Dealing With The Cold
I thought things were rough lately with the cold temperatures and two inches of solid ice on my driveway, until some recent observations of local wildlife trying to stay alive changed my perspective. On my way into town the other morning, I noticed a sizeable flock of wild turkeys trying to work through the hard crust in an attempt to find something to eat. Birds like pheasants and turkeys are dependant upon scratching and uncovering food on the ground. With current snow and ice conditions, I am sure both species of birds are having great difficulty getting enough to eat.
Upon further examination as I was stopped along the side of the highway, I noticed one creative and energetic turkey hanging on for dear life to a slender box elder branch eating seeds left over from last summer.
This past Sunday afternoon despite the minus 20 degree wind-chill, I put on a number of layers and headed out on the nearby Wacouta Bay on my cross country skis. On my way to the upper end of the bay, I noticed a pair of coyotes travelling on the ice between a couple of small willow sandbars next to the main river. As I skied closer to the coyotes, they eventually spotted my presence. As they ran off in the other direction, I continued skiing and quickly came upon their fresh tracks in the snow. At this point, I thought it might be more interesting to follow their tracks in the direction from which they had appeared rather than chasing after them.
Soon after starting on their trail, I discovered where they had recently been bedded down on the south sunny side of a muskrat house well out of the effects of the cold northwest wind that was blowing. As I continued back tracking the wily animals, I discovered they had been patrolling the edge of the ice on the river in search of sick or injured waterfowl.
Continuing to ski up river, I jumped numerous American mergansers that were resting on the open water and diving under the surface to feed on the abundance of gizzard shad that were available for the catching. These ducks are sometimes called sawbills because of their serrated bills which are adapted for catching fish. The silence of this remote part of the backwaters was periodically broken by their wing beats as a flock would fly overhead. Another frequent sound was that of the clanking of huge sheets of ice moving swiftly downstream and smashing into the red and green navigational buoys marking the main channel of the river.
After a couple hundred yards of back tracking, I discovered that these two coyotes had just visited an active beaver lodge with the remote possibility of finding a tasty meal. In the winter, it is quite easy to determine if a lodge is inhabited by looking for hoar-frost on the top of the structure. The warm moist air from the breathing of the beaver rises and condenses on the cold sticks which their home is constructed. More years ago that I care to admit, my father introduced me to the late Irv Benson who lived with his wife Tempest on a remote island on the Canadian side of Saganaga lake at the end of the Gunflint Trail. Irv made a living running a winter beaver trap line over a large area in this part of the wilderness. He was convinced that timber wolves were smart enough to follow his trail and check out these active lodges only to return in the spring and open water to prey upon the young kits as they were learning to swim. On numerous winter trips that I led over the years with the Environmental Learning Center into the BWCA, we observed many times where timber wolves had walked on top of beaver lodges checking for evidence of activity. I wonder if these two coyotes that I just observed will return in the spring for a possible meal of beaver kits?
Early yesterday morning as the sun was starting to appear over the bluff east of Colvill Park, I stopped in to check on eagle activity and numbers. In addition to observing a dozen eagles, there were numerous mallards resting at the edge of the ice as misty clouds of steam were rising off the river. With assistance from my binoculars, I noticed that like the mergansers these mallards were feasting upon the small shad in the river. Evidently, wild creatures possessing the ability to adapt to the rigors of nature stand a much better chance at survival. Maybe there is a message there for me and the two inches of ice on the driveway.