Wildlife Sightings

I had a great day for suburban wildlife sightings... I saw:

• A muskrat, dragging a stick through the water.  It was right in front of me, very close, until JUST the second when I had my camera out and ready... then it dove under.
• Green herons, which seem to be very common right now.
• A poor baby vole, who seemed to be injured, which made me very sad.
• Some other rodent -- I think a chipmunk based on its size and color, atop a compass plant eating the seeds.  We scared it away before I got a great view, but you don't often see mammals six feet off the ground on something as slender as a compass plant stem.  It was cool.  
• A cormorant on the lake.
• Tons of woolly bears -- which I think of a cool weather caterpillars, so I guess that's a sign of fall. 
• Leopard frogs.
• Monarchs, practically posing on NE aster:

• This egret, either several times, or I saw several egrets throughout the course of the day.  In this instance, it landed on a dead tree near the class of kindergarteners I was teaching, then swooped into the pond, where we watched it walking in its smooth, deliberate way for a while. We had hoped it would catch a fish in front of us, but it didn't.  Speaking of fish, we also saw those, including a really big one that flopped out of the water.  

One

That is the temperature this morning. In Deg F. Not including wind chill. It feels like -20 deg F, what with the 25 mph winds. Cold.

Also, ice is on.

I am watching a robin outside my window. Robins used to be migratory birds around here, that left for the coldest parts of the year. Lately, some of them have stayed all year, making appearances on days like this, when, let's face it, if you were going to go south for the winter, you'd want to be there now. I feel bad for it, landing in various bushes, never finding shelter from the wind, flitting to the next one... Hope it's OK.

And speaking of things I feel bad for, I hope the voles are OK out there. There's not much snow, and the snow that is there is rather ice-chunky. I hope they have enough to insulate themselves subnivean-ly, because it would be a chilly day to be an exposed vole. I love voles... let's not think about it anymore, since there's nothing I can do for them.

A Sad Day

Yesterday was grey and rainy and blustery and, overall, icky.  (So much for embracing the weather, whatever it is!)  The day ended in over 3 hours of school board meeting, on the way to which I came across this guy.  A vole, who was alive but not doing at all well.  I couldn't tell why, he had no apparent injuries.  He was breathing.  But he was just laying there, waiting, I guess, to die.  How sad, to make it through the cold winter and then kick it just as spring makes its entrance.  Yesterday was cold, but I can't imagine it was cold enough to do in a vole, so I have no idea what ailed him.  And I thought about putting him out of his misery but couldn't do it because I wanted him to make a miraculous recovery, or at least make some hawk very happy. 

I love voles.  I know that sounds like an odd thing to say, but I really do.  They are the unglorified base of the prairie food chain.  Thousands of them, even in very small prairies, live hidden from view, providing food for owls and hawks, coyotes and foxes.  They tunnel, but not underground.  In the winter, they live in the subnivean zone, insulated by the snow.  You can see their chimneys and exit holes all over.  A lot of people don't even care, they're so common, but I love seeing them.  Knowing they're there and safe.  (Or, people think you really meant to say mole, which is a totally different creature...and go totally unaware of the voles all around them, totally distinct from house mice.)  

In the warmer months of the year, they tunnel under the matted grasses.  They have kitchens, where they cache and eat their seeds.  They have bathrooms, where they, well... duh.  They have bedrooms where they sleep in their family groups.  Under-appreciated and disorganized in their messy way.  

So I thank this one and I mourn him (while I hope against hope that he made it OK).