than a true albino squirrel. There is, of course, a website. tracking “white squirrel” sightings.
The relevant coordinates, for science:
41°41'39.9"N 73°52'56.6"W
41.694410, -73.882374Can’t say if this one had black or pink eyes, but it was pure white!
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Garden Mole: End of Life
One of the moles aerating the ground around here ran out of steam beside the garden:
Mole – dorsal It has wonderfully soft velvety fur!
Flipping it over:
Mole – ventral A closeup of its digging paws and gnawing teeth:
Mole – ventral paws – teeth Those choppers seem overqualified for a diet of earthworms, but I suppose they know what they’re doing.
We left it in as-found condition, ready for recycling …
[Update: The consensus seems to be it’s a vole or shrew, not a mole. It’d be the biggest vole I’ve ever seen and “large shrew” seems oxymoronic, but the teeth are diagnostic. ]
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Craftsman Hedge Trimmer: Laying on of Hands Repair
It being the season for hacking down decorative grasses, our ancient Craftsman Hedge Trimmer woke up dead, a decade after I fixed its switch and predicted it’d be good for another decade.
After verifying the failure isn’t in the wall outlet or the extension cord, haul it to the Basement Laboratory Repair Wing, clamp the blade in the bench vise, remove a myriad screws, and pop the top:
Craftsman Hedge Trimmer – innards exposed I should have removed the screw in the extreme lower right corner and loosened the similar screw at the rear of the bottom plate; they’re two of the three machine screws engaging nuts embedded in the shell. Everything is greasy enough to let the nuts slide right out of the plastic and no harm was done, but that need not be so.
After poking around a bit and finding nothing obvious, I checked the resistance across the plug: open-circuit with the switch OFF and nearly shorted with the switch ON.
Huh.
Put the case back together with just enough screws to prevent heartache & confusion, unclamp the blade, plug into the bench outlet, discover it works fine again, reinstall the rest of the screws, and continue the mission:
Decorative grass bunches – early spring clearcut We moved the Praying Mantis oothecae to nearby bushes for science!
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Dutchess Rail Trail: Beaver Lodge & Dam
A beaver family built their lodge next to the Dutchess Rail Trail:
Beaver Lodge – DCRT N of Golds Gym – 2020-02-23 It’s just to the right of the fence post, on the far side of the pond.
Dutchess County’s aerial survey in 2016 showed a dry-ish area west of the rail trail, with a culvert to the north:
Beaver Lodge – DCRT N of Golds Gym – 2016 CIR image We went back the next day and stopped at the culvert. Their dam spans the entire near side of the pond, upstream of the ditch (just above my hand) leading to the culvert:
Beaver Lodge and Dam – DCRT N of Golds Gym – 2020-02-25 The helmet camera pictures look west from the rail trail, with the lodge in the northernmost open area. The wide-angle camera lens exaggerates the distance, but the lodge is only about 35 feet from the fence.
A stand of birch trees near the lodge now looks like a combination buffet and construction yard. When beavers discover ferrocement, their structures will become much more obvious.
Go, beavers, go!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 